The Ruger Mark IV test gun had languished, unloved, for pretty much the whole of November, and so yesterday I took it to Indy Arms Company with the intention of putting a reasonably significant number of rounds through the gun.
The .22LR ammo can is mostly full of Remington Golden Bullets from one of those "Bucket o' Bullets" bulk pack affairs. I determined to put 200 through the gun to get the barrel warm enough to see if the Loctite on the retaining screw for the front sight was holding.
During the range session, I had one failure to eject on round #114 of the day (#714 through the gun). This was the first malfunction that the gun has experienced. I also noticed that one of the magazines had fuzzed up with a bit of surface rust.
Frankly, I was surprised that 200 rounds of bulk Remington Golden Bullets went through the gun with only the one malf. The stuff does not have the quality control of yore and is generally looked down on these days.
The Loctite on the front sight held fine. Two hundred rounds with no loosening of the screw. Howver the rear sight assembly kept drifting left and had to be manually shoved over in its dovetail with my thumb three times over the course of the range session. I need to tighten and Loctite the set screw on the rear sight as well.
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