I put on a little marksmanship fundamentals clinic for some of the guys from work last night. I took my Ruger MkIV and MkII, and we ran some rimfire drills focusing on trigger control and follow-through before working our way up to the 9mms. One of my guys was shooting my MkII when the entire rear portion of the bolt fell off the gun.





Now, I've read before that there are known issues with the two-piece stainless MkII bolt design, and they are prone to failure. There actually are (or used to be) places that would weld them for you as a preventative fix, but my understanding was that once it's breaks you're done. Like most things online, I wasn't sure how much to believe it, or how prevalent the issue actually was. Folks that had the problem said that Ruger took care of them and replaced the bolt for free (albeit with a MkIII or IV bolt as they ran out of MkII parts), so I figured if it ever actually happened to me I'd just go that route.

Thankfully at some point a few years back, I came across a MkIV bolt for cheap, so I picked it up as a spare. It didn't do us any good on the range last night, but at least I was able to swap it in when I got home. It's blued, so now the gun has an awkward two-tone thing going on. I decided to give Ruger a call this morning and see if I could get a replacement stainless bolt.



I got through to customer service pretty quickly, and explained what had happened. She told me I could either ship the gun through an FFL or pay them $45 for a shipping label to send it back for service. Thinking that she wasn't understanding the issue, I asked her if I could just send in the bolt for replacement, and she said I would have to buy a new one. I asked her if it could be replaced under warranty, and was told they don't have a written warranty. She told me a new bolt would cost $65, which I declined. So much for standing behind their product, even for something that is apparently a known design flaw from the factory.

I've got a buddy who's a really good TIG welder, I guess I'll see if he can do anything with it. If not, the two-tone look isn't $65 ugly.

Lessons learned:

1. Give a little more credence to warnings from anonymous people on the internet.

2. When you see a good deal on parts, grab them, because the factory will try to rape you.

3. I own a lot of Rugers, and I like them. I actually had 3 of them at the range last night. I guess in addition to their crazy price hikes in recent years, apparently you can't count on Ruger to help out their customers these days. This makes me sad.

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

While I think that response is BS from Ruger given the failure at play and it would peeve me something fierce, I am kind of shocked at how seemingly inexpensive a new bolt is.

I'd have been tempted to just cut my losses and order the new bolt and just be angry about it for a couple years.

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I'd have been tempted to just cut my losses and order the new bolt and just be angry about it for a couple years.

I think I paid $40 or less for the blued one, and it was a brand-new factory takeoff...possibly from Volquartsen...I don't remember for sure.

Looking online, the Ruger price really isn't that bad...but I was pissed enough that I didn't feel like giving them any more money. If I didn't already have the gun back up with the spare I'd have probably just bought it.

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.but I was pissed enough that I didn't feel like giving them any more money.

I've been there many, many times. I have also been known to take my nose right off my face from time to time.

I completely GET IT.

/EVIL MODE=ON/ You could take it as a sign to do a full VQ build. /EVIL MODE=OFF/

Bumma. What year is the gun? Cheers.

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It's blued, so now the gun has an awkward two-tone thing going on
...
the two-tone look isn't $65 ugly

I actually like how it looks in the photos. It works with the darker sights, trigger, safety, and grips.

Without knowing much about that particular part, it looks like the original one was welded in place then finish machined to make that part.
If so, that's a pretty simple process to make the repair.

As I’ve thought about this I have a question. So any generation of bolt will work? I thought the MKIV used a completely new takedown system.

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You could take it as a sign to do a full VQ build.

The MkIV has all it's internals replaced with VQ stuff...mainly because that gun wouldn't run with the factory parts. I bought it BNIB about 6 months ago, and it was an absolute debacle. Failure to eject, stovepipes, short-stroking, light-strikes...you name it. Never once did I bitch to CS about that gun...I spent hours and hundreds of rounds working stuff over, and a bunch of money on VQ parts, which are absolutely superb. I love that gun now. I'm not one to call CS about every little thing...I'll go above and beyond to resolve it myself first. But when the bolt literally falls apart in somebody's hand, I can't fix that.

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So any generation of bolt will work? I thought the MKIV used a completely new takedown system.

My understanding is that it will. There were no changes to the bolt design except for a few things related to the size of the charging ears, and they got rid of the two-piece welded ones. The new bolt looks exactly the same to my eye, and fit in the gun fine. That said, I haven't shot it with the new bolt yet. This gun was insanely reliable before...I'm not going to be happy if that changes.

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What year is the gun?

1986 per the lookup info on Ruger's website.

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Without knowing much about that particular part, it looks like the original one was welded in place then finish machined to make that part.
If so, that's a pretty simple process to make the repair.

Hopefully. My buddy is pretty good...I'll see what he can do with it. If He can get it re-attached I can polish it up.

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I actually like how it looks in the photos. It works with the darker sights, trigger, safety, and grips.

Yeah, I guess if I could blacken the safety button and the bolt release lever, it would balance out ok.

About 10 years ago, I owned a Ruger carbine in 44 mag (looked like a 10/22). A small part of the action broke. Contacted Ruger .... "They don't stock any parts for their carbine" and no they didn't know of anyone that might stock the part". They couldn't offer any help or suggestions, at all. Bottom line was that I was S.O.L.

I did end up buying parts from a vendor that had bought all of the Ruger's spare parts. Ruger was too chicken sh*t to even give me the companies' name. And some wonder why I haven't bought a Ruger since! ("Fool me once, shame on you ...fool me twice, shame on me")

YMMV, (I hope)

Disappointing to hear this. I expected more from Ruger.

If you look at the small diameter hole in the back of the bolt head, you can see material sort of puckered around the hole, that is all weld wire material. It will need to be drilled out before the head is reattached in place. The weld is quite likely dressed up by hand on a belt sander and satin polished. Pretty simple. A skilled tig welder can reattach this in short order and it should never again fall off.

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I did end up buying parts from a vendor that had bought all of the Ruger's spare parts.

Do you remember who that was?

1986, while it shouldn't break, imagine that over those years the ears on the bolt take a lot of stress from impacting the back of the gun.

Weld it back and if the new bolt runs, use it, and save the original as a backup.

The Two Tone does look good...

Since I have a Mk IV and LCP Max, wondered what the warranty was, found this in the Manual.

"There are certain implied warranties under state law with respect to sales of consumer goods. As the extent and interpretation of these implied warranties varies from state to state, you should refer to your state statutes."

I’ve had this kind of stuff happen to me. I put the gun back in the safe and try calling customer service again in a month or two in hopes a different customer service person is more helpful. Usually works. Might take a few years to find a sympathetic customer service agent willing to do their job.

I'll accept being in the minority of responses here, but that's a 47 year old rimfire handgun. Is it even reasonable to expect a repair, free of charge? The $60 charge for the new bolt sounded pretty reasonable in the crazy world that we live in.
Just my opinion and everybody has at least one.
For what its worth, the black bolt looks pretty sweet, contrasting to the rest of the stainless look.
Have a great weekend!

LaMont in AZ

As I recall, there are no more Ruger's at Ruger.

Besides that, even when things were better there, they could be spotty and the service would depend on which way the wind was blowing. Fix something with a charge, another time at no cost, another time charge too much (because their method was to change all the parts rather than diagnose the problem).

I get it, it's frustrating, but we are spoiled by the great service we already DO get. You can't argue that. If you called GE and told them your 35 year old washing machine had stopped working and would they fix it, they'd drop the phone laughing.

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Originally posted by MannKrafted:
I'll accept being in the minority of responses here, but that's a 47 year old rimfire handgun.

Not that invalidates the point you were trying to make, but that's 37 years.

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Not that invalidates the point you were trying to make, but that's 37 years.

Dammit man there are three types of people in this world, those who know math and those who don’t.

I didn’t mention it above but I also really like the blued bolt in the stainless frame.

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If you called GE and told them your 35 year old washing machine had stopped working and would they fix it, they'd drop the phone laughing.

Fair point, and as I said in the OP, it's not the end of the world. I have options, and the gun is running. I'm not losing sleep over it.

But Rugers, especially the older ones, had a reputation for indestructibility, and I've heard their CS touted to be on par with the likes of Dillon or RCBS, who will ship parts out no questions asked even for user-caused damage, not just manufacturing defects (which this was). Clearly that expectation was unrealistic.