Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Resetting Ruger American magazine lips

The feed lips on my RAR .22-250 magazine have spread a bit too far and now release the rounds prematurely. When you pull the bolt back the next round in line pops up completely out of the magazine leaving the one under that in the normal feed position so you get a double feed jam.

I measured the width of the lips fore and aft against a new replacement and the rear portion is okay but the forward portion is about .007-.008" wider than the new replacement - .422" vs. .415". This hadn't mattered but I just FL resized the cases and that little bit was enough to start popping rounds out of the mag.

Anyway, being nylon or plastic of some kind, would it be possible to heat up the lips a bit and squeeze them back together a bit? I'm not talking about melting level heat, but would something like a hair dryer applied for a while supply enough heat? I have a heat gun for paint removal that is a lot hotter, do you figure that would work? Normally with something like this I'd just go at it and see what happens but I don't want to ruin it with my inexperience.

Never worked with this kind of material before so any guidelines would be welcome.

I think I'd call ruger and tell them what it's doing. I'll bet they'd send you a new magazine free.

What Crow hunter said, call Ruger.

I don't think you'll be able to successfully re-form the feed lips with heat; wrong kind of plastic. Plastic materials fall into two types - thermoset and thermoplastic. Thermoset materials (what those magazines are made of) can't really be re-formed when heated again, they take a set during the initial manufacturing process.

Thermoplastics, on the other hand, (Kydex for example, or milk jugs) can be heated and formed as many times as you want.

Thanks, that's the kind of info I needed. Oh well, we'll see what Ruger says.

I'll be honest with them and tell them I loaded it by popping the rounds straight down, not sliding them under the feed lips from the front. I read somewhere that might alter or damage them after 4000-5000 rounds or so, but this one has only had about 600 through it so far.

Just got off the phone with Ruger, they are sending me a new magazine free of charge. Good ol' Ruger customer service.

FWIW, this magazine had always jammed the 2nd and 3rd rounds unless I fed them in really fast. If you worked the bolt at less than full speed the nose of the rounds would drop and hit the side of the barrel, not feed into the chamber.

I tried the extra magazine this morning, first time I had ever used it and lo and behold, it fed all rounds perfectly no matter if the bolt was worked slow or fast. The original mag was probably "off" from the get go.