Ruger shoots 4" high at 30 feet...

straightshooterjake said:
I few people in this thread have suggested that 10 yards is too close for checking the sights, and that at some longer distance, the gun would be properly sighted in. My thinking is that 10 yards is a common distance for all hangun use, and that even with a longer range zero, the offset at 10 yards should only be an inch or so.

So I spent a few minutes playing with a ballistic calculator. I took the OP at face value that the revolver is really shooting 4" high at 10 yards, which can be approximately translated to 10" high at 25 yards. I made some approximations for sight height over bore and ballistic coefficient.

The ballistic calculator showed that for 425 grains at 1150 fps, 4" high at 10 yards is approximately a 250 yard zero. And with that zero, the round will be 20" high at 50 yards and over 30" high at 100 yards. So pretty much unusable at 50 or 100 yards. And with a 325 grain bullet at slightly higher velocity, the calculations are not drastically different.

For comparison, a 100 yard zero is about .75" high at 10 yards, and a little over 2" high at 25 yards. If someone else wants to check these statistics, I would be perfectly happy to learn about it if I made some mistake. But I have shot handguns a lot at 50 yards, and bit at 100 yards, and all of these numbers seem about right to me.

Assuming that the gun has a replaceable front sight, then changing to a higher front sight should be a pretty straightforward resolution. But as it sits, the gun is distantly off at all practical distances, and I personally would not be satisfied with it.
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What ballistic coefficient are you using? This is a handgun cartridge not rifle so would ensure have a low enough BC to confirm accuracy of trajectory. Either way I think most of us agree we would want that POI corrected on this revolver.
 
straightshooterjake said:
For comparison, a 100 yard zero is about .75" high at 10 yards, and a little over 2" high at 25 yards. If someone else wants to check these statistics, I would be perfectly happy to learn about it if I made some mistake. But I have shot handguns a lot at 50 yards, and bit at 100 yards, and all of these numbers seem about right to me.

Assuming that the gun has a replaceable front sight, then changing to a higher front sight should be a pretty straightforward resolution. But as it sits, the gun is distantly off at all practical distances, and I personally would not be satisfied with it.
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I got similar results using the numbers form Hornady's 325 load (1350 fps from a 7.5" barrel) in a calculator.
 
Squib308 said:
What ballistic coefficient are you using? This is a handgun cartridge not rifle so would ensure have a low enough BC to confirm accuracy of trajectory. Either way I think most of us agree we would want that POI corrected on this revolver.
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I used a ballistic coefficient of 0.1. The only listing I could find for a 480 Ruger bullet showed a ballistic coefficient of 0.15, and since I am not sure what bullet was being used, I rounded down a bit.
 
n1bsbri said:
Do we have a lot of people here regularly shooting their handguns at 100 yards? If so, you guys are in a different league than me for sure.
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other than my carry gun practice IF im shooting pistols and theres 100 yards....you bet most of the shooting will be at targets I/we can see at 100 yards getting shot at.
 
Ultrarunner said:
425 Grain LFN from Grizzly Cartridge is my preferred load. As crazy as it sounds I do not reload. Just don't have the space.
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This will fit anywhere. $35 for the set to get going. Add another $50 for a digital scale for checking the dipper throw weights, a full set of dippers, and calipers and your ready. I've been loading 357 mag and 38 special for a year now. Its slow.....but I can do 50 rounds of hot 357 mag in 45 minutes. Paid for itself in a month of reloading.

Classic Lee Loader : Cabela's
 
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On an aside my experience with S&W and Ruger are real similar, both seem to ship guns that obviously dont work..

The difference in my experience is that S&W customer service is no where near as quick and smooth, more confusion and a matter of 6+ weeks versus Ruger gets it done more simply and within 3 weeks start to finish.
 
Got the gun back from Ruger. According to the work order they recrowned the barrel and adjusted the rear sight. Both of which are confusing to me since the rear sight was absolutely bottomed out and I'm not sure how the crown would affect shot placement with tight groups in a consistent high spot, but off to the range and we'll see what happens.
 
Looking forward to the range report. It is quite common that work orders for warranty work do not describe all of the work that was done. So I am optimistic that the issue will be resolved, even if it is not clear what they did.
 
Ultrarunner said:
Got the gun back from Ruger. According to the work order they recrowned the barrel and adjusted the rear sight. Both of which are confusing to me since the rear sight was absolutely bottomed out and I'm not sure how the crown would affect shot placement with tight groups in a consistent high spot, but off to the range and we'll see what happens.
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I hate when they send a gun back and dont have any targeting info/results. I would want minimum
"Customer states: impact is 4" high at X feet rear sight is at end of adjustment"
I would like to know they at least put a few rounds down range and report. "Repairs made and with X ammo at Y feet
Bullet impacts at Z? What sucks is if you can actually pull out of ruger what is acceptable accuracy/targeting we all would probably say WTF
Case in point my dad sent back a 77 rifle many years ago.
Even with a scope the rifle could not center (my dad was no slouch shooting) groups ....4" groups at best 5" off center to left. when returned a No problem found and test target
I looked for that target in his stuff when he passed but i think it was tossed long ago.
Well the target showed 3 shots at 50 yards and a note.
Falls with in the standards of the rifle. It was 3" off to the left closest bullet hole to the center and the 3 shot group was
Around 3" . ..... There so called spec was group size 2.5 mean radius and shot placement with in 5" mean radius. Or 5" groups inside a 10" circle. Problem is there was still no sight adjuztmwnt left.
My dad was left with the same problem. Iron sights ran out of adjustment. My dad finally just fixed it himself using a barrel straighten jig he found in the woods.
Eventually he put a scope base with windage adjust also.
He had a local machine shop re cut the crown and it shot ok.
 
mac1911 said:
I hate when they send a gun back and dont have any targeting info/results. I would want minimum
"Customer states: impact is 4" high at X feet rear sight is at end of adjustment"
I would like to know they at least put a few rounds down range and report. "Repairs made and with X ammo at Y feet
Bullet impacts at Z? What sucks is if you can actually pull out of ruger what is acceptable accuracy/targeting we all would probably say WTF
Case in point my dad sent back a 77 rifle many years ago.
Even with a scope the rifle could not center (my dad was no slouch shooting) groups ....4" groups at best 5" off center to left. when returned a No problem found and test target
I looked for that target in his stuff when he passed but i think it was tossed long ago.
Well the target showed 3 shots at 50 yards and a note.
Falls with in the standards of the rifle. It was 3" off to the left closest bullet hole to the center and the 3 shot group was
Around 3" . ..... There so called spec was group size 2.5 mean radius and shot placement with in 5" mean radius. Or 5" groups inside a 10" circle. Problem is there was still no sight adjuztmwnt left.
My dad was left with the same problem. Iron sights ran out of adjustment. My dad finally just fixed it himself using a barrel straighten jig he found in the woods.
Eventually he put a scope base with windage adjust also.
He had a local machine shop re cut the crown and it shot ok.
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It wasn't that long ago that Ruger stopped doing this, maybe 2010. In fact I remember being impressed seeing a target with 3 shots included with my first super blackhawk return.
 
Ultrarunner said:
It wasn't that long ago that Ruger stopped doing this, maybe 2010. In fact I remember being impressed seeing a target with 3 shots included with my first super blackhawk return.
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*Update they did include a target that I didn't notice that shows a perfect clover at 15 yards using 325 grain Hornady. I went to the range with another 20 rounds of 425s and again shot the same perfect, albeit 6inch high group with the sight bottomed out. I'm annoyed but at this point it's just going to be a Kentucky windage thing.

Ironically I had the same gun a couple years back when they first released it in 454 and it was an absolute dead on tack driver. Now I'll head the lesson, "never sell a gun".
 
Squib308 said:
this comes up everytime someone mentions a problem with their ruger. when did you purchase those 4 rugers? their QC really tanked sometime around 2013 probably due to huge firearm demand and Ruger's desire to increase their production #'s. their castings and machining work have become wildly inconsistent. i can't even begin to list the crazy shit i've seen with BNIB rugers from revolvers, pistols to rifles. it's a consequence of them trying to produce too many firearms and different models. Rugers that were built 10-ish years ago do not exhibit such shotty QC. thankfully they maintain amazing customer service otherwise i would completely avoid Ruger.

a perfect example is the SR9 pistol. it's an excellent design. very glock-ish in terms of trigger-sear mechanism. sits nice and low in the hand. rather than properly building the pistols, they churned them out with shit machining, weak springs, all sorts of cost cutting measures that resulted in garbage. for many of them the barrels and slides could not properly engage in lockup. then they come out with an abomination known as the American pistol (WTF?). and now here they are making an enlarged LCP-2 known as the security 9. it's really sad what happens when firearms are designed by committee rather than a few bright minds. when it comes to autoloading pistols I consider Ruger to be completely lost.
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This.... it's also worth mentioning that they're not the only ones. Post Sandy Hook, S&W, Ruger, Sig, bunch of other companies have been cranking out lots of TURDS because they knew that at least, at the time, 75% of the market backfill was going to be bought by "ZOMG I NEEEDAGUNNOW" types, etc. So even if their reject rate doubled or quadrupled during the high demand times, it didn't matter that a lot of the product trended towards crap. Thankfully because things have slowed down it seems like some manufacturers are improving...

-Mike
 
Ultrarunner said:
*Update they did include a target that I didn't notice that shows a perfect clover at 15 yards using 325 grain Hornady. I went to the range with another 20 rounds of 425s and again shot the same perfect, albeit 6inch high group with the sight bottomed out. I'm annoyed but at this point it's just going to be a Kentucky windage thing.
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How about filing the rear sight blade down a bit? I think about 1/16" should do it with about a 6" sight radius. If you remove the sight assembly first, there's little danger to the gun, and it will be easy to measure your progress with calipers and cold blue the top edge after filing. Worst case outcome is $17 for a complete new rear sight assembly, so not much risk to giving it a try (which is nothing like what is required to dial in a Vaquero by filing the front sight).
 
drgrant said:
This.... it's also worth mentioning that they're not the only ones. Post Sandy Hook, S&W, Ruger, Sig, bunch of other companies have been cranking out lots of TURDS because they knew that at least, at the time, 75% of the market backfill was going to be bought by "ZOMG I NEEEDAGUNNOW" types, etc. So even if their reject rate doubled or quadrupled during the high demand times, it didn't matter that a lot of the product trended towards crap. Thankfully because things have slowed down it seems like some manufacturers are improving...

-Mike
Click to expand...

Haha well in the last year I bought 2 new S&W's and 5 new Rugers...

S&W one rifle went back for repair immediately and in the end they replaced the lower receiver, 2nd S&W might have a recall, waiting on a tool that never showed up Im gonna have to chase them for...

Ruger 2 of them went back for repair immediately, one was repaired and the other had a reciever issue with a misplaced port and the rifle was replaced.

Not a good average for me lately. But at least Ruger is fast and easy to work with, S&W is kinda a pain.

One thing that bugs me on both is I hate that they dont custom serialize the new recievers to match the defective ones in these situations - instead you gotta go through the hassle of filling out another 4473, and potentially waiting - they both manufacture their own stuff, it'd be a lot easier if they just took care of the hassle in house and shipped it to your door. But other than that Ruger customer service is outstanding.
 

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