Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Time to start a new mini 14 thread yet?

Minis shoot great.

You've been hacked....

They all suck, even the good ones, unless you or your legislature's afraid of black guns then they are great!

There are some tricks to getting one to shoot better. But, I'm reluctant to say they shoot great unless you put a lot of money into them. The rotary bolt of Garand design just isn't going to give you Armalite accuracy.

But, if you live in a State that won't allow AR's they are one of your only options. The traditional design and new stock options (mostly aftermarket) make for a fun carbine. At under 100 yards with soft points, it's in the top ten for a home defense rifle and they don't have that scary pistol grip and bayonet lug to get the soccer mom's all upset and crying.

kwg

About as well as a typical SKS..

Here ya go, the definitive comparison.

On the other hand...

Mini 14's are pretty.

Mini 14's are classy.

Wonder why the brain trust at Ruger did not use AR15 magazines in the rifle?

Because in 1973 no one owned any AR-15 Mags. First time I remember meeting someone who actually owned an AR was 1979.

That rotary bolt in the M1 and the M14 especially, can give some accuracy under MOA really easily.

Absolutely, ring in Spring.

I think 63 was the year the SP1 was introduced, I had one in 77 IIRC, I guess that is beside the point as they were not very popular then. I guess Ruger just decided to stick with their magazine despite the increased popularity of the AR. IIRC I bought my first mini for $135 and my first SP1 for $350. Those were the days.

The M1 and the M14 had forged receivers that were machined to precision tolerances along with precision barrels. Ruger has cast receivers with God only knows what kind of tolerances and barrels designed to work with any kind of ammo. ASI can get you a precision barrel with tight tolerances but it can't get you a precision receiver.

The newer rifles with the newer barrels are more accurate but those skinny barrel Minis are an abomination. I own 3 of them and had ASI put their barrels on 2 of them. It was expensive but they both shoot much better than the factory barrel that was on them.

You can make them accurate if you are willing to spend the money. I'm sure you had to spend some money and time making your M1's and M14's accurate as well. You can buy an accurate AR right off the shelf or build it yourself for not a lot of money and effort.

That's too bad about the Mini 14's. When they first came out they were a lot less money than the AR's. Not so anymore.

kwg

I like my mini-14

I also have several ARS including a nice Colt
will the ARs out shoot the mini-14 and all depends on what animal you feed everything. but I like how the mini 14 gets to my hands and I'm quicker with it out of a truck window off of four wheeler off of horseback or anything else it works better for me..

I love the idea of a Mini-14 and would prefer them to an AR for a truck gun and hunting but the 3 I owned were awful in the accuracy department. If they could ever shoot consistently, I would jump on another in a heartbeat as I like the ergos over an AR. They point and handle great.

Yes, I am very familiar with Accuracy Systems and their upgrades but I wish Ruger could make them more accurate from the factory.

I always was faster on target with the mini, and I think a lot of people run xm193 in the mini and get the pie plate sized group. OTOH these days they sure are not worth what they are asking for them.

it's hilarious reading the snot from the Mini 14 haters. Funniest part is where they say you have to spend a lot of money on a Mini to get it to shoot right, and then in the next thread, brag about all the high dollar accessories and modifications they do on their AR rifles. To get those to shoot right. laughing.

So its not the bolt design thats the issue with minis. Like I said...Ruger just made cheap guns for max profit. Can't fault em for that. They sold millions?

Thats a kind of thing where its what you are used to IMHO and fit.

I hated moving to the AR from the M14. But in the end got used to it so much that the M14 feels wrong. Plus the scores shot with the AR got to be quite a bit better.

You have some good minis. I love the look of them over the look of the AR.

But in reality I can take a 150 dollar or less lower AR, put a 180 dollar or so upper on it and have a MOA gun. Sometimes a bit better. Sometimes worse. But way more reliably MOA on average without doing anything else. Our Truck guns are 180 buck uppers.

The add ons rarely help accuracy. Other than replacing a barrel with a top line barrel. And thats what we did with our guns because we were after 10 shot 1.5 inch 300 yard groups and 5 shot groups 3 inches or so at 600. few factory AR will do that. I doubt a factory mini would.

Both are great guns though in their own ways. And if we are happy. Then we are happy.

I do recall a guy with a shilen tube on a mini and it was a pretty good gun. He never beat my M14 or AR but...

My first Mini was in '78, the year the stainless ones came out & the upgrade from 1st gen was done.. Saw it, had to have it. Paid full retail for it, but even at that it was still half the money of a Colt AR. In my neck of the woods in the late 70's-early 80's the ones that owned AR's were well heeled or very dedicated to that type of weapon.

I never shot it well, even off the bench. Just figured I didn't get along with peeps or the rear peep wasn't compatible with a ramp front, & still sorta feel that way about the latter. I traded for a ranch when they came out so I could more easily scope one. Scoped, it didn't shoot much tighter than the iron sighted one. But I kept it around even after getting into AR's.

Then the first assault rifle ban list started coming out & the Mini wasn't on many of them. A very good reason to have one. Not just low profile in dimensions, but in the gun grabbers eyes as well. After fooling around with more AR's & the mini made it to most of the ban list I no longer see no reason to have one over an AR.

A complete flip flop, the Mini now double the price of a some decent AR's.

When I went to the original Urban Rifle course at Thunder Ranch in TX in 1993, I took two AR-15s. Neither broke.

AR-15 parts are prolific, as are add-ons. Not so much for the Mini.

Also, the Mini's downfall is the mags, cheap mags = bad performance, Ruger mags = good performance.

However, in the SHTF or EOTWAWKI, AR STANAG mags will be readily available, Mini mags, not so much.

I have an AR parts drawer with triples of anything I might ever need in this lifetime, and ARs are easy to build and repair with commonly available parts.

I'm all about having the thing that is most available when I need to resupply.

Every one of these threads somebody brings up Clints hatred of them. I'm not sure about there being issues at one time with parts breaking, but my family has had a few, and have not had a single parts break and I'm talking about thousands of rounds, through guns that are not treated particularly careful, rarely cleaned completely. They function.

Accuracy isn't good for long range. But for minute of coyote, they are plenty good. My young boys each laid out coyotes without drama, and as long as the shooting was over in a handful of rounds their hit ratio was good.

I still have two. One stainless folder that was my father's "trapping" rifle. Couldn't begin to guess the milage it's seen, and the one I got in high school that seems to shoot better than anything I've read about on the internet.

I do agree the magazines must be chosen carefully. Factory mags work well. I got some straight 20 round from CDNN that have been great, and I've heard Tapco has finally figured it out.

Ruger's insistence on keeping their proprietary scope mounting system is the deal breaker for me.

Had a Mini-14 back in 1979 and it was a 3" rifle at best - at best. I like the ergos and especially the left hand friendly safety and would be willing to try one of the newer ones, but you're stuck with Ruger style rings or you mount an aftermarket rail on top of their sight bases and then you add rings on top of that which pretty much destroys a good cheek weld.

If you want a low mounted red dot your choices are basically a Burris Fastfire or Vortex since Burris is the only company who makes a mount to fit into the Ruger scalloped bases. If you want a carbine style dot or a prism sight with some useful reticles you're back to mounting an aftermarket pic rail and putting the sight way up above the comb.

All they'd have to do is change those scallops to two short 1913 rails and they'd be good to go.

The 580-Series Mini-14 is a fine Carbine... with a little work.



Shoots ~ 2 MOA from field positions w/ aperture sights and ball ammo.

No complaints.




GR

Kinda sexy. Both front & rear sight replacements?


I touched on it, but the Mini's profile is nice.

Front is OEM 580-Series, the rear is adjustable Tech-Sights.

The butt (LOP) has been shortened 1" and squared, and the pad reprofiled to match.

The mags are 10-round Ruger OEM, and the upper ventilated handguard is from Choate.

1-1/4" web sling and QD swivels finishes it.




GR

cheap modification is by the gas block inserts slow that bolt down from slamming back and forward quite so hard can help a lot of things..

This one in 6x45 shoots purty darn good. Sub MOA with many loads. From Accuracy Rifle Systems.

Cost? What brand and twist barrel?

Wiegand makes a pic rail that mounts into the factory scope slots, uses set screws. use any pic rail rings
Blue and silver.

So, buy a mini and spend $1000 to make it shoot like an out of the box AR?

I see this stated SOOOOOO often..... and it drives me crazy. People do not understand gun design.

All ya gotta do is completely redesign the Mini-14 to take AR magazines, it would be so simple!... then why doesn't someone do it? They could make millions!

it's even worse than "they shoulda made it take Schlock mags!"

Not sure on the brand. It’s whatever Accuracy System uses. It’s a 1/9 twist.

I have a 584 Series Mini14, wooden stock, 100% factory, couldn't ask for a better 200-300yd rifle for pests. I have 6-7 AR15/10's, but the Mini is still a favorite.

Umm since they are gun designers it would have been simple had they known about AR popularity at the time. Bill hoped the AR would die and his mini would live. We got lucky that Bill and the mini lost

Looked at pricing and for what it costs to work on an M1A or M14 the pricing for the mini isn't bad.

umm yeah. simple. How would the mag catch work?

What kind of monstrosity would have to be made in order to make AR magazines go in a "mini-14"?

At the time, lots of people liked the M-14. Lots of people also didn't really care much for the M-16. The Mini-14 was made to emulate the M-14, down to the magazine design, and people didn't have a problem with that. And they sold the everlovin' schidt out of them. Even with magazines being fairly hard to come by.

It's just a different gun. Not everything has to be AR compatible. The Mini-14 used to be the economical choice... by FAR. It's not anymore. And the magazines have nothing to do with that.

Shot my first deer (14) with a Mini. One shot running. Spined her if I remember with Black Hills ammo.

I have no clue but I bet I could figure it out without a monstrosity. That said you missed the point, THEY are gun DESIGNERS.. They could easily do it. So many bolt guns take AR mags. How the hell did they do that? ...

Ruger made it in several flavors of tacti cool over the years, different calibers, folding stocks, it would have been a simple matter for them to reengineer the magazine port to accommodate the most popular magazine in the world.

Why can't magazine designers create a Mini magazine that works as well as the original and with volume, they would be cheap too. How many Mini's are out in the market ? 5 or 6 million ?? Maybe as many as their are M14's and M1A1's ??

kwg

Paid ~ $28/pop for my Ruger OEM mags from CDNN the last go-round.

Don't consider that to be prohibitive.

Quality steel product that functions flawlessly and lasts forever.

(Although the 10-rounds purchased were the same price as the 20-rounders, which annoyed me a might.)




GR

Mine shoots pretty good.



But it’s an ASI Mini-30 with true .308 bore.



Shot a lot of deer with that thing, before and after the conversion. My boys nicknamed it The Peashooter. It still gets action during the fall.

'

I think the next mini thread should wait until at least June.

In that TFB video, Clint says the Minis are fine, as long as you stick with Ruger factory magazines. As I’ve reported before, mine has never failed to feed, fire, or eject, save a couple FTEs while testing smaller gas ports. 2moa with ammo it likes, as good as a lot of AR carbines, and better than the sainted AKs that no one ever dares to criticize.

Expensive? Harder to hang schitt on? Funny magazine changes? All true, but none of them matter to me because it always works and can hit anything I need to hit, plus I like it.

Mini 14s are cool if you just want one. I have one and more than a few M1s and M1 Carbines.

For a real deal using rifle it's a pretty poor choice with the AR-15 being a thing.

Coolness factor aside, the draw of the Mini (mine’s a SS Ranch) for me is its simplicity, slim form-factor, and low-maintenance utter reliability. Toting it around with a flush 5-round mag is distinctly more comfortable than anything with a big box hanging down, and it’s less likely to draw negative attention from the dog-watchers and bird-walkers (that’s a joke) that frequent the WMA I hunt and hike, many of whom think it’s some kind of park or nature preserve.


My potential real deal scenarios are likely less demanding than those of some others, but I have a couple of ARs now and another on the way that I can hang schitt on if I want to protect my “castle” in style. For certain they’re simple to futz with and both in hand have been quite accurate and thus far, early in the game, reliable. The one on order is a carbine that I hope to set up well while keeping the weight within reason.