Mini 14 Maintenance Secrets

I'm shot TV this is Chris and today I was going to tell you about how to clean and maintain your mini-14 I've got another mini-14 review video as I said in that video miami 14 runs great there are quite a few people though that had questions about maintenance and and what I do to mine and something had issues with jamming or issues with theirs now there's something wrong with the gun I'm not going to be able to fix that over the Internet but I can show you how I maintain mine and what I use and if that's different than what you're doing maybe give this a shot and see obviously read the manual and do that but I think there's a couple things I might do a little different than how the manual tell you so without further ado let's start taking it apart and I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about first step in this case for mine is this sling is not like a quick pretentiously so I take the sling off the front half of the gun so I'm going to be able to take the stock off so now the sling is only attached to the buttstock the first step in disassembling the gun is make sure the camera Scott you can put it on safe with it on safe you can put a tool in the back of the trigger housing here and you're just going to kind of gently bend the trigger housing until it snaps for now the trigger pack is out now the stock itself should pretty much just lift off the gun okay then we have the stock off and we just have the action itself at this point you can snap off the handguard just held on with a little spring clip and this is a 580 series mini now there are older ones that are a little bit different in that case you're going to have to look at a different video or find something else got one of those I am NOT going to buy another mini just to make a video on how to take the older-style apart but it's pretty similar so now you have your gun this far apart grab the spring here and let it pull out right there now you can post then that holds the spring in place is going to fall out as well the cup that hold it now the gun is pretty far disassembled now you can pull backwards on the operating rod and it will get a magical point where to lever up on them now that is out now the only thing you have left is the bolt to get the bolt out you're going to want to pop this cover you can use pretty much whatever - one I tend to just use a flat blade screwdriver and just give it a nice sharp tap and that comes out there is a spring that comes out as well but I make sure you don't lose that and then there is the mechanism that holds the bolt open now the bolt itself can be pulled out of the gun you just cut to it you gotta kind of wiggle it around a little bit and I'll just come right out so now the gun is completely disassembled from there you don't want to clean it a couple different ways I find that when it's hot I'll pull a bore snake through and keep the barrel pretty clean now over time we'll need to probably do a little bit more scrubbing in the barrel but by-and-large of borisenko keep most of the barrel Queen I also clean the chamber this is important for shooting brass case or dirty ammo or stuff like that now I kind of made a tool it's it's the standard AR chamber brush put a nice bend in it so I can operate it by hand put it in there do a little twist in and that does a pretty good job get many the crud out of the chamber so I use that now at that point your barrel and chamber are pretty clean that's no different than pretty much any other gun now you do have the gas port now the gas port is what cycles the gas to make the op rod move now to get in there you can take this apart but I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you need to pretty much if you want just put a little bit of solvent on there take a air chuck like this one put it on here and blow this all and back on the barrel then clean it out of the barrel that way like I said you can take this apart but the screws are staked and you probably want a torque wrench to put them back at the same torque level on both sides and you know even Ruger recommends you not take that apart so unless you need to I would just you know just wipe it down and then put a little bit of solvent in there and blow it back through the barrel and then clean the barrel again its easiest way to get to it so at this point this this part is clean I tend to use whenever I work on guns with sliding action versus rotating I use grease instead of oil so if it rotates oil it if it slides grease it now this is a variant to the m1 garand rotating bolt action essentially and that was a gun that used grease I think the owners manual mainly says to use oil I think that the oil is kind of a mistake especially on you know a gun it's new and super tight grease really helps it run a lot smoother so what I'll do is I'll put a touch of grease on the barrel where I can see where now on this barrel part this is where all the carbon and everything goes if you don't want to use grease here you don't have to when I would kind of recommend going easy on the grease if you do there's also a section in the stock here where that rod runs and that op rod when it runs in the stock here all that following everything goes here so especially for this I use a dry lube this is hops dry lube I think it's so Conor lithium it's something but it makes it so the following just kind of stays loose in here if you use grease in this channel you're going to end up with sludge of following in grease so maybe do a little bit of dry lube here too I've used grease here it's not terrible on the barrel the stock channel is definitely worth using the dry lube on so at this point you're going to want to get in to where the op rod runs all these areas I use a Mali lithium grease this is an automotive grease it's a lithium based bearing grease with Maui added to it so it's super smooth I use this on all my leather action lever actions and all my you know rotating bolt style actions steel semi-auto pistols like a 1911 I'll use the tiny bit of grease on the rails the important thing is is don't over grease it don't put a giant wad of grease what I'll usually do is get a little bit of grease on a q-tip and just kind of put it in all these channels everywhere where I can see where it's shiny because the parts rub together internally I'll grease this top section a little bit put just a little bit of grease in there just so it's got something to keep it lubricated now you're going to want to do the same thing with this bolt the sections of the bolt that are shiny and get where you're going to put a little bit of grease on there and I'm not saying slop a bunch on I'm just saying a tiny bit of grease and then wipe it off with your finger so there's a little bit left as you can see this is a previous cleaning and I've shot it since and there's still a nice layer of grease on everything not a ton but just enough that it still got pretty good lubricating properties and you know there's no giant globs agree stuck anywhere so once you've greased your bolt and your receiver here you got to put the bolt back in them and there's a little notch in the receiver for the firing pin so you got to kind of line that up and it'll take a little bit of wiggling around and jiggling to get it to fit exactly right and I'll just kind of fall into place here so now back in the turn the gun around here you can see the insides of the bolt hold-open as you can see there's an open spot here you've got your bolt hold-open lever and you've got the external button or pin that controls that level lever so you'll kind of just put that in place a little difficult to do looking the wrong direction but you'll put that in place you can't get it 100% in until you get this pin down but once you take a little look you'll figure out exactly how it's got to run and it should be pretty free and you should be able to push the button and see the bolt hold-open move up and down you know you got it in place and at that point you just shove this little panel access door I put a little bit of grease on this mechanism - it's not going to hurt anything it's pretty well sealed and you're just going to shove this part back up so now you've got that done test make sure that holds true so your next step is to put the opera hide back in now like I said this is going to get dirty you can see there's some carbon following and stuff here I'd use dry lube on this part of it this part you will want to use a little bit of grease because that's not going to get fouled out and that's where the bolt runs so you know just put a little bit of grease on there now the putting this back together is a little bit tricky when we turn this around so you can kind of see there's a notch on the receiver right here where this op rod can pivot up higher and fall out of place so you've got to kind of get the bolt in the off rod is one and look for this proper spot and you're going to need to bend the whole op rod down to kind of get it into place here and then all the sudden we'll just kind of snap into place so now that's all back as one unit so at this point you still have to put this little cup that goes in here back into the gun another the flat spot that I always line up with the barrel side and then there is a pin that holds that in place so you've got your pin here that goes through and just holds that now this is going to be all loose this this this part here because the spring itself is going to hold that under tension so you're going to kind of put this spring back in now the guide rod here has got a flat on it I line that up facing towards the barrel like so put the flat towards the barrel and I put that on the flat side of that circular cup and snaps in like that as you can see it's all held in place by spring Center it's not going anywhere if you excuse me if you want to put in a little bit of oil or something on that spring because it rides in there I wouldn't grease that part it's just gonna it's just going to get all cruddud up so now we're we're back this fire together now you can put your stock back on to the gun and that's just going to slide him like so I like to leave the handguard off until the stocks back on because it's easier to put the handguard back on with the stock in place at this point you've got your trigger pack now the trigger pack I like to put a little bit of grease on the trigger pack too because this all rides on the bolt when the bolt comes back and recog the trigger now you don't want a ton of grease on here and you want to clean it like you normally would and then put a little bit of grease on it just so it runs smooth if you put a ton of grease on is just going to get fouled out with grease but I find a little bit of grease on here does wonders to keep everything operating smoothly now to put this back in place you're going to have to figure out exactly where it goes which is a little bit tricky but once you line up the back edge of this with the front edge of the arbor and the sack or whatever it bolts into here that's pretty much all you have to do and it'll drop into place and now to put it back you got two options you can either push really hard on the trigger guard or I find it's easier just to use the same screwdriver used before Bend the trigger guard a tiny bit when pushing down so now everything's back together on that end you can take your handguard and stamp it back in place and now you should have everything greased cleaned up like I said grease on pretty much all the action very light just put a little on with q-tip or whatever your finger then try and rub it off with you know another finger just so there's not a glob there but just enough to have a nice smooth grease surface and then put a little bit of dry lubricant of some sort in the stock channel because that will get fouled out so now I think that the gun should be pretty well able to run so now your mini should pretty well be cleaned out the only other issue you might have is you might have a mag that is dirty or is a little sticky or something like that I found dry lube works wonders on mags as well to take a mini and most the aftermarket mags apart there's a little hole in the bottom of the magazine that holds the baseplate on and to get that out you're going to want to either use a punch or pin or something to kind of pry that mag up while pushing it's a little bit difficult okay so kind of bent and pried so that little detent is clear and now I can push the baseplate gently we have to do it with a tool so now the baseplate will pull out and now you can with the mag barrel and the follower so now I've got your mag here just the mag body and I find if it's dirty I'll go in and you know clean it out with you know cloth covered in solvent wrapped around a screwdriver or something get up in body and get all those pieces of crud and everything out of there and then after it's all cleaned out I'll do the same thing with dry lube I'll just spray a little bit in there and like I said with the dry lube it doesn't really attract any dirt or anything but it does provide a nice lubricant a fat cop so then you have to put the mag back together which on a Ruger there's a little holder for the spring there the spring snaps into and just slide it back together here just read the note okay so now the mag is back together I find that devious to just kind of feed the spring down so it's sitting under the whips that hold the base plate on and then take a base plate kind of shove it in on top of the spring here not always the easiest process once you get the base plate start it gets a little bit easier you're just going to kind of shove it while pushing down on the spring to make sure that doesn't hang up and you may need to tap it with something to get it started is a little stiff and then it will pop back in place so now you have a mag that's all cleaned out and should have some dry lubricant in there keep it running smooth but to make sure it's not going to gather more dirt and more crud that's going to keep it from running so now your rifle should be all back together and make sure you guys better everything should be working smooth the bolt hold-open should work fine you know try the try the trigger make sure the safety still works and it doesn't go off but now you put it back together like I said you pretty much didn't need a whole lot of tools it helps to have a nail or something like that to work on a couple things screwdriver to get the trigger guard open some dry lube like I said for the stock Channel and for the mags and some moly lube to grease the action bolt op rod yem it interfaces with the bolt at least and make sure everything runs smooth like I said with with rotating bolt designs grease is a much better lubricant it stays put it you know it'll stay where it needs to be and it provides a lot better lubricity than an oil which is a lot thinner the only issue you might have with using with using grease in your mini-14 is in really cold temperatures you may have issues or in super dusty environments or sandy environments I could see the grease possibly causing sand to stick or dust stick and bind up the action now I wouldn't see a huge issue you'll just have to clean the gun more often I still think they run best with grease so you've got a mini 14 it runs a little raw four you have issues try using some dry lube in the front there try using some grease in the action use some dry Lube in your mags and check out see I mean if it doesn't work we may comment let me know if you've got other tips or ideas like I said leave a comment that would be great but for going to shout TV this is Chris saying thanks for watching have a great day

Channel: Gun&ShotTV

Views: 265,860

Keywords: Ruger Mini-14, Shooting Sport (Sport), .223, .223rem, 5.56, 5.56x45, raNGE, Firearm (Sports Equipment), firearms, Cooper, Jack, diy

Id: Be_KbtvZnpc

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2015