The ‘92 Palma rifles they furnished for the US Palma Team didn’t win them any laurels, as they appeared to be designed by a committee that didn’t have a clue what rifle matches were all about. They used crap barrels on rifles that were intended to be used by some of the best US shooters in a prestigious International competition. The guns didn’t shoot, and in the end I think only one US shooter used the Ruger in the match; the rest used their own guns, with most of these being a last minute switch forced upon them by the problems with the Rugers. That didn’t help. And this was with the offer that the guns could be kept, free, by any US shooters who used them in the matches.
My own “last straw” was a couple Vaqueros I purchased when they first came out, including a 38/40 and a 44/40. Nothing seriously wrong with the 38/40, or a matching 45 Colt I bought along with the others. The 44/40, however, wouldn’t keep more than half the rounds fired on a target paper at 25 yards. Seriously, disastrous accuracy. In doing some measurements after a few groups, the problem became obvious; Ruger had changed some dimensions, obviously without putting any thought into the changes. The original 44/40s normally ran nominal .425” to .427” diameter grooves, using comparable projectiles. With the current production, they apparently made a reasonable decision to utilize the now standard .429” projectiles common to the rest of the .44 caliber line now in use. I thought that was perfectly reasonable, and had no argument with that line of thought. However, if you’re going to change the bore/groove dimensions, don’t you think you’d change the chamber throat dimensions to match? Ruger didn’t see it that way, as I found when I started micing the cylinder. So, we had a .429” bullet, being violently swaged down upon firing, exiting a .425” throat in the cylinder, then rattling its way down a .429” barrel. When I called Ruger, I explained the problem and was told that the gun was “in spec.” Yes, I understood that, but couldn’t seem to get them to understand that the specs were what was wrong. I ran into Bill Atkinson at the NRA or SHOT show sometime after, and chatted with him about this. He shook his head and muttered that he’d “told those idiots” that they needed to change these dimensions, but they hadn’t listened to him. He told me to send the gun in to him, which I did. It returned a week or so later, with the chambers reamed out to .429” in the throat. The gun shot pretty well after that. Those, however, were the last Rugers I ever bought. Likely to stay that way, too.
