My Ruger 10/22 is my most used, most cherished, and most loved gun in my collection. It was my first gun; she joined the family for my twelfth birthday. While I would never disparage such a “mature” lady, she’s begun to feel her age. After fifteen or twenty thousand rounds, she’s a bit gritty, stiff, and hard to get moving. So I’ve decided the old girl needs a bit of work. As the Ruger I won’t be going crazy. No fancy stocks, bull barrels or high end optics for me. I’ll be starting with the small items and going from there. Starting with a Timney trigger . . .
Timney sells a drop in trigger group assembly that replaces all the guts except the receiver and bolt. It comes with six different trigger shoe colors and claims to be set at 2 and ¾ lbs from the factory. All yours for $179.95. TTAG’s Answer Man Nick Leghorn put me in touch with the proper people. The company shipped my new test assembly out within the week.
It arrived in bubble wrap with detailed instructions, a sticker and a very nice bit of scripture. Sadly, I did not get a sucker. If you’re a sucker for mechanical object d’arts, the Timney Trigger deserves pride of place on your coffee table. It’s clearly a ground up design, fine in both overall form and intimate details. Timney didn’t just remake a trigger housing and clean up some surfaces. Oh no. Not at all.
The Ruger stock 10/22 trigger assembly is on the left, the Timney on the right. The Timney trigger uses a different hammer spring and sear. Look closely on the stock trigger group and you’ll see a wear mark from the hammer slamming back after each shot is fired. Over time this has worn down the aluminum. No structural issues, but it still looks terrible and probably isn’t so great for the hammer. The Timney has a little nylon bumper bumper to keep that from happening. The rest of the trigger is built hell bent for stout, so I have no doubt that it will hold up under repeated firing.
As you can also see here, this group includes a much sleeker magazine release. If you’ve ever used the stock mag release on the 10/22, you know what an awkward, clunky, stupid mechanism it is. The Timney one looks to be much cleaner. Additionally, they have cleaned up the bolt catch mechanism. The number one thing that always trips new shooters up on the Ruger is this mechanism. You have to do an odd little dance with your hands to make it work. This really simplifies the process. You pull the bolt back, depress the lever and let the bolt go. When you want to chamber a round, pull the bolt back and let it go forward.
Installation took all of five minutes. If you’re comfortable removing the trigger group for cleaning, you are qualified to install the new group. One of the pins was very tight, but some gentle persuasion with the handle of a screwdriver fixed things. I think there may have been a bit of debris or powder coat around the hole that needed to come free.
At this point, I’ve tested that the trigger would actually drop in, dry fired for function, and then removed it. My plan is to take the gun to the range, shoot it to establish a baseline for performance, and then install the Timney. We’ll see if it makes an improvement. My initial dry firing makes me think that I’m going to be sending Timney some more of my hard earned money.