Ruger 10-Round Mini-30 Mags

[Deworld392]

The day before yesterday, I took two rifles, a Mini-30 and a Ruger American Ranch rifle, to the range specifically to test Mini-30 10-round magazines. I took nine magazines, seven Ruger OEM and two ProMag magazines. One of the Ruger OEM magazines was a 10-round magazine which I had problems with earlier. I removed the Ruger mag spring and used a cut-down Wolff AK spring as a replacement. I ended up with a functional eight round magazine but it works.

The two ProMag magazines worked flawlessly which to me is somewhat surprising since I usually shun PromMag magazines.

Of the Ruger OEM 10-round magazines, six worked without problems (including the magazine modified with an AK spring) but one failed by allowing the last two in the magazine to nose-five while shooting the RAR. I tried the same mag in the Mini-30 and it worked without the nose-dive problem.

Why would a magazine fail to feed in the RAR but would work in the Mini-30?

Are problem magazines related to specific batch number or production years? Any way to tell what is what?

I will modify this magazine with the Wolff AK spring but I doubt I will buy more Ruger OEM Mini-30 ten round magazines.

Comments appreciated.

 

[DGW1949]

I worked with quite a few Mini-30's several years ago and never had a single one give problems with the old Mansen 10-rd mags. I don't know if those are still being made or not. If not, I hear that the present Pro-Mag is a close copy (which may explain why they worked well in yours)....At any rate, there simply were no hi-cap factory mags available for the Mini-30 back then, so I have no experience with the present Ruger offering what so ever. As for the RAR that's giving you problems, sounds to me like it's more likely a gun problem than a mag problem.....Hope this helped somewhat.

DGW