Ruger's Customer Service - My Recent Experience

[dleong]

There's more going on there than a good camera; your use of lighting really compliments the gun and makes interesting compositions.
Very Nice

Thank you for the kind words. The lighting in the images above was provided by a kitchen window and "bounced" to fill the dark areas with an aluminium foil-lined laserdisc cover. A somewhat limiting arrangement, but it gets the job done on the cheap!

[dleong]

WOW! The polish on that frame is OUTSTANDING! I've never seen a factory Ruger with that high a polish...even the Vaqueros that are supposed to be highly polished stainless steel. VERY nice work!

If there's one minor gripe I have about Ruger's refinishing job, it's that the revolver now looks a little too shiny and no longer sports the original understated "brushed satin stainless" finish that I liked so much. And, as I'm finding out, it's also a fingerprint magnet.

Um, now that I looked at it more closely....where's the serial number? Isn't it supposed to be on the right side next to the Ruger emblem? Did they polish it off?

It's there...

[dleong]

Well, I guess I should have examined the GP100 a little closer after it came back from Ruger:





I was looking at some old pictures I took of the same gun back in 2009, and the galling wasn't present then. I can only surmise that the galling was caused by the barrel being unscrewed from and/or screwed back on to the frame during the refinishing process.

The galling has taken pretty significant chunks of metal from the surface; if Ruger were to grind the front face of the frame down enough to remove the galling, it would definitely affect the timing of the barrel, which would have to have its shoulder and forcing cone ground down to achieve the correct 12 o'clock barrel alignment and maintain a proper cylinder-barrel gap. While that can be done, it would seem like too much effort. It would almost make sense for Ruger to outright replace the gun which, honestly, is the outcome I'm hoping for.

I called Ruger early this morning and explained the situation to them. They issued an RMA no. and an overnight FedEx shipping label. The gun was dropped off at the local FedEx office about an hour ago. My fingers are crossed!

[Tronster]

I guess I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at in the first pic. If I didn't know it was stainless, I'd say it looks like peeling chrome. Did they take the barrel off and then gouge the frame when they put it back in? Is the barrel screwed in or press fit in?

The only Ruger I've ever sent back for repair (mini14) came back with some minor grinding marks on the replacement bolt assembly, but the gun wasn't a prized possession like your GP100.

[dleong]

I guess I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at in the first pic. If I didn't know it was stainless, I'd say it looks like peeling chrome. Did they take the barrel off and then gouge the frame when they put it back in? Is the barrel screwed in or press fit in?

The radial pattern of the galling/gouging clearly indicates it happened when the barrel was screwed on and/or off the frame during the refinishing process.

A tech from Ruger called me after they received the gun. He asserted they did not remove the barrel during the refinishing process, and that the galling therefore had to have been on the gun when I initially sent it in. They weren't willing to repair it as he claimed it would have required too much effort to grind the front of the frame down to remove the galling and then retime the barrel to maintain a proper c/b gap.

Fortunately, I had taken some "glamour" shots of the same revolver back in 2009 which clearly showed the absence of any galling. I e-mailed the images to him, and he called back within a few minutes, saying that he had consulted with a number of other techs and they all came to the conclusion that the frame had indeed been galled when the barrel was removed during the refinishing. He then apologized and offered to replace the GP100 with a new one. Needless to say, I accepted.

An optimum outcome, to say the least, but I can't help wondering what would have happened had I not taken the pictures of the gun in 2009.

[BigBlue]

It sucks that the first response is to deny responsibility when it is so reasonably attributed to what they did during refinishing. Too many companies use that tactic.

Hopefully you kept those beautiful grips when you sent it back to them. If you did, do you want to sell them?

BB

[dleong]

Hopefully you kept those beautiful grips when you sent it back to them. If you did, do you want to sell them?

BB

I had sent the revolver back to Ruger sans the grip, and am expecting the replacement to come either without a grip or with the functional but ugly Hogue Monogrip found on current retail GP100s. In either case, the "courtesy" Santoprene grip with the laser-etched panels will be going onto the replacement gun.

[dleong]

Picked up the replacement GP100 from the BPR yesterday, completely detail-stripped it and removed an ungodly amount of metal debris and casting flash from the innards (and cutting myself twice in the process), did the usual trigger job with shims and derated springs from the old GP100, polished the contact surfaces of the internal components, and put everything back together. Will be zeroing it with my standard magnum handloads at the range later today, when it warms up.

I already miss my old GP100. Wish I never tried polishing out that tiny scratch...