Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Ruger lc9 failure to feed

Traded a junky taurus revolver for it if you all recall about 3 weeks ago. Feeds ball ammo fine if you slingshot the slide. Any hesitation and it feeds, but requires a tap on back of slide. Tried some hornady flex lock hp and it jams into bottom of feed ramp. It takes a nose dive on 3 different Ruger mags. Though about disassembling mags, clean them, and slightly bend mag lips to get bullet angled up. Thought I came out decent on trade, but not sure now. What do you fellers think?

I would disassemble the magazines and make sure the spring isn't backwards.

Why don't you change the recoil spring?

Unload (trade) it, or send it back to Ruger. Lemme guess, your buddy is telling you it “worked fine” when he had it??? That’s probably why he bought the extra mags for it, hoping that would fix the reliability issues.

Even with 9mm ammo, it’s not hard to blow $20-$30 chasing reliability issues. For that, you could ship it back to Ruger...

How hard are the magazines to load?

It might be weak magazine springs. Ruger uses the same magazine springs in their seven and nine round LC9/EC9 magazines.

Recently a nephew and I put about 300 115gr ball rounds through my LC9 with a 9 round magazine, at the end of that session it began to fail to feed after the first four or five rounds.

Those 9 rounders are suspiciously easy to load (haven’t used em for so long I can’t find the original 7 round mags right now ). I believe weak springs are the problem.

I also tried a Sig P365, in contrast to the LC9 you need thumbs of steel to load the mags, feeds reliably tho.

Or you could man up, fix it, and have an accomplishment to tell about.

Already did a light sanding and polish on feed ramp. Also took a little material out of front part of lips on top of mag. It'll feed Remington umc jhp, they're more rounded. Hornady cd has a rather sharp point. I like Ruger overall, but this is not their best design. A little search on the web & you can read many other accounts. Doesn't matter I carry my shield most often. It's just the right size & works flawless

Work on cheap range toys. Work on expensive range toys. Work on hunting rifles, target rifles, and various shotguns. What I don’t “work on” are inexpensive polymer pistols meant for concealed-carry, that may be needed to protect my life in a sticky situation. They either “work”, or they go “bye-bye” or back to the manufacturer. YMMV.

Your logic is underwhelming....

It's a Ruger. It's doing what so many Rugers do.

And nobody's ask ,factory ammo and type or hand loads

Shoots ball just fine. Fiocchi, Federal,Blazer. Hornady with the sharp point nose dives into bottom of feed ramp. More rounded hp feeds fine. Shot it yesterday through one mag. Dropped mag, inserted another one, pulled slide & let go. It stopped 1/4" or less from going into battery. Pushed it forward & shot some more. I ordered a 20 pound spring & ss guide rod figuring this will make it go into battery every time. I haven't given up on it yet. I've read about issues with Rugers mini 9mms, lc9, lc9s, ec9. I wouldn't recommend one, but I'm still tinkering with this one. On a side note, this little lightweight bastard has some recoil.

If it shoots round nose and round type hollow points fine you're probably not going to fix it with springs and such. Being factory loads I will say this but I can't say I recommend this if you know what I mean. I bet it will
shoot your flatter nose bullets if they're seated just a little bit deeper.

I don't reload

Phuq you.

Or, in lieu of that, phuq spending hours on cheapo/underwhelming $250 pistols that have proven themselves unreliable, apparently (per OP) are “uncomfortable to shoot”, and that can’t be trusted to go “bang” when needed.

Feel free to pat yourself on the azz (or the head).

The OP has already wasted more on parts and shipping then it would’ve cost to go back to Ruger (and if he’d of taken my advice in his earlier post asking if he should trade a revolver for it, he wouldn’t have this albatross around his neck).

Good day, and enjoy the wheel-spinning...

I've got an EC9s works flawlessly factory rn ammo and rn hardcast. Believe I would have sent it to Ruger once just so I didn't invalidate the warranty. Mb

This one feeds great with round nose. The recoil spring is weak though. I barely pulled the slide back with a round chambered and it hung about an 1/8" to 3/16" from battery last night. Pushed it forward easily, that's why I ordered a new stiffer spring. The spring & ss guide rod was only $36 with free shipping. I'm fine with the trade I made even if all I shoot is ball ammo. The Taurus revolver I traded was truly junk, and was $300 new not $400 as stated by another individual.

When he is done, he'll have accomplished something. On the other hand, you would've sold a defective pistol to some unsuspecting buyer. Of the two actions, one is honorable and the other is the result of slime-rodent, shlt-weasel thinking.

Or, he could just send it to Ruger...
(Where have I heard/read that, in this thread???)

I’m gonna go get some popcorn, anxiously awaiting the arrival of a Dremel tool to this equation...

Got the spring & installed it today, works like it should. Will never use anything but fmj in it, because I'm not 100% certain it will feed hp reliably. Ruger gave me the run around, and it would have cost more for ffl to send it & back ground check when they were done than the $36 parts cost me. I'm content with my trade. I only carry 2 different pistols out of many. This one is an option though if I decided to. The problem with these particular models is the feed ramp is to short, and when cartridge moves forward out of mag it sort of nose dives. The oal of ball is longer than any hp, thus it contacts ramp & feeds as desired. This is a known issue all over the internet. No dremel tool is being used, and I'm still glad I got rid of the pos Taurus. I already have .22 revolers & autos that are accurate. The Taurus was not worth the $300 I paid, maybe $100 at best.