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Lightweight Ruger Precision Rimfire barrel is finally here!
- Thread starter Frankr
- Start date
Well, finally got my boys barrel in for his RPRr. The purpose was to shave off as much weight as possible and increase the precision. I requested it to be a match chamber and threaded so we could use my sparrow on it.
Got the barrel in today and it all looks good to me. Super light weight and the cerakote looks good. Threading looks a little long (will have to take my calipers to it to verify but compared to the Ruger OEM it is longer.
One area of concern so far is the match chamber. I tried a handful of different brands tonight just dropping them and out and all fell free and dropped in smoothly except the Eley target ammo. It seemed the wax was causing it to stick but I didn't see grooves on any of the ammo and that makes me think that it isn't a match.
The proof will be in the shooting but it won't be until next week. Going to take my boy to a 100 yard indoor range next week (either Monday or Wednesday).
The handling of the rifle is so much better right now. Makes one wonder why Ruger didn't drop one of their LW aluminum barrels in one.
Got the barrel in today and it all looks good to me. Super light weight and the cerakote looks good. Threading looks a little long (will have to take my calipers to it to verify but compared to the Ruger OEM it is longer.
One area of concern so far is the match chamber. I tried a handful of different brands tonight just dropping them and out and all fell free and dropped in smoothly except the Eley target ammo. It seemed the wax was causing it to stick but I didn't see grooves on any of the ammo and that makes me think that it isn't a match.
The proof will be in the shooting but it won't be until next week. Going to take my boy to a 100 yard indoor range next week (either Monday or Wednesday).
The handling of the rifle is so much better right now. Makes one wonder why Ruger didn't drop one of their LW aluminum barrels in one.
Cool, thats what I figured just didn't look it up.
I really like my TacSol on the light weight 10/22 I built.
Looking forward to your range report.
Really?!? Very interested. do you have any numbers, ammo, pictures you could share?
The 16 incher looks much better IMO. It’ll be interesting to see if taking a bunch of weight off the front of the rifle makes the polymer chassis less pressure sensitive. It certainly couldn’t hurt the balance for shooting offhand
Made it to the range. Posting from my phone so I will have explain more from a computer.
Short answer is that it will shoot without the suppressor but with the suppressor it groups like hell.
50 yards group was < dime for 5 shots with Eley (only shot one group at 50 with Eley because we were getting kicked off the range and shot 5 shot with CCI standard velocity at 50 but I was rushed and was shooting less the 1 second per shot so it really didn’t count).
Now pictures
Short answer is that it will shoot without the suppressor but with the suppressor it groups like hell.
50 yards group was < dime for 5 shots with Eley (only shot one group at 50 with Eley because we were getting kicked off the range and shot 5 shot with CCI standard velocity at 50 but I was rushed and was shooting less the 1 second per shot so it really didn’t count).
Now pictures
Here is the set up. Had high aspirations today but the range was packed and ran out of time.
A few things to note.
Feeding- my old magazine that has been used a ton for my 10-22 worked perfect. The new 10 round magazines were too tight and caused jams unless I only loaded 5 rounds.
Shooting from bags was super difficult with this rifle. The rear end doesn’t ride my sandbags well and I need to make and adapter for the back rail for it.
Trigger- Holy crap it was creepy and heavy. Didn’t feel that bad until I got shooting it and I could see it affecting my groups. Going to clean it out and adjust it lighter.
Future plans-
1. Trigger work
2. Take my suppressor adapter to see if that helps with the problem
3. Try a variety of ammo at 50 yards
4. Make some sort of a rig so I can shoot it from the bench or borrow a leadsled from a buddy to really see what it’s capable of.
Before I sold my rpr i found my full size game changer bag worked great for a rear bag on this rifle as you could nestle the butt into the bag to get it rock solid.
Try giving the trigger a good shot or two of hornady dry lube, helped mine tremendously!
Try giving the trigger a good shot or two of hornady dry lube, helped mine tremendously!
Thats the one. I forgot to note that when I was using it I had the cheek piece as high as I could get it with the scope I had at the time. If not using it that high the wings may interfere with you getting behind the rifle correctly. I had to get a pint size game changer when I switched to my new kidd supergrade and using the titan stock with it. Hope this helps!
It's a great all purpose bag, a bit pricey, but very versatile.
https://www.armageddongear.com/Game-Changer_p_111.html
Short range session with a 3-12 scope for hunting (thick reticle with a BDC)
Still pretty decent. Above is 8 shots of Eley Target ammo at 50 yards.
Barrel doesn’t seem to be picky with bulk ammo. Not match grade accurate but still decent. Got it set up now for hunting ground squirrels.
Still going to borrow or buy a lead sled and really ring out the accuracy.
All in all. I think this will be a great hunting rig. Maybe not a precision rig - My boy hopefully will use it at some NRL-22 matches this summer.
Still pretty decent. Above is 8 shots of Eley Target ammo at 50 yards.
Barrel doesn’t seem to be picky with bulk ammo. Not match grade accurate but still decent. Got it set up now for hunting ground squirrels.
Still going to borrow or buy a lead sled and really ring out the accuracy.
All in all. I think this will be a great hunting rig. Maybe not a precision rig - My boy hopefully will use it at some NRL-22 matches this summer.
That’s a good looking group to me! I wonder if the lightweight barrel is taking some pressure off the composite stock which is helping the group size?
I just ordered one of these for my sons RP rimfire. Our main goal is to bring the weight down for off hand shooting. His rifle is pretty accurate but it is pretty picky with ammo. If you can get some of the Wolf Match Extra that seems to be one ammo the rifle always shoots well. From what I am seeing from your barrel it looks like it is not nearly as picky.
Still shooting pretty good. Eley Tennex shoots better and surprisingly I had a lot of RWS pistol match that it loved.
Here is a group of low/mid-grade ammo (RWS semi-auto) from this week. Almost out of this ammo but I got it for 24.00 a brick
One issue I am still having is extraction.
Don’t know if it’s the barrel or the bolt. Swapped extractor and spring/clip from my RAR and thought that fixed it up the issues cropped back up. I have bent the spring/clip. I have a gunsmither tool to clean the chamber and that helps but it only lasts a magazines worth. I am going to pull the barrel and soak the chamber in an ultrasonic cleaner and see if it helps as well as put the OEM barrel on (never been shot) and see how the extraction is for it.
If I can get the extraction fixed then I will be happy as can be.
The gun really shines when you have multiple shooters of different sizes wanting to shoot it. I just mark on the stock where things need to be for shooter and it’s super fast and easy.
Here is a group of low/mid-grade ammo (RWS semi-auto) from this week. Almost out of this ammo but I got it for 24.00 a brick
One issue I am still having is extraction.
Don’t know if it’s the barrel or the bolt. Swapped extractor and spring/clip from my RAR and thought that fixed it up the issues cropped back up. I have bent the spring/clip. I have a gunsmither tool to clean the chamber and that helps but it only lasts a magazines worth. I am going to pull the barrel and soak the chamber in an ultrasonic cleaner and see if it helps as well as put the OEM barrel on (never been shot) and see how the extraction is for it.
If I can get the extraction fixed then I will be happy as can be.
The gun really shines when you have multiple shooters of different sizes wanting to shoot it. I just mark on the stock where things need to be for shooter and it’s super fast and easy.
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Thanks man. Looks like it’s shooting good. What you said about the adjustability is the reason I bought the RPR so my son can learn to shoot. I also marked my settings so I can adjust them quickly. The gun is just a little to heavy for my son with the factory barrel. He’s already asking when he can get his own gun. The lighter barrel may be the ticket to pass the RPR on to him and buy me something else so we can shoot together.
I saw a thread on here where someone was having issues with extracting Winchester ammo from a match chamber due to the brass being slightly larger than other brands. Do you have extraction problems with all ammo brands? What chamber does your barrel have?
I saw a thread on here where someone was having issues with extracting Winchester ammo from a match chamber due to the brass being slightly larger than other brands. Do you have extraction problems with all ammo brands? What chamber does your barrel have?
I’ll chime in here too. I could never get the WP barrel on my sons RPR to shoot well. It wouldn’t shoot under 1/2” at 50 yards. I tried two different barrels and about every match ammo you can think of. I eventually just sold the rifle and got him a Tikka T1x. I took a chance and put one on my youngest sons 10/22 that is pretty impressive. It holds well under 1/2” at 50 yards and under 1” at 100. We also tried one on a CZ 457 and it appears to be a real shooter too. I don’t know what happened with the first rifle but the two other barrels perform really well given the cost.
My boys barrel has the match chamber.
He is smaller so I got him the lightweight barrel for the same reason you want one.
Ammo- it’s extraction is worse with any waxed/lubed match ammo. Bulk ammo is a usually fine except this last outing it struggled. So I think it’s a build up in the chamber which is why I pulled the barrel today and hope to get it in the ultrasonic cleaner this week.
Between me, Nakoa1, EODDave27 and my other buddy we’ve had ~ 10 of his barrels. My 17hm2 barrels from him for the 455/457 have shot well. My 22lr barreled 455 would only shoot well without a suppressor (I had to get an adapter for my sparrow because he threads are too long... supposedly he is fixing this on his next batch of barrels and should be 0.400). My buddies 10/22 shoots about like EODDaves. His barrel almost shoots as well as his Kidd ULW barreled Kidd receiver. Nakoa1 can comment but his results have been hit and miss (no pun intended).
I think if you wanted a guaranteed shooting barrel you might want to look at BSF or Proof. Now if you hold out till Black Friday you might be able to pick up one of his (WP) barrels for ~100.00 for the RPRr at which point buying 1-2 might be worth the gamble.
Here is the shank of my boys barrel and you can see the firing pin mark on the barrel. Don’t know what to think about that.
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Like Frank, my reason for buying these barrels was all about weight. My boys are 9 and 11 and they just aren’t strong enough to handle a full weight rifle for positional shooting. The thing for me is as soon as they get stronger those barrels are coming off and we will be putting a high quality steel barrel on both the rifles. Since both of these barrels were basically temporary I wanted to keep the cost down. I also just needed barrels that were accurate enough for positional shooting. As long as they will hold 1 moa I am happy. If I had been putting a barrel on that was going to stay I probably would have bought a Kidd barrel for the 10/22 and a Proof barrel for the CZ.
I will say that WP does have awesome customer service. The first barrel I got for the RPR shot what I would consider bad for a match barrel. Even with the best ammo if would barely hold 3/4” groups at 50 yards. They took it back and sent me a new one no questions asked in the end I was just disappointed in the Ruger overall and decided to sell it. The two new barrels as I have said have been excellent.
I will say that WP does have awesome customer service. The first barrel I got for the RPR shot what I would consider bad for a match barrel. Even with the best ammo if would barely hold 3/4” groups at 50 yards. They took it back and sent me a new one no questions asked in the end I was just disappointed in the Ruger overall and decided to sell it. The two new barrels as I have said have been excellent.
1 MOA accuracy would be fine for my needs. I think the RPR gets a bad rap because people think a $400 rifle should shoot 1 hole groups. Mine is a decent shooter but does have the flyer issue. I would be very happy with the rifle if I could solve that issue. But I haven’t tried a variety of ammo yet. We shoot mostly CCI SV.
I don’t want to drop more than $250 on a barrel. I just don’t think paying $500 plus for a barrel is a good decision. I’d rather put that money towards a better rifle. WP has their barrels on sale for $160. Are they cheaper on Black Friday?
That firing pin mark is interesting. I’ll have to look at my factory barrel to see if it has a similar mark
I don’t want to drop more than $250 on a barrel. I just don’t think paying $500 plus for a barrel is a good decision. I’d rather put that money towards a better rifle. WP has their barrels on sale for $160. Are they cheaper on Black Friday?
That firing pin mark is interesting. I’ll have to look at my factory barrel to see if it has a similar mark
Honestly, it sounds like you have an ammo issue and not a barrel Issue at this point. Before you buy a new barrel I would buy some better quality ammo and see how it shoots. CCI SV is fine for practice ammo but even in my best rifles it will throw fliers. A rimfire rifle can only be as good as the ammo you feed it. There are some really good lots of CCI SV out there. I had one that shot absolutely amazing. The problem is after that amazing lot I had 6-8 different lots that were not so great. Try some SK Standard Plus and some Wolf Match Extra. If those don’t shoot good enough then I would look at another barrel. At this point no mater what barrel you put on your rifle you are probably going to have flyers unless you change ammo.
You are 100% right. Any places that sell Wolf and SK? No stores close to me carry the good stuff.
