I have a new Ruger 556E that will not fire after the round is chambered or attempted to be chambered. The rounds are catching on something. Gun was cleaned, oiled etc.
I don’t really have any AR15 experience so I thought I would check here. Gun is enroute back to Ruger on their dime. Here is what the rounds look like after chambering:
Have you looked into the chamber area to see of there is an obstruction? How much of the round chambers or doesn’t chamber? Was it ever working correctly?
I didn’t see any obstructions. The gun is/was brand new. I cleaned the barrel, oiled it and the first round failed to fire. I pulled the trigger and got the famous click sound. I assumed I failed to get the round to chamber from the magazine and I pulled the bolt back and nothing came out. I removed the magazine, let the bolt go forward and then pulled the bolt back again and the live round was extracted, with no firing pin mark.
I inserted another magazine and fed a new round in. Again gun failed to fire. I removed the magazine; let the bolt go forward and the gun then fired. Never would the gun fire initially and each live round that was extracted from the chamber had the above marks.
I took it home, gutted it, cleaned it and removed a lot of brass shavings from the chamber area. I figured I didn’t run it with enough oil so I re-oiled everything. Went back to the range and the above process repeated itself. Failure to fire without multiple chamberings of the same round.
Additionally, when I took the upper off the second time at the range the bolt would not seat itself in the upper and appeared to be rubbing against something in the chamber. I called Ruger and back it went.
I assumed the markings on the brass would mean something to someone with knowledge…to me it looks like the chamber wasn’t cut properly?
That would be my best guess at this point.
And, I doubt they ever test fired it…sad.
Until you hear back from Ruger, all we can do is guess
Based on what you said, I think that the out of spec chamber is plausible. Based on those pics (which is why I asked about obstruction) I remember an incident where a piece of bolt lug broke off in the chamber of a Colt M4 and the round looked somewhat similar.
Good news is that it is unfired and you can return it and get your money back.
Hard to believe a firearms manufacturer would not test fire a gun before it leaves the factory just for pure liability reasons.
Could the ammunition been out of spec?
I used Federal 5.56, winchester 5.56 and pmc 5.56 and Federal 223. All factory ammo. My son in law had his psa rifle and my mags went into his gun and it ran flawless.
It does look like a hellacious burr in the chamber caused that. If its any consolation to you, my one and only interaction with Rugers CS was a positive one. The slide stop on my wife’s LCP broke. They emailed me a shipping label and it was fixed and back in a week. I told here she should have let me get her a M&P. Keep us posted.
Here is the latest and why I love Ruger products:
Tuesday: Sent the rifle back ups ground.
Thursday: Ruger calls me leaves message, they received rifle and said they will get right to it and call me on Friday.
Friday: Ruger warranty calls me; same person who left voicemail on Thursday. Ruger tells me that they are replacing the upper half of the gun. The original upper will be sent back to manufacturing to find out what is exactly wrong and find out why it happened.
Ruger Rep puts me on speaker phone with armorer who test fired new upper, cleaned chamber, oiled gun and made sure it was running 100%. Ruger Rep apologizes for bad first gun, gives me two free pmags and tells me gun will go overnight back to me.
Saturday: Gun arrives UPS and looks test fired, oiled and needs to be shot.
5 days from me sending it to having the gun back. I am amazed at the excellent customer service!
Had they test fired it, you never would have had to deal with their amazing customer service.
My money goes to companies that get right the first time, getting right the first time involves quality control, quality control with firearms involves test firing.
A solid fail on Rugars behalf on this one.
My money also goes to Gun Makers who get it right the 1st time. That’s why I bought a Ruger SR-556C. I’ve never Had to return a Ruger product and I’ve owned many. Now that’s not to say that Ruger is perfect, but for the number of firearms they make I hear of comparatively few that need to be returned. In the OP case, He got a defective one and Ruger is taking care of the problem in a very timely manner. I hope it doesn’t sour Him on Ruger products? Any Gun manufacture can and does let a Lemon slip out the door from time to time.
Got it to the range today. Ran 60 rounds through it and it was flawless. Very happy with my Ruger now.
Before you start jumping all over Ruger, they do test-fire product before ti leaves.
Production was no-doubt very curious as to how it could have passed test-fire, and then shipped, with that, and failed the customer.
And no, they do not pore over every empty to pops out of a test-fired gun. It goes bang, it passes, same as everyone else.
Regardless of whether or not they “pour over” every empty casing, they should have noticed this. This isn’t something that happened after hundreds of rounds.
Wow. I wonder what went wrong
I have bought a fair number of Rugers over the years and been disappointed by too many of them. I see things haven’t changed much. Maybe the customer service. I hear tell they are nice now. Back in my Ruger days the CS folks were surly, seeming to think there just could not be a problem with the gun, the problem had to be the asshole on the other end of the phone i.e. me. Their gunsmiths seemed to think that too. Three times I sent Ruger guns in for repair and had them come back with no work done, problem still there. That’s what happened with the last Ruger I bought, a 77-22 that shot a less than stellar 6 to 8 inches at 50 yards. It came back just like I shipped it to them. The woman I talked to was very displeased that I was displeased. She thought I should be happy with a bolt action 22 that shot 6 to 8 inches at 50. It did after all “meet Ruger accuracy specifications.” That was 20+ years ago. I have bought one Ruger since then. I don’t have any use for Ruger. Or the horse they rode in on.
I guess Ruger probably won’t give you an update on the old upper. Pity. It would be great to find out what was wrong with that upper to cause rounds to look like that.
As stated in another thread around here, after the last six months of hysteria and with the gun companies cranking out firearms as fast as possible during that period…anything can happen. You can bet that quality control slipped some with all the “Brands” during that time, not just Ruger.