[yarddog]

Yes, it really is a shame that a rifle which looks, feels and handles so well could not seem to be made accurate.

Ruger must have tried to correct the accuracy problem. It must have been endemic to the design. I recall reading many years ago that the British eventually gave up on making the Jungle Carbine shoot well.

They finally decided it was just part of the design.

[JamesP81]

Yes, it really is a shame that a rifle which looks, feels and handles so well could not seem to be made accurate.

Ruger must have tried to correct the accuracy problem. It must have been endemic to the design. I recall reading many years ago that the British eventually gave up on making the Jungle Carbine shoot well.

They finally decided it was just part of the design.

I'm pretty certain it's part of the design. The Mini-14's operating mechanism is extremely similar to the M1 and M14. Neither of those rifles are nail drivers either in their rack grade configuration, but they're acceptable and with good ammo, pretty decent. Swapping out for high quality barrels and a good stock bedding makes them shoot pretty straight.

I suspect the Garand mechanism does not scale down well to 223 / 5.56. The inherent problem is the skinny barrel of the Mini flexes really bad right at the gas block. You'll notice most of the accuracy tuning procedures involve messing with the gas block, or attaching struts to it to try to stabilize the barrel a bit better in that area. The new Minis with the thicker barrel ahead of the gas block perform considerably better than the older ones, at a small weight penalty. They still aren't great shooters, but they are at least accurate enough now to legitimately be 'ranch rifles' as claimed.

At this point, you can get a good AR-15 cheaper than a Mini.