That's a nice looking gun, and seems to be decently accurate. Sorry to hear about the reliability troubles. Hopefully it will wear in and start performing better for you. I've always wanted a reliable service-style .22, but have yet to find one in my price range.

My Ruger MKII is excellent...reliable, accurate, and fun to shoot. But with it's goofy grip angle and heel mag release, it doesn't exactly serve as a good rimfire training replica for my carry stuff. It's still good marksmanship practice and fun as heck to shoot, though.

7 yards doesn’t tell much about accuracy potential to do that you need 50 feet minimum and preferably 25 or 50 yards. That is what separates the ok guns from great ones.
The malfunctioning may clear as the gun breaks in. I don’t believe anyone would expect one of these to run standard velocity target ammo until well broken in if ever.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
That's a nice looking gun, and seems to be decently accurate.

Thanks. Yeah, probably more accurate than my ability

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
Sorry to hear about the reliability troubles. Hopefully it will wear in and start performing better for you.

I expect it will. That last 13-14 rounds with only one failure was encouraging. Prior to that I think the best I got was 5-6 rounds w/o a failure.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
I've always wanted a reliable service-style .22, but have yet to find one in my price range.

BTDT. Been there and been doing that for years. Finally decided to pay good money for (what I hope will be) a good pistol. We shall see.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
My Ruger MKII is excellent...reliable, accurate, and fun to shoot.

I've a Ruger Mk I that's the same way. My Mk I has had trigger work (light and breaks like glass) and I replaced the stock rear sight with a target model rear sight. It was actually that pistol for which I bought four different kinds of match ammo to test. In fact <looks around...> here's a picture I posted previously:

quote:

Originally posted by captain127:
7 yards doesn’t tell much about accuracy potential ...

I dunno. Printing five rounds in a nearly straight line seems pretty promising (That was with Eley match ammo, btw.)

quote:

Originally posted by captain127:
... to do that you need 50 feet minimum and preferably 25 or 50 yards. That is what separates the ok guns from great ones.

Fifty feet I might be able to do. I'm afraid twenty-five yards with open sights with my eyes is probably a non-starter, much less fifty. Heck, fifty yards is about my limit, precision shooting, with a rifle with an RDS.

quote:

Originally posted by captain127:
The malfunctioning may clear as the gun breaks in.

That and proper lube.

quote:

Originally posted by captain127:
I don’t believe anyone would expect one of these to run standard velocity target ammo until well broken in if ever.

There are varying field reports. Some people have had good success with a wide variety of ammo, some have experienced ammo sensitivity to the point theirs ran well only with higher-velocity ammo. I guess I'll find out.

I hope it ends up running well. It's a lot of fun to shoot

That's a beautiful MKI! Looks like it's a shooter, too. I'm beginning to feel the need for a rimfire stage in the postal match at some point...

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
That's a beautiful MKI! Looks like it's a shooter, too.

Thanks! It is

There's a long story behind that Mk I. It's been back to Ruger twice:

First time was when it had been sitting in a foam-lined case. Still not sure what happened, to this day, but I went to open the case, something had interacted with something and the metal was all covered in brown, bubbly, crusty stuff and the bluing eaten-off. Sent in to Ruger for re-bluing. (To this day I refuse to use foam-lined cases because of that incident.)

The second time was when a friend tried to tune the trigger. He botched it. Well, the thing had always been a stone bitch to get the barrel separated from the frame and back together again, anyway, so back to Ruger it went. They fixed all that up and it came back with a dream trigger

I'd originally bought it to shoot .22 cal. metal silhouette.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
I'm beginning to feel the need for a rimfire stage in the postal match at some point...

Sounds like a plan

Had my Kimber 1911 Rimfire Target out to the range, today, for the second time.

The good news is it's a hoot to shoot. The not-so-good-news is it's ammo-sensitive. So far the only thing it's really liked was some 36 gr. Remington JHP bulk pack somebody gave me. Functions flawlessly with that. Go figure.

Didn't like standard velocity CCI, Winchester Xtreme (same specs as the Remington JHP, but lead). Didn't like any of the low-velocity target ammo. (I expected that.)

I guess I'll go through my whole stash, test everything else I have, and separate it into "Kimber likes" and "Kimber doesn't like" cans.

I expect the likes/doesn't like sets to move a bit as the pistol breaks in.

Last target I shot today:



Those are 1 in. circles. Distance was seven yards.

I ran each magazine of ten in close to ten seconds, following the first shot. (Seat-of-the-pants estimate based on firing rate.)

Sounds like it was fun!

Nice shooting...I recognize that target ! A while back there was a thread on here that suggested lubing .22 ammo prior to shooting it in semi-autos to improve reliability. I wonder if you were to give that a shot if it would help at all? You're probably correct, too, that it will improve some as it wears in.

The gun clearly doesn't suffer from accuracy problems...if you can get it eating reliably it sounds like it will be just about perfect!

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
Nice shooting...I recognize that target !

Thanks! I bet you do

My plan was to shoot it as best I could to see how I might've done in the Postal Match, but, about the time I had the two mags loaded and the target set up, the range display said my time was up, so I just kind of banged 'em out.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
You're probably correct, too, that it will improve some as it wears in.

That's my hope.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
The gun clearly doesn't suffer from accuracy problems...

Indeed. When I do my part it performs well. I had one target where I'd put the first 5-6 in about a dime-sized group. Then I lost it - lol

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
if you can get it eating reliably it sounds like it will be just about perfect!

About as perfect as one might ask of a .22 cal. rimfire, anyway.

I haven't been keeping close count, but I'd say I've about 400 rounds down the pipe as of the end of yesterday's range session.

It definitely likes the higher-velocity stuff. CCI Target Mini-Mags (FMJ round nose) and Remington Golden Saber JHPs ran flawlessly. (Until near the end of the session. Then I had a FTE with one of them and a FTF with the other. Next time I'll bring my bore snake.)

It did not like the Federal high-velocity FMJ bulk pack stuff, despite it being high-velocity. A lot of FTE's (had to pry the spent case out with a screw driver two or three times), FTF's. Some of the FTF's were just like standard velocity rounds: Simply failed to strip a round from the mag.

Same thing happened last range trip, with some bulk pack Winchester LRN that also claimed to be high-velocity: FTE's, FTF's, and stuck casings.

What surprised me was it did like some really vintage stuff I had laying-around in little 50-round cardboard boxes: Western Super-X, Federal Power-Flite, and, most surprisingly, some Remington standard velocity Target stuff in an old green and blue box.



That stuff has to be about forty years old. Look at the price sticker on that Western ammo: Less than 4¢/round

While Kimbers certainly are nice pistols, I really like my P226 with rimfire conversion. I like it so well that I sold my S & W M/41 !

.22 ammo can really vary drastically from brand to brand...and sometimes sadly, within the same box. I've been working on getting an old Glenfield 70 to run reliably over the past few weeks. I tweaked the ejector, modified the magazine to reduce slop, changed out the bolt assembly, polished the feed ramp, and replaced a bunch of old spring with new ones. It went from malfunctioning 5-6 times per 10 round mag to once every 2 or 3 mags with ammo that it likes. I did manage to eliminate the light firing pin strikes with the new bolt and pin, so that cut the malfunctions way down overall.

I got come CCI stuff that came in a plastic jar. The bullets are plastic coated, and just looking at them, they vary quite a bit geometrically round to round. They will occasionally hang up when chambering, but are probably the most reliable of anything I've tried so far...they've not failed to cycle so long as that goopy plastic crap doesn't get them stuck going in the hole.

I tried some Remington golden bullets. They shoot noticeably softer...like WAY softer. They will occasionally fail to eject...I think they're just not cycling the action hard enough...and they can produce some pretty catastrophic jams when this happens.

The new Winchester super X in the vintage looking box was working pretty good until I ran out of it, and can't find any more.

Blazer is somewhere between the CCI and the Golden bullets. Occasional weak cycling, but better than the Remington stuff overall.

It's hard to make a blowback action run reliably when there's so much variance in the ammo. Somehow Ruger worked some magic with my MkII...I don't know how they did it, but that thing truly runs 100%. The only malfunctions I've ever had with it have been rounds that have no primer and are complete duds. Can't blame that on the gun.

22 ammo is very erratic in terms of quality. I bought a case of Aguila right before the ammo drought. I was going to send it back due to what looked like water damage but it was cheap and Buds was being a pain in the ass (I actually have had some really bad experiences with them recently) and the trouble wasn’t worth it. That thread on lubing 22’s was mine because I couldn’t make Aguila run in anything. My Kadet and Beretta 87’s, and to a slightly lesser degree my MkIII Rutgers are pretty reliable. These things were disasters. All ammo related. Lubing helped though. A lot.

Easily my most reliable 22’s are my Kadet’s and my Beretta 87. Worst? Beretta 21a Bobcat. Followed by my Wilson Combat branded 1911 conversion kit. Awful.

Beautiful MkI by the way. The Kimber is nice too but I’m not a Kimber aficionado. Burned once kind of thing.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
Somehow Ruger worked some magic with my MkII...I don't know how they did it, but that thing truly runs 100%.

My Mk I is the same way. It'll reliably run anything until it gets dirty. Can't blame the gun for that, either.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
Beautiful MkI by the way.

Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
The Kimber is nice too but I’m not a Kimber aficionado. Burned once kind of thing.

Thanks.

I understand. Many people have. Word is they've turned themselves around--improving PQ, QC and CS.

The Rimfire Target really has run flawlessly with the right ammo and until it gets dirty, but, as I noted, even my un-picky Mk I starts malfing when it gets dirty, so I don't blame the Kimber for that.

My 10mm Kimber Custom II GFO has had FTF issues, but that appears to be extractor tension. Not an unusual issue with 1911s. Other than that it has a slight hitch in the trigger. When I called Kimber about those issues they told me if they persisted after 500 rounds, send it in and they'd fix me up. (I don't like mailing my guns around, so I'll probably just have a local 1911 guy fix it up.)