Is the Ruger M77 MkII wood stock rifles prone to have accuracy issues?

Just wondering the concensus here?

Are most of the problems related to inlet issues and/or angled recoil lug screw?

Any tricks to get a Ruger to shoot

Curious as to your experiences...Thanks!

I have an older tang safety Ruger (.270win) that I installed pillars on, also glassed the action, free floated the barrel and worked up dozens of loads for. Having spent some of the most productive years of my life trying to get it to shoot, I finally got it to shoot 4 MOA.

I have some friends that own newer MK2 rugers, they all shoot just fine, however the stainless/synthetics seem to outshoot the wood.

Personally, I would try free floating first, then go from there.

There are no Ruger long guns in my house......quality is the reason.....

In all fairness I must add that things may have changed.....I have been Rugerless for over 20 yaers.....they pissed me off for a long time....

However today's Rugers might be just fine!

quote:

Originally posted by Late-Bloomer:
Any tricks to get a Ruger to shoot

Yea....trade it for a Remington!

I guess it's the luck of the draw. My Son has an early(1975) 77 in 6m/m Remington that shoots one hole groups thanks to Steve Ricciardeli, the load came from his data.
It has a real light barrel and I didn't expect this kind of accuracy. All I did to it was to free float the barrel and lighten the trigger a bit. 4-12 Redfield glass. It's the only Ruger in the safe but a good one.

Stepchild

quote:

Originally posted by vapodog:
There are no Ruger long guns in my house......quality is the reason.....

In all fairness I must add that things may have changed.....I have been Rugerless for over 20 yaers.....they pissed me off for a long time....

However today's Rugers might be just fine!

quote:

Originally posted by Late-Bloomer:
Any tricks to get a Ruger to shoot

Yea....trade it for a Remington!

LOL!

My Ruger MKII 270 did ok when it was all factory. By that I mean it suited my needs for hardwoods in Alabama. Not many shots over 150 yards.

Had a smith glass bed it, reduce the trigger to 3 pounds. It shot better...about 1-1.5" with handloads.

Sent it back to same smith about 12 years later, put on a Hart bbl and blueprinted the action. I've shot many .25 MOA with it using 130 TSX bullets and Re19.

I've used it on a lot of game since I put the Hart bbl on it and with the TSX and TTSX bullets. Here it is pictured with its last kill in 2008: 200 yards, 110 TTSX H4350:

Of three resent Ruger Varmints w/ laminated stocks All were moa after about 30 to 40 shots and some load tweeking. One was a .223, another a 22-250 and the third a .243. There also are two tang safety rifles a .257 varmint and a .270 light hunter both have been tack drivers for about 38 years.
Now my only #1 aint that good but it looks pretty.
Might just be the luck of the draw. roger

I have read that such was true but I had a Ruger M77 Mark II .243 with a wooden stock and it was a real shooter. I didn't get it new, but it had a bull barrel that had been cut off. I don't know if that had been done for weight reduction, or because it hadn't shot well at some time. Whatever the case, it shot really tight groups when I got it.

Same as vapodog above.

Thanks for the replies folks

I have a NIB Ruger M77 MkII 6.5x55mm bought/liquidated for $400 when Remington introduced their new Hawkeye line...I'll be taking it out to the range soon and check it out...

I hope I'm LUCKY

clean the bore to bare metal for the first 20-30 shots between the first 10 to 15 and then after every 3

None of the 6-7 M77MKIIs I've shot have been nearly as inaccurate as the last M700 I bought. It was so bad the barrel became a tomato stake in the smiths garden! Even my early tang safety .250 Savage will shoot 3/4 MOA with it's favorite load. I've got 3 very good M700s, but then 2 of them are much modified and carry custom barrels.

I have accurized a lot of rifles including 77s and MII 77s. Almost all the Rugers with wood stocks need bedding and free floating and trigger jobs but then most of them shoot well. That being said, the same is true for a lot of remingtons, winchesters, and so on. I have had more trouble getting expensive Kimber rifles to shoot than plain old rugers.

Personally, I wouldnt use a ruger action as a platform for a bench rest super duper competition rifle, but as an all around gun they are good.

I must have bad luck with Rugers. I've had a few that I don't have now, and have maybe 6 now. I have never had a factory barreled Ruger that I could get inch groups with, that is among those that I've tested. I have two now that I haven't shot for accuracy, so I don't know what they will do. However, I've had such bad luck with others that I consider them all potential donor actions.

I've got a 308 now that someone went to a lot of trouble to get to shoot, and didn't succeed. I got it pretty cheap off Gunbroker, so I don't feel cheated. I just didn't get the steal that I thought I was gonna. The action and part of the barrel has been bedded, and the trigger replaced with a Timney, and I'm pretty sure that the gunsmith turned the barrel back one turn and re-chambered. The darn thing still slings bullets all over the paper.

I have had really good success by re-barreling. Some of the most accurate rifles I've got are on a Ruger action, with custom barrel.

I always consider it really odd to read that someone has an accurate Ruger with a factory barrel. I mean really - I should have found at least one out of all those I've tested, but I didn't, at least not yet, and that's a fact.

It's been so dissappointing that when I planned on testing yet another load in one of the Rugers, to see if I could haappen upon one it liked, I would be sure to take along another rifle or two so I could shoot them while the barrel cooled on another, but mostly to reassure myself that when the Ruger shot poorly that it wasn't just me having another bad day. Comparing groups from the accurate rifles to the Ruger, helped. It got to the point, reading all these reports of others having accurate Rugers, that I needed to do something for assurance the yea it's the darn rifle, not me.

The last really bad one was a new 257 Roberts. 6" groups was good for that rifle. I gave it to a friend who said he could get it shooting. His neighbor is a gunsmith, who recommended sending it back to Ruger. Last I heard it's still in the gun safe.

To get around the potential bedding issues, I have just taken one that is bad, and drop it in a Hogue stock. Sometimes that helps, sometimes not. At times I have been reluctant to use a Ruger action as a donor, because I worry that the action may be contributing to the problem, and it's possible. I noticed that all the Rugers I've checked in the last two years, the firing pin strike on the primer is not centered. That worried me for a while, but at the same time, I have three Ruger actions with custom barrels, and they are very accurate and not picky at all about what I shoot through them. The firing pin strike on the primer is closer to centered, but not exactly centered, but it apparantly doesn't make any difference, since the rifles with the custom barrels shoot very well.

Since discovering the off-center firing pin strike on the Rugers, I've checked all my rifles, which are mostly Mausers and CZ 550s, and while not all are perfectly centered, even the worst one I've yet to see is closer to center than any of the Rugers I've inspected. Some argued that it's the chamber, and the way the brass lays, but I don't think so. Seems like that problem would go away with handloads using brass already fire formed in the chamber, and neck sized only, but even with the custom barreled Rugers, neck sized brass, the firing pin strike is still not centered. That means to me that the bolt itself isn't centered with the breech, and it wasn't centered with the factory barrel nor the custom barrel. So, the bolt may be off center, or the threads in the receiver could be off-center, which either way would have the same effect.

When rebarreling, the gunsmith always trues up the face and lapps the lugs, but that's about all that can reasonably be done. Careful installation of the barrel, and cutting the chamber has to help.

One thing for sure, in my experience, the difference in accuracy comparing Rugers with factory barrels, and the same actions rebarreled, is dramatic.

The latest re-barreling job was to convert a 338 to a 458. The 338 was all over the target, with factory loads and some handloads. the 458 is accurate.

Here's a target, 100yds, that I shot soon after getting the rifle back with the new barrel. The handloads used the same powder charge, brass & primer, different bullets, those shown in the picture. I was real curious if the different 350gr bullets shot close to the same point, so I could mix them in the magazine with no worry. My curosity was satisfied. I think the reason the shot so close together, besides a good barrel, is the short throat in this chamber. Although the seating depth is different on each, the bullets all have in common the short travel distance to engage the rifling. Look at the curve of the bullet diameter just ahead of the crimp grove.



KB

guess i'm in the minority here.
every ruger i have ever gotten has shot well. even the early tang safties.
I cannot get a remington gun to anything but break.
and the savage the wife had to have, shoots about minute of barn at 100 yds.
the only ruger i have ever had that was even picky about it's handload was a ruger 77-11 target varmint model.
once it's load was found,[and the fact that it likes to shoot with a well fouled Bbl] it is dangrediculousain'tnevergettinridofitaccurate

I've only had two. One was a 7 Rem magnum when the 77 first came out. I never could get it to shoot less than about 1-1/2" groups, so I sold it.

I bought a new Hawkeye 257 Roberts two years ago. It would shoot Hornady Custom 117 grain SST's in about the same size groups. I tried reloading Nosler partitions for about a year with about 5 different powders. It must not like partitions. I tried Barnes Tipped Triple Shocks (100 grains) It shot a little better - but I added one of those Sims barrel vibration dampening rubber doughtnuts and it shoots about 3/4" groups, so I'm gonna keep it.

I read about 6 months ago in Reloading Magazine (I think) that Ruger never had made very good barrels until several years ago. My Rem 700 SS BDL in 270 - will shoot everything I feed it into about 1/2-3/4" groups - handloads and Federal premiums. It just has a Timney trigger.

I do like the new Hawkeye trigger - no creep and very light pull, so that's an improvement. I think I just like the Bob.

"Bob with a Bob"

I have two 77Mk.2, a 77/22 and a #1, all shoot very well. I would also like to mention that he firm's customer service is outstanding.

quote:

I've only had two. One was a 7 Rem magnum when the 77 first came out. I never could get it to shoot less than about 1-1/2" groups, so I sold it.

My first Ruger M-77 was also a 7mm Magnum....it wouldn't feed the cartridges up from the magazine so the bolt could engage them to feed them....

I returned the rifle to Ruger and when it returned it wasn't fixed.....

Later a .243 stock warped terribly....my attempts to fix it made it look terrible as I had to remove way too much wood from one side to keep the barrel floated.....

Later a #1 varmint rifle in 6mm Rem wouldn't group worth a crap.....3" was best at 100 yards.....come to find out it was within Rugers specs for that rifle.....I returned it to Ruger three times.....

All three of them are now in someone elses closet!

I've never owned a Ruger, never shot a Ruger, never saw a Ruger at a shooting match, and only ever worked on one. I am a pre 64 Win 70 fan; Rugers don't thrill me. I did like Bill Ruger though.

to tell the truth i've had very few ruger problems that couldn't be fixed by bedding. In fact one of my most consistent shooters is a little 223 that i restocked, that's not to say they don't exist, but don't look for problems due to opinions on the net

I have two stock Rugers that both shoot very well using factory ammo... a 77 w/ wood stock, blued, tang safety 30-06 I bought new in '81 and a MK-II laminated wood stock, stainless in 300WM. Looking at getting a Hawkeye African in 338WM.
Target below is the 30-06 at 100 yards off the bench using Federal Premium 165gr Nosler ballistic tips... three shot group.

I had a M77 with the tang safety in a .270 a long time ago and I struggled trying to get it to group under 1.5-1.75" without any luck. All kinds of bullet and powder combinations were tried and it functioned best with H4831. I was never able to get the group down to the really "accurate" level that I wanted but yet for reasonable ranges, under 300 yards, it took a lot of elk and deer and is currently in Montana doing the same.

My understanding is that the newer models have better barrels on them, perhaps they are in house manufacture. They seem to be getter under that 1.75" group size a lot more easily than anything I could come up with.

Since then I have stuck with the Remington 700 actions and have been very well please with about 6 of them now.

I've been into tang safety Rugers for quite a while. I've owned and hunted with about thirty of them. I still have seven. Only one, a 308 wouldn't group well, it would shoot two to two and a half inch groups with everything that I tried, but would shoot little better with anything. I never changed anything on it. I just used it deer hunting and it worked well for that. The rest were 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 with most ammo, out of the box. All of them would do an inch or better with the right load. Initially, I didn't do anything to any of them, except put a scope on them. A few I've since glassed or removed the front pressure ridge. All of the one's I've kept will keep their holes touching at one hundred yards with handloads that I've worked up for them. I've had friends who had 25 and 7mm caliber guns that were a problem. We were able to resolve the problem by pairing the bullet to the twist. The 7's would only shoot 175 grains accurately. The 25's would only shoot shorter bullets, 100 grains or less with good accuracy. All my references to accuracy are based on bench shooting with a solid rest. Off hand, I'm not a good enough shot to tell the differences in rifle accuracy.
Never used a Mark II so can't say how good they shoot.
Bfly

i have a ruger M-77 S.S. syn. In a 260 remington. all I had done to it was bedded. Most of the time it will shoot about 1.0" group at 100 yards with my good load. And on a good day .88

I have an old tang safety Ruger 7x57 and a new Hawkeye AW .280 Rem.The 7x57 has always shot well with 140,150 and 176gr bullets.It does prefer the heavier/longer bullets giving my best groups just over 1" with the 175's.The others avg 1 1/2".I've only tried 150gr in the .280 but since I've gotten 3/8" groups with them I see no need to try anything else for now since all I'll be using it for are deer and if the God's smile on me black bear.Both are dead stock.