# Ruger Mark III Firing Pin Stop Pin



## SGWGunsmith (Jan 8, 2015)

Something that I came across a few years ago involves the Ruger Mark III pistol bolts, specifically which firing pin stop pin was used in these bolts. Here's what I found.



The firing pin stop pin on the left is the proper "solid" steel, longer pin, that you should have in your bolt. If your bolt has a firing pin stop pin in it like the "spring roll-pin" on the right, you need to remove that pin and install the solid steel pin. What can often happen with the spring roll pin is, the pin will collapse from the battering received by the hardened firing pin. This event will then allow the firing pin to move forward too far and then, during dry firing, put a chamber mouth ding in the back face of your barrel. Here's a couple of pictures to show what to look for.

SPRING ROLL PIN

If you have one of these in your bolt, replace it with the longer, solid steel pin. The longer, solid steel pin, is much better supported on each end as it sits flush with both sides of the bolt and is less likely to bend or collapse.

A chamber mouth ding is not easy to repair completely. The ding going into the chamber mouth can be rolled out of the chamber with a chamber "ironing tool", but the sides of the ding as rolled up onto the rear face of the breech is a bit harder to push back into place. A safe bet whenever dry firing ANY .22 rimfire firearm is to use some sort of snap-cap. I use these little gizmos when I decide to do any dry firing or to relax the striker spring rather than to leave the gun in the cocked condition.



These yellow wall anchors will take at least 10 hits from the firing pin after being rotated in the chamber,and they will feed from a Ruger Mark magazine. I get these at the ACE True Value Hardware store locally and a box of 100 runs around $5.00, so they make for cheap insurance to not get a chamber mouth ding.

Some young *"newbie"* on another forum got his wife to buy him a Ruger Mark III Hunter 6-7/8 version (she works, he doesn't) and rather than read his manual, he started right in with dry firing his new pistol. Unfortunately, he never checked to see what type of firing pin stop pin was in his new Ruger. Here's his firing pin stop pin. I think he goes by *"Steve"* these days



Now he has one of these:


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## berettatoter (Sep 1, 2011)

Lol. Wish you would have posted this about 6 years ago. This very thing happened to me, and costed me 133 dollars to have fixed. It had fallen out during a cleaning session.


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## SGWGunsmith (Jan 8, 2015)

Ouch! Nobody needs a lesson that expensive.


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