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Overall, Poor Quality Control, but Good Customer Service from Ruger

I bought this gun as a fun gun to shoot that would allow me to work on trigger control and accuracy with affordable ammo prices. I choose the SR22 due to the fact that it has a stainless steel barrel and is advertised by Ruger as working with a variety of ammunition - not just high velocity. (reference the video under SR22 Features at one minute and 33 seconds as found on: http://www.ruger.com/products/sr22Pistol/models.html)

When I received the gun I was a little disappointed by the quality of materials. I also have a S&W shield that I paid exactly $11 dollars more for when buying them at the same time. It is a tight/solid gun compared to the SR22. Now, I know that you can\'t have a heavy stainless steel slide on a gun chambered in 22lr and expect it to cycle, but Ruger could have at least used a stainless steel guide rod in place of the plastic one that comes with the gun for that price.

The main issue I have with the gun is poor quality control. When I first fired my weapon, it jammed CONSTANTLY! I took it home and inspected it after field stripping and found a sharp edge/lip where the feed ramp did not fully extend to the bottom of the barrel due to poor machining in the manufacturing process. The edge/lip was catching the tip of my round nose bullets and preventing them from entering the chamber. Each bullet had a distinctly visible notch where the bullet impacted this edge. I fixed this issue and it corrected my jamming problems. Being curious, I went to multiple gun stores and inspected multiple SR22 pistols for the same issue. I found a lot of variability even comparing brand new SR22%u2019s as they were sitting next to each other in the display cabinets. Differences that others could clearly see when only asked to look for differences in the feed ramps. This tells me that Ruger has poor quality control in this area. Furthermore, since there is a YouTube video explaining how to correct the issue, it is obviously a known problem. One may want to inspect their firearm for this issue before taking it home.

Moving on. Now that the gun no longer jammed, I discovered additional issues that were previously unknown. While the bullets chambered flawlessly, they only fired 40-50% of the time. Yes, out of a ten round magazine 4 or 5 bullets failed to fire with a very light or nonexistent strike mark. Additionally, rounds that failed to fire were extremely difficult to extract and would take manual pressure on the outside of the extractor arm while manually cycling the slide multiple times. I ran through over 400 rounds of different ammunition with this frustration and multiple cleanings before contacting Ruger. Initially, I called and the person I spoke with gave me the canned answer of trying different ammunition and ensuring it was rated as high velocity. I explained that I had tried different ammunition and why I didn%u2019t feel it was an ammunition issue, but got nowhere. I did try a few more brands and then sent an email. I received a prompt reply and an invitation to send the gun back for inspection. I sent it back with a supplied shipping label and the gun was fixed and returned to me within a week, free of charge. The firing pin spring and the barrel were replaced (this one had a well machined ramp all the way up to the barrel, too). My guess is that the chamber was a little tight so that rounds were not fully chambered when the firing pin would hit. This would knock them fully into the chamber, but not ignite the round at times. Once seated in the chamber, but not discharged they were hard to extract without the rearward pressure from the round firing.

It was frustrating, a hassle, and an additional expense on the part of Ruger that could be avoided by better quality control. However, Ruger stood behind their product and fixed the issues providing me with an overall good customer service experience.

In the long run I now have a pistol I am pleased with and functions very well for the purpose it was purchased for.

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