The author found the new and improved Mini-14 to be a great sporting rifle and all-around field gun.

Many gunsmiths have corrected the problem by removing the gas block, which can be deceivingly tricky, and carefully and evenly removing a small amount of metal from its face, thus creating a more even match with the slide block. The gas-block faces can also be honed to provide a more even match between the surfaces of the upper and lower pieces, causing a more homogeneous amount of pressure on the barrel.

Another possible flyer-causing culprit in the manufacture of the Mini-14 is the method used to fix the front sight to the rifle. The sight was previously machine-pressed into the barrel, a process that can actually bend the barrel slightly. Such problems were typically noticed by the factory prior to final shipment and fixed. The ones that weren't caught, however, might now be causing their owners accuracy headaches.

The distinguished popularity of the Mini-14 has continued to excel, and the bosses at Sturm, Ruger and Company have wished to honor its status by producing the highest-quality firearm possible at a reasonable price. Chatter about the accuracy issues of the Mini-14 has never gone unnoticed by the company, and the engineers have worked long and hard to alleviate the issues. It appears they may have reached that happy medium between accuracy, reliability, handiness and cost effectiveness in their new and improved Mini-14. Some are referring to the new rifle as the "580," referring to the three-digit-series number that appears ahead of the serial number.

The company recently shipped a Mini-14 580 series Ranch Rifle to put through the wringer at my southern New Mexico digs. The gun is a standard Ranch Rifle, Mini-14/5, blued finish with the hardwood stock. It is outfitted with what Ruger refers to as a simple, rugged Garand-style breechbolt locking system, with a fixed-piston gas system and self-cleaning, moving gas cylinder and an improved receiver with rounded contours.

Four shots with Hornady's 75-grain BTHP grouped just under an inch at 115 yards--outstanding accuracy for a factory Mini-14. A flyer extended the five-shot group to 17?8 inches. New tooling and CNC manufacturing processes are the reasons for the carbine's improved accuracy.

The rifle features the new protected front sight and a ghost-ring aperture rear sight. The open sight configuration is designed to take a pounding and keep the shooter on target.

Ruger's Roy Melcher, one of the original designers of the Mini-14, says that the new Mini is "a mature product that has been reborn." The company actually shut down production of the Mini-14 for a redesign period sometime back. The rifle's tolerances were tightened from both the manufacturing and casting side. In many areas it was retooled for more modern production and to hold these tolerances.

According to Roy, in building the receiver the old manufacturing process required the movement of the part from one machine to another and from one holding fixture to another for each machining operation. This resulted in the part being made within acceptable dimensional tolerances but with produced tolerance accumulations that were close to the edge of suitability.

With the new tooling and new CNC processes, multiple fixtures are mounted to a machine pallet. Each fixture holds a part with such aptitude that multiple machining operations can be performed without removing the part from the fixture, thus greatly reducing tolerance accumulations and providing more consistency in the parts. The speed in the manufacturing process is also greatly increased. This basic procedure has been followed for all the major component parts in the Mini-14, with the end result being tighter tolerances and more uniformity part to part and finished-gun to gun.

My test rifle didn't appear to be different than any other Mini-14 I'd ever handled, at least on the outside. I figured the obvious trial would be at the range. I gathered up a good variety of factory ammunition for the job and put aside several afternoons to see just what I could squeeze out of the new Mini. To assist in checking the accuracy of the rifle, I mounted a small Leupold two-power scope. The Leupold had previously been fitted to a Ruger scout rifle and had proven to be an excellent little scope.