These guns are old, ancient bulky bricks. My new to me example of this P85 is from 1988. It is a tank. My FTO for the small police department had one. He could finish his qualifying test, 50 rnds, at 5,10,15, 20,25 yds in a 50 cent piece hole. I Thought this gun was ugly, heavy, and unwieldy. He made it sing, proving to me quickly that modern guns are far more accurate than most shooters by far.

I ran across this as I dropped my daughter off at work. She works part-time at the local GS. A guy traded this in on a Mossberg shock wave. It was stupidly cheap with 4 15 round mags and 2 30 round mags. I have wanted one of these since I started my own gun collection in 1996.






Is it a pristine example, Hell no. It has no box or paperwork. It was fouled up with gunk and dried oil and lube. I cleaned it up today. I am replacing the plastic grips with some Houge checkered walnut grips. It has a lovely worn patina. It is well used. I am excited to test it out tomorrow.





One of it's biggest advantages is a smooth double action trigger pull. This example is a sub 6lb double action. The only other modern gun that had a DA pull like that is my old CZ82.


What is the single action trigger pull? A lovely 2 lbs 12 oz.


After I cleaned the poor neglected gun. I opened up the mags and found this. FFS people clean your damn mags.

first handgun I ever bought!!!! I liked it until I found a H&K usp9 that I had to have!!!

Sweeeet... a friend had a later model Ruger brick 9MM in all stainless. It never failed him.

And he liked it as a southpaw, because they were ambidextrous before it was cool...

I saw a P89 the other day at a pawn shop I might pickup next week.

My Brother has a P85 and my friend has a P90. While not the most beautiful guns, they work every single time.

For the money, I think they cannot be beat.

Nice score.

P89 was the first pistol I ever shot! In my area, I rarely every see any Ruger P-series for sale...owners must love theirs!

quote:

Originally posted by onpointgun:
I saw a P89 the other day at a pawn shop I might pickup next week.

These things are so undervalued. This was under 300 out the door with 6 mags. If i had not opened my stupid mouth to the owner of the gunstore about what to sell it for when he asked before the previous owner came back with the other 5 mags i would have been out the door for 265.

They are accurate, they are robust. It can be somewhat tricky to take apart. I have often recommended them to first time centerfire pistol buyers who have a 300 clam budget. I think i have seen them carry the 300 dollar retail price tag for 10 years or so. I am excited to see how it shoots tomorrow.

A little ugly, but good shooters and indestructible.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
A little ugly, but good shooters and indestructible.

A little? As far as a modern gun it ranks among the ugliest imho. Barely beating out the beretta arx and remington rp9

From a durability standpoint, the Ruger P85 may well be the most underestimated pistol of modern times. With the anachronistic ruggedness of a Checker Taxi, the pistol is an American icon of the aluminum framed wonder-nine era. I recall a late 1980's article in one of the popular gun rags where a bolt was threaded into the barrel of a P85 creating a deliberate bore obstruction. The pistol was then test fired with a standard 115 gr. FMJ load suffering only a damaged extractor. I believe it was once said (tongue in cheek of course) the only survivors of a nuclear holocaust will be Twinkies, cockroaches and Ruger P85 pistols.

My first semi-auto was a P-85 a little older than that one (it had a different slide release IIRC); great gun, I sent it in for the recall and they sent me back an extra mag to cover my shipping. I ended up trading it in for a P-89DC (Stainless) in '90 or '91, and I still have that one.

You'll love it -- it'll eat anything you feed it. Mine has only had two stoppages, and they were both on me; one was a failure to feed because I didn't seat the mag completely during a speed reload in competition, and the other was a stovepipe because I limp-wristed it. They're big, clunky, and rattle, but they go bang every time.

Nice find; enjoy the old girl!

Lets see some photos of it.

I've never owned one, but it's funny, they seem much better looking to me now than they did when they came out. Don't know why, maybe it's "retro charm".

quote:

Originally posted by DSgrouse:
Lets see some photos of it.

Who, me? LOL. Give me a few days; I'll try to remember to take a pic when things settle back down...

They are very good guns , go bang every time .

quote:

Originally posted by cas:
I've never owned one, but it's funny, they seem much better looking to me now than they did when they came out. Don't know why, maybe it's "retro charm".

I will go with that. They certainly do have a late eighties early ninties vibe.

I agree the older Ruger tanks are overlooked as they are an excellent value. I can't think of a part that would wear out as they are really solid. I have the Ruger P89 that I absolutely love. It is big and bulky but man does it shoot and it shoots nice. It was a blued police trade in and I had the slide refinished by coyotekiller and Tommydog refinished the frame. So it looks like the stainless two tone version. I stripped the frame down myself and replaced all of the springs,something I will never do again,especially the magazine release. It was a pain in the butt to put back together. I took it out after refinishing and it is amazingly accurate. I replaced the grips with a polymer set I found on GB from a guy who replicates grips and they are now the checkered kind,kind of like the old Uncle Mikes checkered grips. The grips made a big difference as well. It is now my bedside gun.

My mom bought this for my dad for a birthday present in about 1990. She bought it at Fred Meyer, back when you could buy a gun in a department store

I inherited it a few years later when my dad passed away, and it was kind of like a 'gateway drug' and led me to where I am today. I told my daughter just this morning that she can have this gun when I check out.

Time for a shooting update.

In today's fun fest we have 1988 Ruger 85. Using (4) 15 round mags, (2) 30 round mags. 375 rounds of Tula 115 grn steel cased Berdan primed 9mm ammo. I holstered this gun in a Versa Carry OWB belt holster.

I have typed about the P85 and the mags above. I have not mentioned much about the Tula or the versacarry. I hear a lot of negative things about Tula ammo. Everything from it being filthy, to it breaking parts on guns. I have used it since 2004 when I got back into collecting and regular shooting. I buy what happens to be the cheapest factory new ammo I can get my hands on at the time. In this case, it was two 1k cases of Tula. My first 5k rounds on my Dan Wesson Guardian 9mm in 2007/8 were exclusively Tula crap 115. Since then I have used it to break in my mpx, my 9mm pistols and even use it regularly in my Ted Yost BHP. It goes bang, is cheap, I don't reload, and I like to shoot a shit ton.

The versacarry is a new edition to my range kit. Since rebuilding my range this spring I have wanted to practice more Draw, fire, fire, decock if necessary, safety and reholster. I have many different oddball pistols I like to keep my skills upon. I bought this because it fits my Smith and Wesson victory. I usually practice my draw step using 22lr for the first 300 rounds, the migrate to the gun I am practicing with for 100-200 rounds. This versacarry works well here in central va. It was 88 at 11 am when I started shooting in the shade. By the time I made it through all 375 rounds, it was in full sun.



I found the versa carry to be easy to draw, and reholster from. I have found it to be so with a wide range of my pistols. Ruger p85, S&W Victory, Star Model B etc. It does an excellent job covering the safety next to my flabby side, and the trigger guard area. It also easily indexes the draw step and reholster step.

On to the P85, how did it shoot?It shot well, the trigger pull is a steady sub 6 pound even when dropping 45 rounds via the 15 round mags and 60 rounds via the 30 round mags back to back. It got hot, but it fed, ejected, and fired everything in that salvo. Did i have failures? Yes, I did have a constant problem with one mag. I had reservations about this mag when loading it last night.

As you can see the mag on the left has some bulge to the feed lips. The bulge is on both sides, not just the left as it looks in the image. This mag would feed, fire, eject one round then stove pipe the next round straight up. I shot the whole mag and it did this for every other round in the 15 round mag. To be sure it was not a loading issue, i dropped the base plate, reversed the spring, and put it back together. I then loaded the 7 stoved piped round and it continued to do the same for those rounds. After finishing shooting those 15 rounds through the mag, I set it aside.

I also noticed that at 25 yds this gun was well over 6 inches, more like 8 inches to the right. I quickly found out someone had moved the sight to the right.




I found this out after the first 60 rounds. I will be drifting that sight back into alignment when I have time. I continued to shoot it, like this during the rest of the testing. So when you see everything off in right field you know why.

The next thing i found was i have dinky thumbs. I can easily manipulate the safety on, but my thumbs are too short to get good enough purchase on the decocker lever to flip it up. I have to ride that grip so high it took my web on its 3rd date.

When riding the grip this high I could much more easily manipulate the safety on and off. Most all of this shooting was practicing the DA/SA pull. So it was Draw, fire da, fire sa, decock/safety, reholster repeat. I wanted to get used to manipulating this safety, as it is diametrically opposed to every other safety I have on my guns.

So how did I start? Well I did Draw, Double action fire, Single action fire, Decock/safety, reholster for each of the six mags on my steel plates. I didn't bother with photos here. I was concentrating on the draw and reholster step. I was looking out for issues. Which i found in the mag mentioned above. It provided the only failures of the day. Clearly it is a mag issue not an ammo or gun issue. Once i had completed that 120 round basic test I moved up to 21 feet to do a bit of Draw, Fire, Fire, Reholster training on the targets.

Here is my first target using 45 rounds, three mags, with the draw, fire da, fire sa, decock/safety, reholster. I am not a speed demon, I want the draw to be clean, the grip to be correct, and the sight picture to line up smoothly.
Here is the first 45 rounds.

As you can see the guns strings to the right a bit. The sight being drifted right being the biggest culprit i think.
The second set of 45, I went back to riding super high on the grip and making my sight picture perfect in the draw. This cleaned up the stringing to the right a bit, it does still drift right a fair deal.

Here is an image from 21 ft


This is my next Draw set up. I draw, fire fire to center, fire fire left, fire fire right, decock/safety and reholster. This was done at 35 feet. Again you can see the sight being drifted has impacted my accracy. 45 rounds again. I should also say i am not 35 feet straight direct line to these targets when shooting. When i do that i get some lead zinging back at me. So I measured 35 feet straight direct line, and 15 feet to the right. I marked it with a line on the ground. This causes any bounce back to be away from me.


This is my next draw set up. Draw fire center, fire left, fire right, decock/safety reholster. The groups improve a bit. Not a great amount but I am only a few hundred rounds into this gun at this point.

My third and final plate shooting was draw, fire ct, fire left circle, fire right cirle, decock safety, reholster. I did not have 3 full mags here, IIRC 37 rounds.


Final thoughts. It functioned flawlessly in my mind. I had 0 issues with the guns ability to do its job. The magazine that failed is not a fault of the gun, the sight being drifted right is not a fault of the gun. It ate every round, it fired every round, it ejected every mag cleanly, and locked open after every last round fired. I do have to right the gun high, that is me again. The grips are slick in 88 degree weather as i sweated my ass off. I am glad I have checkered wood grips coming. How dirty did this gun get? Well not dirty enough to cause failures, but here are a few pics for you to judge yourself.

quote:

Originally posted by 4x5:
My mom bought this for my dad for a birthday present in about 1990. She bought it at Fred Meyer, back when you could buy a gun in a department store

I inherited it a few years later when my dad passed away, and it was kind of like a 'gateway drug' and led me to where I am today. I told my daughter just this morning that she can have this gun when I check out.

OOOH, that is a spiffy example. How do you like shooting it.