A couple of weeks ago, with the help of a welder buddy, I built a dueling tree. It's got a set of centerfire and a set of rimfire paddles. My oldest (13 y/o) and I have been shooting it quite a bit the past few weeks, primarily with rimfire lever-actions. He quickly decided that he needed a rimfire handgun of his own so he can take me and my single-six on. He's been working odd jobs and had some money saved up, so we went shopping.

I'm not a big proponent of bargain basement guns. I was hoping to find him a used single-six somewhere for a reasonable price, but from looking around, it doesn't appear that that's a thing these days. Everything I found was well over $500, even old and beat examples. That left the Heritage Rough Rider and the Ruger Wrangler. I can't abide the safety on the Heritage...it's cheap, plastic, and positioned such that it interferes with the way I grip a single-action. We found a shop that had Wrangler's on sale for $200, and my son liked the "stainless" one, so we went with that.

The shop actually had .22 ammo in stock, so we bough our limit of 2 50 round boxes of Armscor while we were there. I had happened upon a 500 round box of the same stuff at Dunhams a few weeks earlier, and had shot it through my guns with no problems, so I figured it would be a decent buy.

The fit and finish on the gun is about what you can expect from a $200 gun. It feels like very rough sandpaper. You can actually see the casting seam in the metal on the bottom of the grip frame. The cylinder had a plastic plug in it so we couldn't try the action in the shop. Upon getting it home and removing that, I observed that the cylinder rubs a little bit in one spot as it turns. The trigger pull isn't bad, though, and the action cycles as it should with decent lockup. The free-spin pawl is kinda weird to me, but does make it easier to unload the gun (no missing the gate and having to go all the way around) so I guess that's a plus.



We swapped out the cheap plastic grips for some walnut ones I had in the parts box off of one of my Blackhawks. The fit was far from the blended sanded fit that I like, but they do fit, and the indexing pins line up properly, however they are about 1/8" too short and the base of the grip frame sticks out past the bottom of the grips. Not a huge deal, but kind of unfortunate.



At the range, the gun shot a bit low, but being a fixed sight gun, I'd take that over shooting high as it's easier to fix with a little bit of filing on the front sight. Groups out to about 10 yards were acceptable given the small cowboy-style fixed sights. The problem arose when I got back to the 15...bullets were tumbling and keyholing through the target. I shot the same Armscor ammo through my Single-Six, my Mk2, and my Marlin 39 and 56 with no problems.



We ended up taking it home, cleaning it well, and returned to the range the following day. This time I brought a variety of ammo. We put about 200 rounds through it, including some Winchester bulk pack, CCI Blazer, Remington Golden .22 shorts, and even some old Russian steel case junk. None of them showed any sign of tumbling except for the Remington Golden .22 Shorts, which were quite bad. We got to play with the tree some, too, and he enjoyed it.

At this point, I'm glad I've found ammo that it will behave with, but I'm kind of annoyed that it's doing this at all. I get that it's a cheap gun, but $200 is a pretty good amount of money for him, and while I don't expect perfect fit and finish, I at least expect the thing to shoot straight. I'm trying to decide if I should call Ruger about it, or just call it good and only feed it ammo that it likes.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 92fstech,

I'd call Ruger. Tumbling ammo is not acceptable.

Definitely call Ruger.

Call Ruger. I had a SP101 that was a monumental turd out of the box. Misfires due to badly off center primer hits. Shitty inconsistent trigger pull with each chamber. I called Ruger they gave me a shipping label. I wrote a brief letter explaining the revolvers issues and included it.

Ruger replaced my revolver. My replacement works as it should. No sense saddling you son with a sub par revolver when it can possibly be replaced or fixed.

Be glad you stayed away from Rough Rider. My buddy bought one for his kid. The safety is everything you described and worse in person. It was also so rough that it kept locking up. Couldn’t get through a cylinder without issues. I wouldn’t take one of those for free.

I agree with above. Bullets shouldn’t tumble and cylinder shouldn’t rub. Send it back, they will make it right. My experience is that they will be pretty quick about it as well.

Well I called Ruger. After a brief period on hold (3-5 min), I spoke to a very nice customer service rep who was very helpful and knowledgeable about the gun. She agreed that tumbling ammo and keyholing is unacceptable. They are sending me a new cylinder to try, and she told me if that doesn't resolve the issues, to call back and they will send me a shipping label for the gun.

I've got a bunch of Rugers, but this is the first one I've ever had to call their customer service. So far I'm impressed.

They sucks about the problem, but I’ve sent a couple Ruger’s back, their CS is incredible. They will take care of you.

I went with the Rough Rider over the Wrangler. I’ve had a Rough Rider for years and shoot the shit out of it and love it. The safety is dumb as hell but it isn’t in my way at all so I ignore it. I recently went to upgrade to a Single Six, but like you couldn’t find even a used one for under $500. I looked at the Wrangler but was disappointed with the action. I prefer the half-cock loading style, which is the same as my centerfire SA pistols. Then I saw the store had a Father’s Day sale on the Rough Rider for $129, so decided to grab another to match the one I already have, and then picked up a third with the birds head grip. I was pleasantly surprised to see that one came with both .22lr and .22mag cylinders. The .22mag is a blast to shoot out of that gun.

My brown Wrangler (Davidson's) is surprisingly tight. Good to hear Ruger is working with you.



Perhaps it is the slightest of timing issues. hopefully just a bad cylinder.

Glad you called Ruger. Hope the new cylinder fixes the glitch.

Sigsentry- I like the looks of that Brown Davidson’s Wrangler. That or the OD Green Wrangler is hopefully going into my collection.

I shot a .22 match a couple weeks ago and 2 .22/45 LITE MKIVs in my squad were tumbling bullets. I couldn't believe it. Not sure what the deal is. Hope you get your revolver sorted.

I'd also look at the barrel rifling as well. Look to see how well defined the lands and grooves are. Ruger typically uses cold hammer forging for their barrels; we've had a few .22s from them in the past who have had issues with poorly formed/defined rifling, as if the mandrels they were using were used up and past their prime. We had a MkIII that had bad rifling, and later on two or three SR22s that had rifling that appeared very faint and not particularly deep into the barrel. The owner of one SR22 that we had earlier sold from that batch came back complaining on how poor the accuracy was with his gun. He sent his gun back to Ruger and their fix in that case was a barrel replacement. As for our guns, my boss chose to sell them as-is and let the customer deal with Ruger themselves. Ruger CS may be great with end users and owners, but historically they STINK when it comes to helping dealers out.

That armscor stuff gave me issues in a couple guns that usually eat everything, so no surprise. The ammo I had was giving me 5 or more misfires per box of 50 in multiple guns. Never again.
If it shoots everything else well I wouldn’t worry too much

quote:

Originally posted by captain127:
That armscor stuff gave me issues in a couple guns that usually eat everything, so no surprise. The ammo I had was giving me 5 or more misfires per box of 50 in multiple guns. Never again.
If it shoots everything else well I wouldn’t worry too much

Interesting. Any tumbling issues for you, or just the misfires? I'd never used it before, but these days I shoot whatever I can find, and I was happy to find it. It worked ok in all my rifles, my single-six, and my MKII...I had a few failures to fire, but nothing out of the ordinary, or any worse than what I get from Winchester or Federal bulk pack. Most would go off if I rotated them in the chamber and tried again, but there were 2 or 3 true duds out of the box of 500.

This not anything to do with the gun but I had a GREAT experience with Ruger CS. I work for a retail gun website, had a customer buy a Vaquero that was supposed to come with wood grips, showed up with plastic grips. I called Ruger on the customer's behalf, actually got through to a pleasant lady, and after explaining the situation, gave her the serial number, her first response was to ask me where to send the proper grips. No muss no fuss, no asking me to send photos or otherwise prove the gun had the wrong grips.

Things as they ought to be.

I have a Wrangler and it’s been a surprisingly awesome little plinker. I have had no issues luckily as of yet and it is amazingly accurate for what it is. For around 2 bills it’s a steal IMHO.

Well, quick update. The new cylinder came within a few days of my first contact with Ruger Customer service. We finally got around to testing it (was out of town on vacation for a week), and the problem persists. I called Ruger back and they were very helpful....they arranged for a UPS pickup and the gun is going back. Unfortunately my wife had other stuff to do today, so I'm stuck at home waiting on UPS to maybe or maybe not show up at some point to get this thing. Not Ruger's fault...they offered a FedEx shipping label, but the hub is an hour and a half away. I hate dealing with shipping stuff.

Also, be aware, Ruger will ship it back to your home. Adult signature required. I am an amputee (not complaining, the VA treats me like gold) and the FEDEX guy would only wait about 2 minutes before leaving with the package. Had to leave a note on the door so they would give me enough time to get there to answer it!
But yes. Ruger will take care of you.

Yeah, they told me they'd ship it back to the house. I work nights and my wife stays home, so that's no problem for us (provided they actually notify us that it's coming, unlike Taurus that one time. But that's another story!). I just wish Fedex would stick to a schedule so we know when to expect them and don't have to sit around the house all day. I did get a notice that they'd received it the other day, so far the communication from Ruger has been very good.

I wanted to update this with the resolution. Ruger had the gun for about a month, and ultimately decided it needed to be replaced. After a little drama with the LGS, we got the new gun in hand, and have had it to the range a couple of times.

Ruger never said what was wrong with the old gun, but they did include a photo of a target shot with the new gun showing nice round holes. The cylinder spins freely with no rubbing or binding, unlike the old one. I haven't been able to get ahold of any of the Armscor stuff that we were having issues with, but I've tried quite a bit of other stuff, including the Remington Golden .22 shorts that were tumbling consistently in the other gun, and have seen no issues. I'm ready to declare this one good to go.

Good to see that Ruger got you fixed up.