Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Which were the "bad barrel" years for the slide safety Ruger 77?

The reason I ask is that of the 4 new Ruger 77's that I have owned, which were built in '71(1), '72(2) and '75(1). All would easily shoot 1" or smaller 3-shot groups at 100 yds without intense load development. Were these not the bad years, or was I just lucky?

I'm hardly a source of definitive answers about Ruger and I'm not a gunwriter either, but IIRC, there was more than one barrel maker that Ruger purchased from during the 70's. That means that it wasn't so much the year of manufacture, but the brand barrel that was screwed into the receiver.

(Now I'll wait for the folks who actually know something to confirm or correct my aging memory. )

That's what I have always heard more than one source of barrels, that you could get a good or bad Ruger. I had both.

IIRC the "bad" barrels came from Wilson.

My experience has been that bad barrels on tang-safety Rugers were extremely rare, and were scattered randomly throughout the years.

I had 1 of the bad wilson barrels on a 70's vintage tang safty in 7mm Rem Mag. It was a 3 to 4 moa gun at best with glassbedding and floating the barrel

After getting a NECO firelapping kit and treating the barrel to the full 40 round lapping proceedure it now shoots 5 rounds into 1-1/4 inches or less.

I own 2 tang-safety Ruger 77's (220 Swift Varminter and 30-06 Sporter). Both apparently have bad barrels since they occasionally shoot 1.5" groups. Generally, they will do less than 1", but a flier every now and then opens the group (to 1.5").

Question for the Gun Writers: Should I send these 30+ year old rifles back to Ruger and demand a new barrel since they are obviously bad?

I happen to own one of those so called bad barrel Ruger.It is chambered in 250 Savage and it could,t repeat the old hitting the barn from the inside.
It really is that bad even with factory loads.It was given to me by my father in law I think he didn't like me very much and wanted to keep me scratching my head over it.
But I will probably keep playing with it for years to come.It's been 25 years now.

Am glad you said it, many don't believe me.

I bought a new one in 30-06 about 1979 or 1980 that shot patterns. You couldn't call them groups. Ruger took it back and sent me a good one.

The only tang-safety 77 I've owned with a really bad barrel was a 7x57. It would shoot into 1.5 to 2" or so for the first group after cleaning, but then the groups would grow.

After a little experimenting, I slugged the barrel and found the "tight" parts of the barrel measured .287"! And yes, there were several loose spots. That one got rebarreled to .358 Winchester.

The first tang-safety 77 I owned was a .30-06, purchased new. It would shot about anything into an inch, and favored loads when into 1/2" to 3/4". The only tang-safety model I own right now is a sporter-weight .220 Swift, and it will put five shots into .6" or so with about any 55-grain bullet.

Sometimes "randomness" seems to strike in one place, I guess. My history with Ruger M-77's is as follows:

M77 tang safety Round Top .30/06: shot OK
M77 tang safety standard .30/06: shot OK
M77 tang safety .220 Swift Varmint: shot OK
M77 tang safety laminated .30/06: shot OK
M77 tang safety .300 Win. Mag.: shot OK
M77 MKII Varmint .243: shot OK for 20 to 30 rounds, then bullets would keyhole and accuracy would become non-existent until the rifle was cleaned
M77 MKII .308 Compact: 4 to 6 MOA with every load tried; rebarreled to .358 and now shoots 1/2 MOA
M77 MKII .308 RSI: 4 to 5 MOA, but very pretty. Shoots a nice group every 6 months or so...a reliable 100 yd. deer rifle
M77 MKII Target .220 Swift: shot OK
M77 Gunsight Scout .308: shot OK

So I've owned 10 of the Model 77's and 3 of them have been stinkers. Oddly enough, all of them were early MKII's.

I have a pair of them, one from the first year of production and one from the last. Never a problem with either one.

Ruger used Douglas barrels until 1973 when they made the transition to Wilson. They began making their own barrels in about 1992. The Wilson barrels are the ones with poor quality control. However, I have several rifles with Wilson barrels that shoot very well. And, a couple that were pretty frustrating until I found the load they liked.

I was in Bob Ward's in Bozeman about 1987 and they had two M77RL in .30-06. One had the bore noticeably off center. I passed on that one and bought the other. It would shoot MOA with just about every load I fired in it.

YMMV

mcknight 77, This barrel production question comes up from time to time at the gun club. Can you direct me to the provenance?

Thanks,
Wayne

I have a 1984 vintage tang safety 77 in 7x57. With RL19 and 140 grain Ballistic tips it will shoot into 3/4" at 100 yds. With 139 grain Hornady spire points and IMR 4350 it will do 1/2". So I guess I got one with a "good barrel".

Ron

Every Ruger rifle I've owned either shot quite well, or extremely well. Her Mini-Thirty wasn't anything to write home about, but I only tried .308" bullets in it, never .311 or .312, so it was prolly my fault.

I sold off most of my bolt guns years ago to focus on Ruger #1s but I did have several 77s that never shot well including a .35 Whelen tang model, a 7x57, and a 6mm Rem varminter. Same story in my #1s a few out of a pretty wide sample -- maybe 5% --were dogs -- the worst was a .243 that fouled badly after one or two 5 shot groups. But maybe 7-8 of my #1s had to be accurized to perform at their best.

I have not had a black pad Ruger #1 that would not shoot adequately with a little tweaking.

1B

1B

A lot of the "bad barrels" were issues with the diagonal action screw rather than the barrel. Same thing with No 1s. My bad barrel No 1V .22-250 consistently does 5/8 inch for 5 shot groups. It is bad because the factory throat was way too long. Still shoots though.

I am pretty much a ruger slut and have owned more than a few TS over the years. I still have 4 (6 if you count actions). There was a while where I seemed to specialize in buying TS that didn't shoot.

Only one of the several that came to me that way didn't end up shooting very well after some sort of bedding or trigger work, or relieving a magazine bind etc. It was brenneke and it very well may have been the barrel, but it also might have been some little thing I didn't think of.

My guess after dealing with maybe 15 TS rugers is that the barrels were responsible for maybe 10% of the bad shooters, the rest were some small crap that would have been easily fixed. There were just a good many shooters who would try to fix a bad grouping rifle by trying a bunch of bullets and powders and when they had spent a summer of shooting without good results were so fustrated that they would sell it off.