Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Ruger M77 Ejection Issue

I have a 257 Roberts red pad ultralight that is in great condition save for a bit of an issue. It doesn't fully eject fired brass (or unfired rounds for that matter) It extracts the round and lets go of it on top of the magazine follower. I also have a MK II ultralight 257 Roberts. It functions flawlessly. I ordered a brand new spring for the Red pad. It didn't help. I switched the follower from the MK II to the red pad. It didn't help. I switched bolts. The Red pad bolt works fine in the MK II. The MK II bolt has the same ejection issue in the Red pad rifle.

Any ideas? I am befuddled.

Paul,

I'm no Ruger expert, but I believe your "red pad ultralight " is a tang safety model that combined a plunger ejector w/ a mauser style claw extractor. It sounds to me as if their is something wrong with the plunger ejector. Perhaps it is stuck/frozen in place or missing?

The MKII is a true controlled round feed action that uses a fixed blade ejector pinned into the action. Swapping the bolt from a MKII into a tang safety model might allow the bolt to seem to function properly, but as there is no pinned ejector in the tang safety model it will still fail to eject.

HTH

David

I should add that in the tang model, the MKII bolt doesn't eject. With a new spring and the MK II follower, it still doesn't eject.

What's happening when the tang safety bolt is in the tang safety rifle? When you ease the bolt back can you tell if the cartridge is being pushed out by the extractor? it would be visibly cocked to the side slightly pushing towards the ejecting port.

I'm asking of the ejector appears to be working properly in the tang safety rifle and then gets disrupted prior to the case/cartridge clearing the ejection port?


David

Every now and then it will kick a round out, but about 80% of the time it just releases the round and the round comes to rest on the magazine follower.

Paul,

Can you any sort of mark/nick on the (non) ejected catridge case? I'm not a gun smith, but it sounds like it may be possible there is a sharp edge or a burr that is knocking (or pulling) the cartridge off the extractor prior to ejection.

Hopefully one of the gunsmiths on this site will comment.

David

I keep hoping a smith will ring in. Surely this isn't the first time someone has had a similar issue. If it is releasing prematurely in the tang, why would the same thing not happen when I put the tank bolt in the MK 2 rifle?

I think I have identified the source of the problem. The only ammo I have is reloads. I have some new nickel brass reloaded and I have some once fired regular brass. The once fired regular brass has been neck sized only. It won't chamber in the Tang rifle. The new nickel reloads chamber fine in the Tang. When I move the Tang bolt over to the MK2 rifle, I was cycling the brass ammo. I got to thinking the nickel might be a little thicker, keeping the extractor from fully engaging the brass. So I tried the Tang bolt in the MK2 rifle using both regular and nickel brass. It doesn't eject the nickel stuff but about 20% of the time, but ejects the regular brass with 100% reliability. Then I started paying attention to which nickel round it ejected. Sure enough, it ejects the same nickel case each time. I guess the nickel isn't as thick on that one.

Am I crazy or have I found the source of the problem?

Scott, I looked at the extractor again, and it almost looks as if it as been filed down a bit. I wonder if MK2 extractors work with Tang bolts. If so, I will just order one. If not, I am probably screwed. Ruger no longer supports the tang model and I doubt anyone has a tang extractor just laying around.