Mini Thirty owners- any experience with firing pin breakage?

[parabellum]

I've long been considering buying a Mini Thirty Tactical, so much so that I bought 4 factory 20 round magazines for it a few weeks ago.

Although I would utilize quality brass cased ammo when loading it for defensive use, the primary ammo for practice would be, of course, the Russian and Eastern European steel cased ammo, and reports can be found online of firing pin breakage when firing this type of milsurp ammo in the Mini Thirty.
The reasons seem to be the hardness of the primers, as well as the greater depth to which primers are seated in the pocket.

Does anyone here have any experience with this?

In looking around online, I also found stories of failures to fire using Russian ammo, and the efforts to compensate for the primer hardness by using a Wolff extra power hammer spring. Does anyone use this spring?

 

[crewdog05]

I only shoot brass in mine but I have heard from many that the mini 30 will do ok with the steel case.ammo, but there is surplus eastern bloc ammo that is brass, yugo or hungarian, I have gotten it from southern ohio gun. not real pricey.

 

[MOUNTAIN WILLIAM]

I've shot thousands of steel case ammo through my stainless Mini 30 during the last 15 years and no broken parts of any kind so far.

 

[blume357]

I've got a mini-14 I bought used and the firing pin had been replaced in it according to the guy I bought it from and then I broke that one...

Yes they can break and it's best to let a gun smith replace them.... they really don't cost that much so just buy a spare for down the road... if you are sort of a gun smith you can probably do it your self.... but I think they need to be fitted to give the right strike... or they can break prematurely.....

still the easiest solution is to not shoot cheap commie ammo....

shoot cheap American ammo: http://georgia-arms.com/762x39russian125grsoftpoint100pk.aspx

 

[oregon73]

My Mini-30 does not shoot steel cased ammo reliably. Just puts minute little dents on the primers. However, it shoots quality brass cased ammo superbly--very accurate and 100% reliable.

Rob

 

[Bob G]

Cheap is good. Ruger should make the thing fire the cheap stuff. Period.

 

[Architorture23]

I never had a problem shooting Wolf or any of that stuff. I also didn't shoot a ton of it in the whole time I had the rifle... probably only 500 rounds or so. Still, never had a failure except failure to feed because of a crappy 30-rd ProMag.

 

[parabellum]

You guys mind if I ask you the approximate year of manufacture of your rifles?

The wide range of results is interesting. I suspect the failures to fire have to do with variances in the maximum firing pin protrusion among these rifles.

 

[MOUNTAIN WILLIAM]

Stainless 189 series with Wolff extra power hammer and recoil spring, no buffers.

 

[Architorture23]

mine was a 1988

 

[DonD]

Spoke to Ruger customer service a few days ago, they do not recommend former Soviet block steel case ammo for two reasons, primer sealing lacquer fouling the gas system and wear on the extractor. Take it for what you want.

I've used Fiocchi and some Sellier & Belot ammo exclusively. Don

 

[chefrob1]

sold mine recently (196XXXX), but i bought it new around 2003....fed it only commie stuff and never an issue.