She came home today with her new bolt.  I'm 99% certain she has a new stock and a new pistol grip too.

RA definitely shot her A LOT, must be working well.  Hopefully I have time tomorrow after work to go to the range.

The Barska 6.5-20x50 with extra high rings that it came with fits PERFECT.  Whoever it was that said it'd be too high, well...I must have a huge head because it's just exactly right for me :)

I've got her all apart to clean right now, but here's a teaser pic:

Sweet! DO let us know how it shoots!

I see you like to crawl the stock...just like me....

I'm not sure what that means, I assume it's got something to do with where my scope is?

RA - I'm taking pics of the new bolt - if it's OK I'd like to post them, but I want to make sure with you before I do.  Let me know.  Thanks

No problem on the pictures of the bolts.

We are pretty happy with the new bolt, but I may change the firing pin. It may need to be a little shorter.

That rounded off bit makes it much easier to get in and out of the receiver


Here's a closeup of the bolt face


Here's some pics of the extractor set up.  I ran through a couple mags by hand, seems to work just fine :)

Went to the range after work today.  I took 9 mags, three BC Hotlips and 6 Eagles, all loaded up, and that was it.  I had 90 rounds total to work with, a mix of CCI MiniMags, Federal Gameshok 840s, Federal bulk, and Remington Golden Bullet bulk,

Of the 90, I have 7 unfired rounds that failed to feed.  I do not remember the break down off the top of my head, I will check later, but I do know that the worst damaged was a hollow point - it looks like the point was caught because the top of the bullet was sort of split apart.  The remainder were squished in some manner.

I grabbed up as much brass leftover as I could so I could inspect and all had excellent firing pin indentations.  Some of the brass was squished a little bit, I guess this means that they were caught by the bolt on the way out a little.

The first mag that went in was a BC Hotlips loaded with Federal Gameshok 840, and it did beautifully.  I emptied all the BCs (they all had 840s to start) and no failures.  Then I tried an Eagle (the one that I sent with the rifle to Rhineland for testing) which had two failures.  I tried another Eagle and it didn't work at all.  The bolt was catching on the magazine.  I tried a different Eagle and same thing.  So I dumped all the rounds out of the Eagles, loaded up the BCs again.  Had two failures with the BCs, each on the last round.  Some other FTFs to end up with the 7 unfired.

Anyway, I'm seriously pleased.  Before I sent her in I was less than 50% functional.  Tonight screwing around I was over 90%.  Got the new scope sighted in, was working beautifully.  Anyway, that's it for now.  Thanks RA!

My first-gen still has never failed to feed anything from any mag that would work at all (which is all of them I've tried, except the Eatons). My only functional problem was failure to eject, and the VQ extractor cut that by about 90%. Some days, with some ammo, the gun even runs 100%. I'll get 100% out of it yet!

Just read the report.

We also just found out about the FTF with the new bolt, this is cuased by the firing pin being 1/2mm too long. This is causing the rim of the chamber to deform making the bullets hand or deform.

It should be 90 out of 90

We can send a new firing pin out tomorrow.

Note-Eagles in the R22 dont work very well, we modify them. Trim the top down a bit and bevel the rear lug a bit.

I honestly don't think it's anything to do with the firing pin.  The first 30 rounds (which were Minimags in three Hotlips 10-rdrs) were flawless.  Honestly I'm of the opinion that the FTFs later in the session could be related to the newness of the magazines (not sure how many rounds you guys put through the rifle but 2 of the 3 Hotlips I was using last night had never seen action before).

I'm going to be hitting the range again probably Friday afternoon and definitely Saturday, this time with hopefully 2 more Hotlips mags and my range case and my family and I are going to get those mags broken in.  After that I think we'll be in a better position to see what's going on with the remaining few failures, if there are any at that point.

Let me reiterate though that I am in NO way dissapointed with the functioning of the rifle at this point.  Having seen my coworkers wrestle with their 10/22s on more than one occasion I know the .22LR can be finnicky.

Congrats on getting your rifle back.

I've been waiting for a replacement bolt since January, and have yet to hear from Rhineland. It seems that they're trying to grow too much too fast, and their customer service is most assuredly taking the brunt of the fall here.

Quoted: Congrats on getting your rifle back. I've been waiting for a replacement bolt since January, and have yet to hear from Rhineland. It seems that they're trying to grow too much too fast, and their customer service is most assuredly taking the brunt of the fall here.

Agreed.  However, for what it's worth, Thomas can't be faulted for getting testy and pissed off with his customers.  It has to be frustrating on both ends of the phone and keyboard.  I've been waiting on a G3 stock adapter for months.  Half a dozen e-mails back and forth with CC and shipping info, and still we wait.  I know from past performance, I will eventually get my part.  I also know it's going to take a few more months and another half a dozen e-mails.

It's the price we pay dealing with talented people.  When was the last time you ran across someone who was extremely talented, good with the public, and orginized like Patton's army?  We got two out of three.

I'm not overly annoyed yet, but It'e been going on 6 months now that I've had issues with my rifle. Rhineland was great about gettingme a replacement extractor back when that was first thought to be the issue, but now that the weather is starting to warm up, and I've gone almost 2 months with no response other than a january email claiming my bolt would be shipped out in two weeks, I am getting a little concerned. I really enjoy my R2... when it works.  I'm just dying to be able to drop the last part from that sentence.

Ok, I had a chance this evening to look at the 7 rounds that did not fire yesterday.

Of the seven, one was fine (I think it was one that got ejected when I was having the issue with the Eagle mags - it is undamaged and unmarked) and one was contacted by the firing pin but did not go off.  It had a good impression from the firing pin so I think it was just a dud - not unheard of from bulk packs from my reading.  The one that did not fire was a Remington Golden Bullet bulk, and the one that was untouched was a Federal bulk.

Of the remaining five, four have similar marks along the case like they were scraped.  The four in this condition were Federal Gameshok 840s (2), Federal bulk (1), and Remington Golden Bullet bulk (1).

The remaining damaged bullet was a Remington Golden Bullet bulk and it is seriously messed up.  Just look at the picture - it's the one that the point is all torn up on.  Can't really figure out what happened there.




Now if you remember I also mentioned that some of the brass looked irregular, like it had been caught somewhere.  Well, I looked through the thirty or so cases I managed to keep and of them only four were unusual.  They had all been pinched at the neck and along the case.  Two of them were CCI Minimags and two were Federal somethings (can't tell if they're bulk or Gameshok 840s, sorry).

The best guess I've got on the pinched or distorted cases is failure to eject properly.  If i'm right, don't look to RA for a fix, 'cuz it's a problem with the design of the Ruger mag and bolt, not RA's application.

While the 10/22 and R22 have an ejector, they might as well not bother installing one.  the gun really does better using the steel lipped header of the origional ruger mag, or the BC Steel lip mag.  Both mags have a built in ejector well ahead of the factory unit.

In your case, the case is likely not hitting the ejector with enough force to clear it from the gun, and it's getting smacked by the bolt in counter recoil.

Shitcan the Eagle and Hotlips mags, and get a few Steel Lips mags.

Quoted: Shitcan the Eagle and Hotlips mags, and get a few Steel Lips mags.

I agree. Steel lips work about 99.9% in my R22. My Hot Lip mag seems to work best when it's not filled to max -cap (I load 20 rnds instead of 25).

YMMV

Ruger factory mags work great in mine, also Hot Lips and RamLine doublestack IF I don't load them to full capacity.

Phobus, how do your mags seat? Do they snap in easily, without effort, or do you have to horse and muscle and fiddlephuck them into place, and some don't want to go at all? If so, I think I see what your problem is. Been there, fixed that.

The Hotlips go right in no problem, the Eagles are a pain.  I've eliminated the Eagles from my shooting inventory.

Ok well I took it to the range yesterday and again today.  All the failures are failures to eject, it turns out.  I went a bit slower and was more methodical about it and that's what I discovered.  I was using 6 different HotLips mags, 3 brand new and 3 with maybe a hundred rounds each, for this today and yesterday.  Sometimes one mag or another will be perfect, sometimes they'll have a failure or two per mag.  Seems pretty random.  Ideas?

Quoted: Ok well I took it to the range yesterday and again today.  All the failures are failures to eject, it turns out.  I went a bit slower and was more methodical about it and that's what I discovered.  I was using 6 different HotLips mags, 3 brand new and 3 with maybe a hundred rounds each, for this today and yesterday.  Sometimes one mag or another will be perfect, sometimes they'll have a failure or two per mag.  Seems pretty random.  Ideas?

Yes, toilet the damn hotlips mags!  Get Steel lips and spend your time shooting, not wondering why the gun jams.

Put another way. if your gun is broken in and the mags are broken in, and there is no improvement, why keep expecting any???

Because neither the gun nor the mags are broken in :)

RA - Will the BC Steellips work OK with the new bolt?

Phobos, if I were you at this point I would do three things:

1. Make sure the recoil spring and its rod are well lubed. Seems like a small point but this will turn my M261 from a 100% performer into a jamamatic faster than anything. One or two drops of oil changes everything.

2. Shoot CCI Minimags, which are peppy and guaranteed to give the bolt a rull ride.

3. Use Ruger factory mags, with the steel ejector bump on them.

Do this and see if the gun runs. Get it running 100% or close to it with this combination and then you can start playing around with mags and ammos. Hope this helps.

I assume the new bolt has a good (i.e., VQ) extractor in it? Bad extractor caused more problems than anything else in mine till I replaced it.

The extractor is shown in the pics above but they have their own extractor now and it isn't the same setup as a 10/22 anymore.

I tried a factory Ruger mag in my gun once and I'll never do it again because I had to take the gun completely apart to get it out.

Quoted: I tried a factory Ruger mag in my gun once and I'll never do it again because I had to take the gun completely apart to get it out.

Sounds like you need the upper receiver bevel fix trick. They should have done at the factory when you returned it--I understand they're doing it on all new guns now.

Before I did this, I had 3 Ruger mags, and only one would go in, and that one had to be horsed in and coaxed out. After the fix, all three--and every OTHER kind of mag, too--just pop right in and out at least as easily as on a stock 10/22.

It's a five-minute fix (exclusive of disassembly/reassembly time) that anyone can do. I'll see if I can take a couple pictures tomorrow.

Well I've done some more shooting and have determined that all the issues are being caused by failures to eject.  I went last night and sat with the rifle and my Eagle mags and figured out how they were interfering.  The rear corner of the Eagle mag was hitting the bolt, but I could "adjust" it to where it wouldn't (maybe a mm of play) so I took a file to all the Eagle mags and they all cycle fine now.  Since they have an ejector built in (though not made out of steel like the Steel Lips mags) I am going to see how they function.  If they work better than the hotlips then the hotlips will all go up on Ebay and I'll buy a stack of Steel Lips.  If they DON'T function better, not sure what.  I personally can handle one or two FTEs per 10 but at the same time I don't necessarily want to.

Well probably put close to 250rds through the rifle today.  She continues to function better.

The Eagle mags are shit.  I got so angry at them I broke one today.  The remainder are going in the garbage.

I had several mags go through without any failures.  I was able to shoot many full mags as fast as I could, it was great.  Pop! pop! pop! pop! pop! pop! pop! pop! pop!

Both my girlfriend and her son shot the R22 today.  She still gets really annoyed when it fails, she's mostly very easily annoyed in general.  Joe (her son) loved it, he put 21 rds through without any failures.  Not sure if he hit anything, but he thinks he did so it's all good.

I fired 30 rounds through mine today, testing Remington Golden Bullets. NO failures to feed or fire but I did have three stovepipes in there--about par for the course with this gun, though I think some of the blame for these might have been with the ammo. Half of them sounded supersonic, half subsonic. I used a RamLine doublestack mag.

Then my kid shot it a while, no idea exactly how many rounds. He said he had a few hangups with it (stovepipes) but nothing he couldn't handle. He still prefers my DPMS .22, I believe.

Accuracy with the Rem GBs was okay but not outstanding. Average of the best five of six groups (25 yards) was .421", which puts it about in the middle of six ammos tested in the R22. The best group was a nice one-hole .195, but the other groups all had one or two flyers blowing out a nice 3 or 4 shot pattern. It was the same with two other rifles I shot the stuff in today, too. Rem GB= not as good as Dynapoints, not as bad as Federal Bulk.

Quoted:The remaining damaged bullet was a Remington Golden Bullet bulk and it is seriously messed up.  Just look at the picture - it's the one that the point is all torn up on.  Can't really figure out what happened there.

Looks to me like the round went up the feed ramp and hit the top of the chamber. If you look at your bullet tip, that line across the face where it got smashed looks like a curve rather than a line.

That's certainly possible.  I can say thankfully that that hasn't happened since that one occurence, that all the other failures pop out these rounds with impressions halfway down the case.  None of them are even seriously bent anymore, as they still chamber (I'm not willing to try shooting them, however).

I'm curious, has anyone shot any of the hyper velocity rounds from their R22s of any gen?  I'm thinking of picking up some Aguila Super Max (or something, the 1700fps ones), as I've read someplace, might have been RA's site, that hotter is better.

Hottest I've shot is CCI MiniMags, which eject in a quite zippy manner!

MiniMags are only 1280, same as all the other stuff I shoot.  I want the hot stuff :)

So I'm down here in Orlando this week and I found a lovely place that sells SteelLips mags...So I'm going to buy two, and a loader (since I'll have 10 BC mags now) and see how that all works out.  Should be good I think.

I'm in love with the loader. Best $25 I've ever spent that's .22 related. You can pour the ammo into the hopper from a bulk pack, jostle it around and a bunch drop down into the slot and stand in line, and you crank the wheel and they all get elegantly stuffed into the mag. Makes loading a lot faster.

Snake, I bet his has the bevel that you're talking about. Mine did from the factory, and I bought mine almost a year ago, #12X. The one problem I ever had was the extractor having trouble holding on to the rim all the way to the ejector. VQ extractor was almost identical except for about 0.010" - 0.020" on the claw and that made all the difference in the world. I'm generally at 99-100%, except with 2 dud mags I have (one hotlips, one steellips).

just dropping a hello line in on your thread.  


I placed an order for a 3rd gen R22 last week.

Im so excited!

Would you be one of the guys over on CalGuns?

Well, we went out to the range yesterday.  Out of the first 60 rounds we had 6 failures.  Which sounds bad until you realize that the failures all were between two different magazines out of six - the remaining four had no failures.

I did not end up picking up the SteelLips mags that I found because when I went the first time they turned out to have been on the wrong rack - when I we went back to purchase them they were on the $25/ rack, which was a major rip-off.

I think I might have had a double tap at one point (pull trigger, two rounds fired), not sure though.  It did make a weird noise and my girlfriend noticed it too.  

I bought a Steel Lips at a gunshow yesterday--ran near $30 with tax. Will be interesting to see how it works in my first gen.

nope - not on cal guns



After talking to thomas about the new mag wells for the 3rd gen - I was on the phone when he tried a hot lips - and it FIRED!  he was excited about it!

I think that they might finally have the magwlel issue solved.  If not I promised thomas I would look at it as well.