As the old sage wrote, "The only interesting rifle is an accurate rifle". Even if you get it to function acceptably well for playing, it will never deliver acceptable accuracy for serious purposes.
I talked with Ruger engineers at the SHOT Show in February and asked what they did to improve the Mini-14 accuracy as so stated in their 2008 catalog. They provided a weak story about adding some kind of dampener to the muzzle which supposedly cut group sizes in half. Loosely translated, that means that the typical old 6-8 inch groups at 100 yards can be expected to be as small as 3-4 inches (about twice as large as their competitors). Over three decades and they still haven't fixed a basically poor design
If you are willing to live with a rifle that performs so poorly, go ahead and waste more time and money on Ruger's Mini-14.
If you compare the old and new designs side by side you'd see that they are noticeably different.