Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Time to start a new mini 14 thread yet?

So its not the bolt design thats the issue with minis. Like I said...Ruger just made cheap guns for max profit. Can't fault em for that. They sold millions?

Thats a kind of thing where its what you are used to IMHO and fit.

I hated moving to the AR from the M14. But in the end got used to it so much that the M14 feels wrong. Plus the scores shot with the AR got to be quite a bit better.

You have some good minis. I love the look of them over the look of the AR.

But in reality I can take a 150 dollar or less lower AR, put a 180 dollar or so upper on it and have a MOA gun. Sometimes a bit better. Sometimes worse. But way more reliably MOA on average without doing anything else. Our Truck guns are 180 buck uppers.

The add ons rarely help accuracy. Other than replacing a barrel with a top line barrel. And thats what we did with our guns because we were after 10 shot 1.5 inch 300 yard groups and 5 shot groups 3 inches or so at 600. few factory AR will do that. I doubt a factory mini would.

Both are great guns though in their own ways. And if we are happy. Then we are happy.

I do recall a guy with a shilen tube on a mini and it was a pretty good gun. He never beat my M14 or AR but...

My first Mini was in '78, the year the stainless ones came out & the upgrade from 1st gen was done.. Saw it, had to have it. Paid full retail for it, but even at that it was still half the money of a Colt AR. In my neck of the woods in the late 70's-early 80's the ones that owned AR's were well heeled or very dedicated to that type of weapon.

I never shot it well, even off the bench. Just figured I didn't get along with peeps or the rear peep wasn't compatible with a ramp front, & still sorta feel that way about the latter. I traded for a ranch when they came out so I could more easily scope one. Scoped, it didn't shoot much tighter than the iron sighted one. But I kept it around even after getting into AR's.

Then the first assault rifle ban list started coming out & the Mini wasn't on many of them. A very good reason to have one. Not just low profile in dimensions, but in the gun grabbers eyes as well. After fooling around with more AR's & the mini made it to most of the ban list I no longer see no reason to have one over an AR.

A complete flip flop, the Mini now double the price of a some decent AR's.

When I went to the original Urban Rifle course at Thunder Ranch in TX in 1993, I took two AR-15s. Neither broke.

AR-15 parts are prolific, as are add-ons. Not so much for the Mini.

Also, the Mini's downfall is the mags, cheap mags = bad performance, Ruger mags = good performance.

However, in the SHTF or EOTWAWKI, AR STANAG mags will be readily available, Mini mags, not so much.

I have an AR parts drawer with triples of anything I might ever need in this lifetime, and ARs are easy to build and repair with commonly available parts.

I'm all about having the thing that is most available when I need to resupply.

Every one of these threads somebody brings up Clints hatred of them. I'm not sure about there being issues at one time with parts breaking, but my family has had a few, and have not had a single parts break and I'm talking about thousands of rounds, through guns that are not treated particularly careful, rarely cleaned completely. They function.

Accuracy isn't good for long range. But for minute of coyote, they are plenty good. My young boys each laid out coyotes without drama, and as long as the shooting was over in a handful of rounds their hit ratio was good.

I still have two. One stainless folder that was my father's "trapping" rifle. Couldn't begin to guess the milage it's seen, and the one I got in high school that seems to shoot better than anything I've read about on the internet.

I do agree the magazines must be chosen carefully. Factory mags work well. I got some straight 20 round from CDNN that have been great, and I've heard Tapco has finally figured it out.

Ruger's insistence on keeping their proprietary scope mounting system is the deal breaker for me.

Had a Mini-14 back in 1979 and it was a 3" rifle at best - at best. I like the ergos and especially the left hand friendly safety and would be willing to try one of the newer ones, but you're stuck with Ruger style rings or you mount an aftermarket rail on top of their sight bases and then you add rings on top of that which pretty much destroys a good cheek weld.

If you want a low mounted red dot your choices are basically a Burris Fastfire or Vortex since Burris is the only company who makes a mount to fit into the Ruger scalloped bases. If you want a carbine style dot or a prism sight with some useful reticles you're back to mounting an aftermarket pic rail and putting the sight way up above the comb.

All they'd have to do is change those scallops to two short 1913 rails and they'd be good to go.

The 580-Series Mini-14 is a fine Carbine... with a little work.



Shoots ~ 2 MOA from field positions w/ aperture sights and ball ammo.

No complaints.




GR

Kinda sexy. Both front & rear sight replacements?


I touched on it, but the Mini's profile is nice.

Front is OEM 580-Series, the rear is adjustable Tech-Sights.

The butt (LOP) has been shortened 1" and squared, and the pad reprofiled to match.

The mags are 10-round Ruger OEM, and the upper ventilated handguard is from Choate.

1-1/4" web sling and QD swivels finishes it.




GR

cheap modification is by the gas block inserts slow that bolt down from slamming back and forward quite so hard can help a lot of things..

This one in 6x45 shoots purty darn good. Sub MOA with many loads. From Accuracy Rifle Systems.

Cost? What brand and twist barrel?

Wiegand makes a pic rail that mounts into the factory scope slots, uses set screws. use any pic rail rings
Blue and silver.

So, buy a mini and spend $1000 to make it shoot like an out of the box AR?

I see this stated SOOOOOO often..... and it drives me crazy. People do not understand gun design.

All ya gotta do is completely redesign the Mini-14 to take AR magazines, it would be so simple!... then why doesn't someone do it? They could make millions!

it's even worse than "they shoulda made it take Schlock mags!"

Not sure on the brand. It’s whatever Accuracy System uses. It’s a 1/9 twist.

I have a 584 Series Mini14, wooden stock, 100% factory, couldn't ask for a better 200-300yd rifle for pests. I have 6-7 AR15/10's, but the Mini is still a favorite.

Umm since they are gun designers it would have been simple had they known about AR popularity at the time. Bill hoped the AR would die and his mini would live. We got lucky that Bill and the mini lost