Where is it!!!  Here it is!!!

I got a great deal from my local gun runner on a new SU-22CA. He's probably the largest seller on GunBroker, and his business is .6 miles from my house. I bought my SU-16C from him about a year ago, and then I got to know him because he's in my local Ron Paul group. Membership has its privileges! He ordered me an SU-22 but it wasn't available until after the KTOG National. He's had it for a few days, but we've both been busy. I finally dropped by tonight and picked it up. It's very cool.

Here is the SU-22CA, fresh out of the box.


I didn't waste any time converting it to an SU-22C...


...because it can fold more conveniently...


...and then I added a big 4.5-14X50 Sightron scope...


...but I may like the EOTech better.


Decisions, decisions.

I'm going to read the user manual tonight and clean it, then probably take it out shooting tomorrow. I'll file a range report in this thread.

So far, the SU-22 has a solid, quality feel. I suspected it would, given the large number of parts that are common with the SU-16.

Serial number V008x.

Am I the first KTOGger to get an SU-22?

 

You really needed a much stronger warning on that link. That's the ugliest shotgun I've ever seen, and maybe the ugliest gun, period. It's even ugly by Beckley WV standards. It's as ugly as homemade sin. I'd eaten recently, and it was hard to keep my dinner down as I scrolled through the pictures.

You still got a good deal and you can probably win the award for Most Improved Project Gun. I'd throw all the furniture away. I'd actually wrap them in paper and tape and seal it in a box so the garbage man didn't accidentally see it and think I was responsible. I'd buy some Knoxx furniture for it, including the recoil reducing stock. I'd probably add a magazine tube extension. I'd bead blast the finish off the metal, wipe the dust and any residual oil off with alcohol and then spray it with matte black Ceramacoat. You'd double the cost, but you'd have a very nice shotgun for a bargain price. I'm really getting the urge to buy a good but ugly 12 gauge pump shotgun cheap in a F2F cash sale and fix it up, much as I described above, and hide it away where I can find it but nobody else can.

You know, for later... for the zombies.

 

Thanks for the info and the link, ktwm. Good stuff! I have a milling machine in my basement, and I'll probably chop a mag soon, but for now inserting and removing the mag with the SU-22 folded is probably good enough.



I'd like to have a short double stack high capacity magazine. I understand the technical limitations and I have a decent idea of the difficulty of pulling off a double stack .22 LR magazine. Maybe I'll do that after I cure cancer and create everlasting peace in the Middle East.

Hopefully, BDM will respond to the consumer demand for shorter single stack magazines. The SU-22 and PLR-22 demand isn't much yet, but with the high cost of .223 ammo there are AR-15 guys who will be increasingly using .22LR conversions for training, and a lot of them want to shoot off a bench.

 

I STILL haven't taken the SU-22 shooting yet, but I did finally spend some quality time with her today, disassembling, cleaning, and learning the differences between the SU-22 and the SU-16. There are some significant differences, but I'm even more impressed with the high quality of the parts and the design. The SU platform is excellent, and lends itself very well to a neat folding .22. How could anyone not like that?

I'm desperately wanting to take this fun little gun out shooting.

Some of the parts seemed a bit tight when I started disassembling, and while that made the initial disassembly a bit fiddly, I don't want a gun with a bunch of parts that are undersized to make sure they all fit regardless of sloppy tolerances. The SU-22 has a precision feel to it, like a modern firearm should.

I really want to take the SU-22 to the range and put some rounds downrange.

The first trip, I'm going to run a bunch of Federal bulk ammo through there and then try some of the Remington Golden Bullets to see that they really do jam as reported.

The next trip I hope to start my .22 tests, where I evaluate about 60 different types of .22 ammo, measuring muzzle velocity and standard deviation and extreme spread, and accuracy, and reliability to a very abbreviated extent. I'll do this for several different .22 firearms. The goal is a big chart that's sorted by cost, by accuracy, and by kinetic energy, so people can determine at a glance which ammo is likely to work in their similar gun.

Then, I'd like to pick a consistent ammo or two and test the SU-22 to see if it's more accurate stock, off a sandbag, with as much of the barrel unsupported as possible (I like to grip it on the receiver just in front of the mag well), or if it's more accurate with the compact forend removed and a custom bi-pod attached to the Compact Forend Barrel Nut.

I think I'm going to like the reduced heating when shooting .22LR instead of .223.

Did I mention that I REALLY want to take this neat little .22 to the range and put 1000 rounds through it?

All the moving parts seem to cycle a lot more smoothly after cleaning and lubricating, and probably the parts polished themselves a bit with my manually cycling them, even though from the cleaning it appears that my rifle may have been tested thoroughly at the factory. The bore was mostly clean and looks gorgeous after simply wiping it out with a little RemOil, but the parts in the Recoil Spring Tube seemed to have a fair amount of gunk on them. It looked like some lubricant, but also a fair amount of crud? Cleaned up easily, though. Maintenance is obviously a lot easier on the .22 version because it's simply a recoil spring and there isn't any hot combustion gas in this area unless maybe it sneaks in from the blowback operation on the chamber end. Overall, the maintenance on the SU-22 seems easy and there isn't much required. It's simple and quick, as a .22 should be. I think I may enjoy the heck out of the SU-22. It may have been the .22 rifle I had been wanting. Aesthetically, it's about as close to an evil black gun as a little .22 can be.

The more I play with it, the more I want a PLR-22 as well! I bet that only gets worse after I shoot the SU-22... soon!

 

3wb,

Seems like you've been working lots and shooting little of late.

They let you bring those subbies with you and shoot at floating targets bobbing up and down out in the water?

I'm going shooting... right now!

Range trip pictures later tonight.

PS - I'm also going shooting all day Saturday. Eat your heart out. Might even get inspired and post a SUB-2000 Braggin Rights target... maybe.

 

My local range is nothing fancy. A guy I know bought it as a place to shoot close to town. It's just across the county line, and it's the closest place I can shoot, 14.5 miles away.




The SU-22C folds nicely and fits in my monster range bag with only the barrel sticking out the side.





There's no way I'd be able to shoot up that much ammo before dark!



First I shot with the EOTech sight.



Then I shot with the open sights, which were surprisingly accurate after I just lined up the rear sight peep hole with the mold line on the top of the receiver.

Then I shot with a Sightron 4.5-14X50 scope. It was like I was cheating. It was starting to get darker by that time but the large scope at the lower power was very bright and clear. At 14X, the pop bottles looked like milk jugs!



I shot a total of 200 rounds of Federal bulk pack ammo, the cheapest stuff sold at Mal*Wart. I had two problems. The first was a misfire. I ejected it and it had a strong primer strike. I loaded it back in the magazine, fed it in again, verified that the bolt was all the way forward and the nicked rim wasn't keeping the round from chambering all the way. I tried again, with another misfire. I tried two more times, making sure to rotate it so it hit another part of the rim. No luck. I think there was just no primer in that round. Can't blame that on the SU-22.



I had already looked at the primer strike on the first brass out the ejection port (a reloading habit) and the SU-22 makes a very prominent and positive hit.

I did have one jam caused by an unejected case. Not too bad in 200 rounds. I'd call that 99.5% reliability out of the box.

Then I tried the Remington Golden Bullets, also Mal*Wart bulk pack cheap stuff. As ktwm said, the SU-22 does not like the cheap Remington Golden Bullets. In a magazine with 25 rounds, I had eight jams and misfeeds leading to Fail To Fire.



I ejected the round. Oooh! Dat's not right!



PROS:

Almost everything! How fun was it?



Way too fun! I love that little rifle! This Saturday, I'm probably going to do a repeat of Bob and the GSG-5, and run 750 rounds an hour through it for an entire day.

CONS:

The darn magazines don't load themselves. That's a real hassle. Someone should do something about that. If there was an SU-22 that loaded its own magazines, it'd be like the Flying Spaghetti Monster heaven, with a beer volcano and a stripper factory.



Anyone know of a good mag loader for these BDM magazines? I'd like to find a Lula for it. Those are great mag loaders. They've spoiled me.

I didn't really evaluate the accuracy. It seemed plenty accurate, at least for the cheap ammo I was shooting. I chewed up a lot of plastic pop bottles. I'll get serious seeing how accurate it can be later with a lot of different types of ammo.

It was neat as it became darker at night. A fair amount of sparks shoot out the ejection port. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that.

 

Wow! $120!

I was immediately impressed with the need for a magazine loader. I wanted to find one similar to the various LULA loaders I have. I briefly entertained the idea of a loader that had a bin for loose ammo, but didn't think anyone actually made one. Great idea!

I'd go $30 on a LULA style loader or maybe $45 on the upcoming plastic version of the BDM loader that allows me to dump the loose ammo into a bin. At $120, my thumb will just need to stay sore, I guess. I think it's odd that BDM is selling what is essentially their aluminum proof-of-concept mag loader prototype, in advance of their upcoming magazine loader made much less expensively from injected molded plastic.

The only real disappointment from my range trip last night was not being able to find the Leupold Zero Point bore sighting tool that allows me to quickly adjust windage and elevation on a newly mounted scope without firing a shot. I remember having it at the KTOG National at Knob Creek last month, and I remember seeing it and picking it up to put it away. It isn't where it should be. I guess I'll go post my usual "which one of you <expletive deleted> stole my..." posts in the KTOG National thread, which will be followed up soon with my "sorry, never mind, I found it" post. I hope I find it. If not, I'll be shelling out another $70. That is an indispensable tool as far as I'm concerned.

On the plus side, when I was looking for my scope alignment tool, I finally found the SUB-2000 stock extension that I've looked for about seven times in the last few months. It was in the wrong pocket of the huge range bag. :-/