Dirtiest 22 in the west

[000Buck]

What is the longest you have gone without cleaning your 22LR? I have a Model 60 I have 3500 rds through without cleaning. I just keep adding CLP to it once a brick and it keeps on going. I am going to see if it will run indefinitely like this. I have a feeling it is blowing most of the crud out as it is being fired due to all of the CLP.

 

[waterhouse]

I put about 1,650 through a Buckmark rifle over the course of a weekend once without cleaning. It never stopped running, but I cleaned it at the end of the weekend because, well, it was dirty.

I have read that the fact the it is open on both side of the action when ejecting helps keep it clean. The Rugers that were there started having issues after about 1.5 bricks, but seemed to run better after a good scrubbing.

 

[tkendrick]

You clean your .22?!?!?!?

 

[TimboKhan]

I have a 10/22 that probably has 50,000+ rounds out of it in the 20 or so years I have owned it, and I personally have never cleaned it. Still shoots like a champ. For the most part, I just don't bother with my .22's.

 

[rgs1975]

I just cleaned a .22 rifle a couple weeks ago that probably hadn't been cleaned since the 1960's.

 

[mainmech48]

The longest I've ever held off was about 700 rds. The rifle was a Rossi M62 and the reason was that it was the amount my two young nephews put through it in a long day at the club range.

The cleanup was mostly Q-Tips and solvent on the action and a wet swab down the bore followed by a couple of dry patches and a single pass with a WD-40 wet one.

Early training and habit. My Dad made us clean after every use, as did the DI.

Let us know how the experiment with the Marlin 60 works out. I'm curious as to what will give out first.

 

[41magsnub]

The nastiest I have seen was my dad's winchester model 270 that he bought in the 60's and only ever swabbed the barrel every 10 years or so and just dumped some oil in it. What finally drove me to take it from him and clean it for him last year was the action froze from all the grit. I was scraping out hardened goop with a screw driver for hours.

 

[Jubjub]

I have about 3500 rounds total through two 10/22's so far this year, mostly CCI Blazer, without cleaning. One malfunction so far, a stovepipe. My MKII has been cleaned once in the last 20 years; no real idea of the round count.

 

[Markbo]

I scrub every one of my .22's to spotless after leaving the range. if it is just a few rounds shot at the lease or something like that I don't touch them. They are all always treated with rust protection.

"A clean rifle is a happy rifle!"

 

[Andrewsky]

I like to take my 10/22 apart and degrease it after every range session. I also put as much lube as I can inside the action. If I don't, it won't feed the bulk ammo I get at Wal Mart for $10/550 very well. After the first shot a huge puff of smoke from the burning oil pops out between the receiver and the stock.

 

[Markbo]

Andrew... get some dry lube. Several different brands, available at Home Depot, Lowes, etc. it takes a veeeeery light coating of dry lube to smooth the 10/22. When you use oil too liberally, it actually affects the bolt movement negatively. FWIW I also don't lube my trigger components at all.

 

[rantingredneck]

I have a Marlin Model 60 that I've owned since Christmas of 1983. I was 9 years old at the time.

I detail stripped and cleaned it for the first time when I was in college (1993 or thereabouts).

I detail stripped and cleaned it for the second time about 2 mos ago. The only reason I detail stripped it this last time was that it was having weird failure to cock issues. It would extract the empty round but would not cock the firing pin for the next shot.

Stripped it and found a recoil buffer in 4 pieces. 8.95 from Brownells and about 25 mins of cussing got it back together and running like a top.

I'll clean it again when my daughter goes to college .

BTW, the model 60 has a plastic recoil buffer that is sensitive to some chemicals. I expect chemical sprays into the action is one reason I had to replace mine.

 

[Rugerlvr]

I believe my Ruger 10/22 went uncleaned from it's manufacture date in 1980 until I bought it in 1996.

the chamber was absolutely rotten with sludge. I had to detail strip it, and soak everything in Hoppes #9 and scrub to get it all off.

Of course I only paid $60 for it, so that was a steal.

 

[DEDON45]

A Marlin Model 60 I gave my younger brother for Christmas a few years ago went for approximately 2500 rounds or so, with NO cleaning or oil (he never tore it down and cleaned it), until it would no longer fire. I took it apart, detail stripped the trigger / hammer group, and scrubbed about a pound (it sure seemed like that much) of shaved lead, bullet lube, powser residue, etc. out of the action, and cleaned the barrel. It went back to working just fine after that (and I showed him how to clean it so it wouldn't get that bad again).

 

[TimboKhan]

the chamber was absolutely rotten with sludge.

I was scraping out hardened goop

Neither has been a problem for me, as I run my guns pretty close to dry.

I think I am starting to develop the reputation as the guy that doesn't clean his guns given this and a couple of other recent threads, which I would point out isn't true. I just happen to never clean my .22's in terms of anything down the barrel or the chamber, and I have yet to have any problems related to that. For that matter, if you look in the barrels and chambers of my .22's, they don't even look particularly dirty, certainly not so dirty that you could tell that many thousands of rounds have been fired down all of them over the years. I guess living in a dry climate and using little, if any oil over the years (actually none in the last 5 years or so) has it's advantages.

 

[pgeleven]

i clean mine quarterly even if i dont shoot them

 

[Markbo]

I guess living in a dry climate and using little, if any oil over the years (actually none in the last 5 years or so) has it's advantages.

Indeed it does! Those of us that live in subtropical rain forests have these things we have to worry about daily... humidity and rust.

Besides... excluding all the inner workings and talking just about the tube, the wax and lubes of the bullets actually provide some decent measure of protection.

 

[uk roe hunter]

i have a brno model 2 semi auto .22, i tried to oil it once. it hated it and soon stopped working. I cleaned it in petrol and then isopropyl alcohol it was dry as a bone. it works far better dry. It has a moderator on and i think that they make them dirtier. but it is a nice little thing, a bit dirty....but i don't mind that. (somethings are nice a bit dirtier)

 

[waterhouse]

Neither has been a problem for me, as I run my guns pretty close to dry.

I wonder if this was the problem with the 10/22s I saw. There were 2 of them, and both had a horrible gunk/sludge build up that was obviously affecting function after about 700 rounds. The owners stripped them down and cleaned them and they rand fine for the next 700-800 rounds. Then we ran out of ammo.

I thought it might just be the design, since both of them started choking around the same point, but perhaps it was that they were too wet.

 

[Markbo]

Not after 700 or 800 rounds they weren't! They had too much gunk in the action around the bolt. The 10/22 is a fabulous little design, but it must be clean to work properly. The bore may never have to be swabbed, but the action must be clean.

For one that dirty I suggest taking it out of the stock (it's only one screw), push the two pins out for the trigger group, the hose down the interior of the receiver and around the bolt with brakekleen. The solvent will remove everything and the pressure will blow it out.

Then apply a LIGHT coating of a dry lube and put it back together. You can do the whole thing in 2 to 3 minutes. The dry lube doesn't hold onto the gunk nearly as much as any wet lube/oil so it takes longer to gunk back up.

 

[TimboKhan]

The 10/22 is a fabulous little design, but it must be clean to work properly. The bore may never have to be swabbed, but the action must be clean.

I can only respond that my 10/22 is going on 20 years without cleaning and still works like a champ. I also have a couple of other .22 rifles, one of which I know hasn't been cleaned by me in over 20 years, if ever, in it's 90 year lifespan, and another that I know just hasn't been cleaned by me in the couple of years I have owned it. My target 10/22 does get cleaned on occasion because the tolerances are pretty tight, and I start getting extraction problems if I don't keep it relatively clean, but even then it's not particularly frequent.

Again, Colorado is a fairly dry climate, and I live closer to the plains than the mountains, which helps things. I know it freaks people out when I say I run my guns dry, but with the exception of a teeny-tiny coat of graphite grease (I literally don't use oil on any of my guns anymore) on my pistol slides, my guns are dry. I suppose on my centerfires there is a tiny amount of residual oil from normal cleaning, but thats about it.

The only thing I have ever cleaned on my current MkII is the magazine, which I don't really count as "the gun", part of the reason that I personally can't buy into the argument that they are hard to take down. First, they aren't if you follow the directions and second, if you never have to take it down whats the difference?

 

[351 WINCHESTER]

Nylon 66 cleaned twice in 30 years. The inside of the receiver was pretty bad, but the rifle still functioned just fine. Most .22's require more matintaince than a nylon (just the nature of the beast).

 

[CajunBass]

I try to clean mine every February 29th.

If I forget I just wait until the next February 29th.

 

[MilsurpShooter]

750 through a Savage model 7, got it as a hand me down and it was dirty when I got it, so don't want to imagine how many's been through.

About 1,500 through my scoped Henry Lever action, no issues with either

 

[eliphalet]

The Marlin 60 I had woud begin to jam now an then after 2500 or so and I would take it apart and clean it. Would shoot like a new one again for another 2500 or so.