So, here it is, my initial review of the Ruger Precision Rimfire.
I’ve been a rimfire shooter for years. In fact, .22lr is my all-time favorite caliber to shoot. It’s a love affair that started well over 25 years ago with a single shot lever action, but that’s another story for another time.
Recently a good friend and fellow enthusiast informed me about the new NRL22 league. I was instantly fascinated. The downside is, they haven’t made their way to Georgia (or the surrounding states yet). I haven’t shot rimfire benchrest in a good number of years and gave up 3 position due to bad knees so this sounded like an exciting opportunity to get back into some fun, competitive shooting again.
I began doing some research and had decided to get myself another Anschutz, more specifically, the Anschutz 1416D HB G. This model has a 16” threaded barrel and a 5 round magazine (10rd are available) in a beavertail stock. I mentioned this to the same friend who had suggested I look into NRL22 and he stated that I should build up a 10/22 due to some of the courses being a little quicker than others.
I thought about it for a day or so and decided that he was right, a 10/22 does make sense, but that doesn’t have to be all I do, I could do both a 10/22 and a bolt gun. It was at this time that the Ruger Precision Rimfire was announced and thus, a plan was hatched. I would build up a 10/22 (decent receiver, trigger, barrel and stock) and get one of the new RPRs. What intrigued me about the RPR over say the Ruger American or the Savage FV SR (which I’ve had a few of) was the chassis design, integrated M-Lok handguard, acceptability of 10/22 mags and 30MOA scope base.
I began the search for one and only found a pre-order from Sportsman’s Outdoor Superstore. I’m not a huge fan of pre-orders so I waited a little longer. I then found that Kentucky Gun Company had it listed but was out of stock. I put in a notification to be alerted when they returned to stock and on Jan 23rd, I received such notification. I immediately ordered one and on the 24th, it shipped out. Shipping only took a couple of days and on the 27th, I was able to go by FFL and pick it up.
For those that don’t know, the Ruger Precision Rimfire was designed to be a “trainer” rifle for the larger, centerfire Ruger Precision Rifles. The rimfire versions sport a very similar action and chassis, just in a slightly scaled down version.
We’ll start at the rear of the rifle and work our way forward. At the end of the rifle is a stock that allows an adjustable length of pull, an adjustable cheek riser and an adjustable butt pad. When I received mine, I noticed that there was just a little bit of wobble in the cheek riser. This was easily remedied by tightening the lever on the passenger (right) side of the riser.
Now, setting up the stock to fit my reach took a little longer than I had anticipated. I needed to pull the riser up part of the way and all the way back (the reason for this I’ll discuss in a moment). Getting it to move backwards was a bit more difficult than I had initially thought.
The riser rides on two sets of clamping blocks that have “teeth”. The “teeth” secure the blocks to the stock and keep it from moving. A decent design but I unintentionally unscrewed the cam lever all the way from the nut. It’s not hard to reassemble and in fact, to change the lever to the other side, this is what you have to do anyway.
The stock portion is actually a lot studerier than I anticipated it being. I expected to find some play in the thin portion just behind the grip, but this wasn’t the case. Once the stock was adjusted for my length of pull (I have monkey like arms that require a decent LOP), I adjusted the riser to what I thought would be good, then moved on to mounting the optic.
For an optic, I decided on the Vortex Viper HS-T 4-16x44 with the VMR-1 MOA reticle. Research and experience told me that I would need medium rings to mount the scope, and this was true, mostly.
The RPR comes equipped with a 30MOA scope base from the factory. If you’ve ever used a base with built in MOA, you know that rear of the base is actually thicker than the front, causing it to slope towards the muzzle end. What does this mean for mounting an optic? Well, the objective will actually sit closer to the barrel (or rail in this case) than it would on a base with 0 MOA.
Imagine if you will, a 50rd box of .22lr ammo. Continue to imagine that you’ve set an AR bolt carrier group on top. The box of ammo will represent the scope base and the BCG the scope. If you lift the rear of the box, that would be like adding MOA to the base. You’ll notice that the front of the BCG begins getting closer to whatever the box is sitting on. The same is true for a scope sitting on a base with added MOA.
In this case, the front objective of my optic began getting very close to the M-LOK rail that ruger installs from the factory. In order to get the objective to clear the rail, I had to move the rings back an entire space (roughly .4”) in order to move the scope back far enough that it would clear the rail. This means it also moved the eye box (the distance your eye needs to be from the scope) backwards. This is why I had to move the cheek riser all the way to the rear. Because It moved the scope back nearly half an inch, I was able to mount the sun shade, so that’s something.
Moving down from the scope and base, we get into the action and the bolt. Here is where my issues with the RPR begin. I will preface what I’m about to say by stating that I realize this is a $400 rifle. I get it. This is ⅓ of what I would have spent on the Anschutz. This does not go unnoticed. Now, that said, the machining/ finishing on the bolt and action leave a lot to be desired. I’ve been told that after roughly 500-1000 actuation, the action/ bolt begin to smooth out. I hope this is true. If you try and cycle the bolt as you would any other bolt gun, you’ll notice it wants to bind. Not so bad that it wouldn't cycle, but bad enough it’s noticeable. If you treat as a straight “pull-push” like what you would find on a biathlon rifle, it works wonderfully.
There are also some very evident machine marks on the bolt. Again, I know this is an inexpensive rifle but it appears as if NO attempt was every made to clean these up. I mean, they’re pretty bad.
Moving down to the trigger, well, it’s blade trigger. I was pleasantly surprised at how it felt, I had anticipated it being really bad. The blade portion feels wobbly side-to-side, but I guess that’s to be expected. I know I can’t expect it to feel like the crisp two-stage of a 5098, but one can dream. The adjustments are easy to make utilizing the screw located in front of the trigger inside the magazine well and the allen wrench is hidden under a small piece on the top of the stock. I will say that this is an improvement to the way a Savage Accu-Trigger adjusts as all adjustments can be made without removing the trigger or action from the rifle.
The safety is similar to an AR style safety and can be swapped over to the other side. Doing so seems like a royal PITA so I’m going to leave it for now, even though I’m a left handed shooter. Hopefully an ambi selector will be released at some point. The grip is a standard AR style so you can toss your favorite grip on there if it so pleases you. I found no issue with the one supplied by Ruger but I may upgrade down the road.
The magazine well and release. I noticed inside the well that there appears what looks like rough, uneven sanding. I didn’t pay it a lot of attention because it didn’t interfere with the seating of magazine. The 15rd magazine provided seats and releases well. The one BX25 I tried seated fine but felt weird on release. It didn’t hang up or anything, but it didn’t feel like it feel free, not like the 15rd did. Odd.
The mag release looked and felt like a medium style you would find on a Ruger BX trigger. Nothing special but certainly better than the old style 10/22 magazine releases. Man do those suck. It works as it should, but it sits in the trigger assembly slightly askew. Just another little thing that could have been improved but doesn’t actually change the functionality of the rifle.
Continuing to move forward we finally come to the barrel and the rail. The barrel is a standard ⅞ bull barrel that has been factory threaded in 1/2x28 for mounting a suppressor (or flash hider/ muzzle brake). Here’s where the QC seems to get worse.
Now I don’t know if the following is because the barrel isn’t true to the receiver or because the rail isn’t but either way, something is off. I first noticed it when began getting ready to mount the optic. The rail is crooked. Or the barrel is. Whichever is true, the two don’t jive. I’ve read of 10/22s that have a serious variance in how the barrel sits in receiver to the point of it being crooked. There’s even a write up on Rimfire Central where people have pulled their 10/22 barreled actions and laid them on a table, measured the distance from the barrel to the table, flipped it over and measured it again and found it to be off by quite a margin.
Now, I’m not saying this is the case with the RPR, but it’s a possibility. It’s also possible the the rail was installed slightly askew. I haven’t pulled the rail or action yet to check because honestly, I’ve been incredibly sick and wanted to get this done. I did use my Brown and Sharpe dial calipers to measure the distance from the outside of the rail to the barrel. Here are the measurements I obtained. I’m sure there’s some measure of error that should be accounted for but I don’t feel good so take it for what it is.
So you can see the barrel sits towards the bottom right of the rail. WIll this have any adverse effect on accuracy? I seriously doubt it. Is it kind of frustrating to have a brand new rifle with issues that should have been caught? Uh, yeah.
The barrel is held in place with a barrel nut that can be removed with a standard AR Armorers tool, according to Ruger. Everything I’ve seen so far confirms this and hopefully we’ll see some barrels from KIDD, Volquartsen, Feddersen, Tac Sol, etc. So where does that leave us?
It’s a $400 bolt action rimfire based on a centerfire costing as much as 3x times the price. So there, that’s exactly what it is. A trainer. Do I think it’s worth the $400? Absolutely. If you look at the Savage FV-SR as the direct competitor, I think you’ll find the Ruger actually has some features that, to me anyway, make it worth the little extra. Now a standard MK2 FV SR is about $250 while the newer B22 FV SR is about $300.
What is it that makes the RPR worth the extra $100 - $150? Well, the added M-Lok rail is a nice feature (even if it sits askew to the barrel). Having a rail system that utilized common accessories is actually kind of nice, but this alone wouldn’t have been the selling point. However, when you add in the fact that it comes standard with a 30MOA rail (something that is really nice when trying to shoot .22 to any serious distance) as well as a barrel that’s easy to remove and upgrade, the value starts to become apparent. Rounding it off with a chassis that allows for ambidextrous use, adjustable LOP and cheek height and the utilization of 10/22 mags and it becomes very clear why this rifle is worth the little extra. Even if you were able to upgrade the FV SR to a better stock/ chassis and toss on a better scope base for $100, you still have to deal with the crappy 5 and 10rd mags from Savage and your stuck with that barrel.
So there it is, my initial thoughts on the new Ruger Precision Rimfire. Once the weather warms up a little and I don’t feel like death, I’m going to drag it down to the CMP range in Anniston, AL to put some rounds through it and get a good range report. Until then, lather, rinse and repeat.
How I got here:
I’ve been a rimfire shooter for years. In fact, .22lr is my all-time favorite caliber to shoot. It’s a love affair that started well over 25 years ago with a single shot lever action, but that’s another story for another time.
Recently a good friend and fellow enthusiast informed me about the new NRL22 league. I was instantly fascinated. The downside is, they haven’t made their way to Georgia (or the surrounding states yet). I haven’t shot rimfire benchrest in a good number of years and gave up 3 position due to bad knees so this sounded like an exciting opportunity to get back into some fun, competitive shooting again.
I began doing some research and had decided to get myself another Anschutz, more specifically, the Anschutz 1416D HB G. This model has a 16” threaded barrel and a 5 round magazine (10rd are available) in a beavertail stock. I mentioned this to the same friend who had suggested I look into NRL22 and he stated that I should build up a 10/22 due to some of the courses being a little quicker than others.
I thought about it for a day or so and decided that he was right, a 10/22 does make sense, but that doesn’t have to be all I do, I could do both a 10/22 and a bolt gun. It was at this time that the Ruger Precision Rimfire was announced and thus, a plan was hatched. I would build up a 10/22 (decent receiver, trigger, barrel and stock) and get one of the new RPRs. What intrigued me about the RPR over say the Ruger American or the Savage FV SR (which I’ve had a few of) was the chassis design, integrated M-Lok handguard, acceptability of 10/22 mags and 30MOA scope base.
I began the search for one and only found a pre-order from Sportsman’s Outdoor Superstore. I’m not a huge fan of pre-orders so I waited a little longer. I then found that Kentucky Gun Company had it listed but was out of stock. I put in a notification to be alerted when they returned to stock and on Jan 23rd, I received such notification. I immediately ordered one and on the 24th, it shipped out. Shipping only took a couple of days and on the 27th, I was able to go by FFL and pick it up.
The rifle:
For those that don’t know, the Ruger Precision Rimfire was designed to be a “trainer” rifle for the larger, centerfire Ruger Precision Rifles. The rimfire versions sport a very similar action and chassis, just in a slightly scaled down version.
We’ll start at the rear of the rifle and work our way forward. At the end of the rifle is a stock that allows an adjustable length of pull, an adjustable cheek riser and an adjustable butt pad. When I received mine, I noticed that there was just a little bit of wobble in the cheek riser. This was easily remedied by tightening the lever on the passenger (right) side of the riser.
Now, setting up the stock to fit my reach took a little longer than I had anticipated. I needed to pull the riser up part of the way and all the way back (the reason for this I’ll discuss in a moment). Getting it to move backwards was a bit more difficult than I had initially thought.
The riser rides on two sets of clamping blocks that have “teeth”. The “teeth” secure the blocks to the stock and keep it from moving. A decent design but I unintentionally unscrewed the cam lever all the way from the nut. It’s not hard to reassemble and in fact, to change the lever to the other side, this is what you have to do anyway.
The stock portion is actually a lot studerier than I anticipated it being. I expected to find some play in the thin portion just behind the grip, but this wasn’t the case. Once the stock was adjusted for my length of pull (I have monkey like arms that require a decent LOP), I adjusted the riser to what I thought would be good, then moved on to mounting the optic.
For an optic, I decided on the Vortex Viper HS-T 4-16x44 with the VMR-1 MOA reticle. Research and experience told me that I would need medium rings to mount the scope, and this was true, mostly.
The RPR comes equipped with a 30MOA scope base from the factory. If you’ve ever used a base with built in MOA, you know that rear of the base is actually thicker than the front, causing it to slope towards the muzzle end. What does this mean for mounting an optic? Well, the objective will actually sit closer to the barrel (or rail in this case) than it would on a base with 0 MOA.
Imagine if you will, a 50rd box of .22lr ammo. Continue to imagine that you’ve set an AR bolt carrier group on top. The box of ammo will represent the scope base and the BCG the scope. If you lift the rear of the box, that would be like adding MOA to the base. You’ll notice that the front of the BCG begins getting closer to whatever the box is sitting on. The same is true for a scope sitting on a base with added MOA.
In this case, the front objective of my optic began getting very close to the M-LOK rail that ruger installs from the factory. In order to get the objective to clear the rail, I had to move the rings back an entire space (roughly .4”) in order to move the scope back far enough that it would clear the rail. This means it also moved the eye box (the distance your eye needs to be from the scope) backwards. This is why I had to move the cheek riser all the way to the rear. Because It moved the scope back nearly half an inch, I was able to mount the sun shade, so that’s something.
Moving down from the scope and base, we get into the action and the bolt. Here is where my issues with the RPR begin. I will preface what I’m about to say by stating that I realize this is a $400 rifle. I get it. This is ⅓ of what I would have spent on the Anschutz. This does not go unnoticed. Now, that said, the machining/ finishing on the bolt and action leave a lot to be desired. I’ve been told that after roughly 500-1000 actuation, the action/ bolt begin to smooth out. I hope this is true. If you try and cycle the bolt as you would any other bolt gun, you’ll notice it wants to bind. Not so bad that it wouldn't cycle, but bad enough it’s noticeable. If you treat as a straight “pull-push” like what you would find on a biathlon rifle, it works wonderfully.
There are also some very evident machine marks on the bolt. Again, I know this is an inexpensive rifle but it appears as if NO attempt was every made to clean these up. I mean, they’re pretty bad.
Moving down to the trigger, well, it’s blade trigger. I was pleasantly surprised at how it felt, I had anticipated it being really bad. The blade portion feels wobbly side-to-side, but I guess that’s to be expected. I know I can’t expect it to feel like the crisp two-stage of a 5098, but one can dream. The adjustments are easy to make utilizing the screw located in front of the trigger inside the magazine well and the allen wrench is hidden under a small piece on the top of the stock. I will say that this is an improvement to the way a Savage Accu-Trigger adjusts as all adjustments can be made without removing the trigger or action from the rifle.
The safety is similar to an AR style safety and can be swapped over to the other side. Doing so seems like a royal PITA so I’m going to leave it for now, even though I’m a left handed shooter. Hopefully an ambi selector will be released at some point. The grip is a standard AR style so you can toss your favorite grip on there if it so pleases you. I found no issue with the one supplied by Ruger but I may upgrade down the road.
The magazine well and release. I noticed inside the well that there appears what looks like rough, uneven sanding. I didn’t pay it a lot of attention because it didn’t interfere with the seating of magazine. The 15rd magazine provided seats and releases well. The one BX25 I tried seated fine but felt weird on release. It didn’t hang up or anything, but it didn’t feel like it feel free, not like the 15rd did. Odd.
The mag release looked and felt like a medium style you would find on a Ruger BX trigger. Nothing special but certainly better than the old style 10/22 magazine releases. Man do those suck. It works as it should, but it sits in the trigger assembly slightly askew. Just another little thing that could have been improved but doesn’t actually change the functionality of the rifle.
Continuing to move forward we finally come to the barrel and the rail. The barrel is a standard ⅞ bull barrel that has been factory threaded in 1/2x28 for mounting a suppressor (or flash hider/ muzzle brake). Here’s where the QC seems to get worse.
Now I don’t know if the following is because the barrel isn’t true to the receiver or because the rail isn’t but either way, something is off. I first noticed it when began getting ready to mount the optic. The rail is crooked. Or the barrel is. Whichever is true, the two don’t jive. I’ve read of 10/22s that have a serious variance in how the barrel sits in receiver to the point of it being crooked. There’s even a write up on Rimfire Central where people have pulled their 10/22 barreled actions and laid them on a table, measured the distance from the barrel to the table, flipped it over and measured it again and found it to be off by quite a margin.
Now, I’m not saying this is the case with the RPR, but it’s a possibility. It’s also possible the the rail was installed slightly askew. I haven’t pulled the rail or action yet to check because honestly, I’ve been incredibly sick and wanted to get this done. I did use my Brown and Sharpe dial calipers to measure the distance from the outside of the rail to the barrel. Here are the measurements I obtained. I’m sure there’s some measure of error that should be accounted for but I don’t feel good so take it for what it is.
- Rail overall width: 1.5035”
- Left side to barrel: .3455”
- Right side to barrel: .2905”
- Bottom to barrel: .2855”
- Top to barrel: .3595”
So you can see the barrel sits towards the bottom right of the rail. WIll this have any adverse effect on accuracy? I seriously doubt it. Is it kind of frustrating to have a brand new rifle with issues that should have been caught? Uh, yeah.
The barrel is held in place with a barrel nut that can be removed with a standard AR Armorers tool, according to Ruger. Everything I’ve seen so far confirms this and hopefully we’ll see some barrels from KIDD, Volquartsen, Feddersen, Tac Sol, etc. So where does that leave us?
Final Thoughts
It’s a $400 bolt action rimfire based on a centerfire costing as much as 3x times the price. So there, that’s exactly what it is. A trainer. Do I think it’s worth the $400? Absolutely. If you look at the Savage FV-SR as the direct competitor, I think you’ll find the Ruger actually has some features that, to me anyway, make it worth the little extra. Now a standard MK2 FV SR is about $250 while the newer B22 FV SR is about $300.
What is it that makes the RPR worth the extra $100 - $150? Well, the added M-Lok rail is a nice feature (even if it sits askew to the barrel). Having a rail system that utilized common accessories is actually kind of nice, but this alone wouldn’t have been the selling point. However, when you add in the fact that it comes standard with a 30MOA rail (something that is really nice when trying to shoot .22 to any serious distance) as well as a barrel that’s easy to remove and upgrade, the value starts to become apparent. Rounding it off with a chassis that allows for ambidextrous use, adjustable LOP and cheek height and the utilization of 10/22 mags and it becomes very clear why this rifle is worth the little extra. Even if you were able to upgrade the FV SR to a better stock/ chassis and toss on a better scope base for $100, you still have to deal with the crappy 5 and 10rd mags from Savage and your stuck with that barrel.
So there it is, my initial thoughts on the new Ruger Precision Rimfire. Once the weather warms up a little and I don’t feel like death, I’m going to drag it down to the CMP range in Anniston, AL to put some rounds through it and get a good range report. Until then, lather, rinse and repeat.
