Bright and mid-70s, so I went to amigo Mike's farm, and decided to do some fact finding. Beautiful day with useful things accomplished.

My 10/22 registered short barrel rifle has been wickedly unreliable since I put it together, just pre-Covid. It has a 4 1/2" stainless Pike Arms barrel.

Bolt over base failures to feed, stovepipes short stroking being the usual run of woes. Oh, it hasn't been accurate for bodiddly, and doesn't like anything but factory 10 round mags.

I switched from a Pro Mag stock to a Butler Creek, and noticed that the magazine lockup seemed often downright poor and fussy at best. I had a little of that with the Pro Mag, but more with the allegedly better Butler Creek.

It appears the problem never was with the stocks, except that the deeper Butler Creek exacerbates a problem it already had. The magazine lockup in the action itself is poor from the factory. The lug the magazine positions on is apparently too short from the factory, and the magazine catch spring is too light. This is apparently a known issue in later model 10/22s.

It also, now pretty certainly, has too much recoil spring for the short barrel's pressure curve. I had suspected this, but never tested it much. This is certainly not a fault of Ruger's, as they designed the carbine around a barrel 4 times as long. The temporary fix is simple. Run quality hi-speed ammo. I got 100 rounds with 0 failures using some Super-X Hi Speed I got when Bush Senior was President. This is unheard of, never got 30 rounds w/o a failure before. And careful insertion of the previously temperamental Ruger 25 round mags ran perfectly.

It never made it through one magazine today with std vel or subsonics. Bolt polishing, radiusing, reduced recoil springs may all be in the future. But right now, it gets higher quality hispeed ammo.

in a 1022. Before I discovered stock pinching my mags, I noticed I could push-pull-twist the 25rnd mag and cause it to work or jam, quite repeatable also. Had an evil vision of inviting JimmyP up for a range day and shooting it without a jam and then handing it to him... but he would figure it out.

I mostly shoot CCI SV in mine and I use the stock recoil spring. Another thought. I would also check the chamber; a lot of the aftermarket barrels are cut with a tight-ish Benz chamber. I put a Benz into a Ruger Standard integral I built and it was not reliable with CCI SV. Ran a normal 22lr reamer in and the problem went away. Still shoots stunningly.

Several good bits of info in that post. The chamber will be investigated. I am told there are aftermarket fixes for the weak magazine lockup. That is likely next.

As soon as I can, I want to run a box of Mini Mags through it.