Just purchased a new precision rimfire and looking forward to getting it even though I had issues with Ruger in the past and swore I'd never own another Ruger. Any tips or tricks with it, things to watch out for, must have things to get for it??
Well, this IS a "factory" rifle . . . so, if you're lucky, you'll get one that shoots great and if you're unlucky, you'll again not want to ever own another Ruger. And I guess a lot depends on your expectations.
I've had mine now for over a year now. I got this as a trainer as my center fire is a .308 RPR. Initially, there were some issues as I do think they rushed this design to market and let quality control suffer.
At the time my bolt didn't cycle smoothly and after cutting my finger pretty good on an edge of the long groove in the bolt, I filed down the sharp edges and the bolt then cycled rather nice afterward and even better as time went on.
The big issue I had with mine (as did many other owners at that time) was the failure to eject where the case just kinda flopped out and often just staying in the chamber. This was especially so with BX15 mag. I though it was the ejector in the mag assembly that wasn't working properly, and manged to get it to do the ejecting, though still rather weak. I had to bend the ejector spring so that it held the case more firmly when extracting and that helped with the ejection too. But, I found out that when the mag is in the mag assembly, it's the mag that is designed to eject the case and not the ejector. So, I looked and found that the reason my mags weren't doing the job was because the mag assembly wasn't holding the mag high enough. A little shimming under the mag assembly raised it up enough so that now ejection is consistent, though still somewhat weak.
Accuracy wise, after a few hundred rounds the groups tightened up nicely (relative to .22 LR ammo) and once I found the ammo that factory barrel liked best, I'm please with the gun. When I bought the gun, I had plans right off for swapping out the barrel since the factory barrel is a "target" barrel rather than a "match" barrel. So, I did that after about 1000 rounds with a Shaw barrel and have liked that result.
A lot of people don't like the stock being "plastic" and I think there's some good reason for that in that putting much pressure on a cheek weld really seems to affect accuracy a lot. I get best consistency when hardly touching the stock.
To match the set up like on on my RPR, I replace the grip of like kind that helped eliminate imparting any twist movement in my trigger pull. And, I removed the trigger tension spring to bring my over all pull to under 1# like my center fire gun. These changes made good improvements for me.
