Ruger LCR report

I've had the LCR for a bit and I have a few observations:

1. The gun is tiny compared to the Taurus M85 I used to carry.  It fits in nearly every pocket I have so I seldom use a holster anymore.
2. I seem to have finally worked out how to hold it so as not to buck the shot like I used to.  Small guns, in particular, are sensitive to how you hold them, and the only way I know to work that out is to dryfire like crazy watching what the gun does, until you get to the point where pulling the trigger doesn't move the muzzle, and then practice that until it becomes a natural habit.
3. .327 is a phenomenal cartridge.  I'm thinking about picking up the SP101 in .327 as a bigger carry gun.  The recoil is about the same as .38 +P but is over a shorter period so bothers me less.
4. I got bigger grips for it.  The stock grips are way too small and have finger grooves.  Finger grooves force you to place your hand where the grooves are so mess up the ability to move your hand around to the right place for the combination of your hand and the gun.
5. It has developed a rattle.  I have no idea what is causing the rattle, but it works fine.  It is concerning me though.
6. While trying to chase down the rattle, I reassembled the gun improperly and damaged a $4 spring.  Finding the spring was easy; getting it took a week, ordering online.  Of course, I, once again, made a mistake reassembling it and damaged the new spring, but not badly enough that the gun won't work.  I may order a case of them.
7. On an unrelated note, I still can't find a firing pin for the M85 so it is in my gun closet (with a lock on the door, of course), inoperable, so I can't even sell it.  This means that, while the LCR was inoperable as well, I was carrying a Phoenix Arms .22 LR semi-automatic pistol which is a good deal less than ideal as a carry gun, although an excellent plinking gun.  I need a backup carry gun.

A note on holding guns: I've often preferred to shoot tiny guns because of the challenge of hitting accurately with one.  I have fond memories of a Jennings J-22 .22 LR pistol that never worked right but was surprisingly accurate once you got used to it.  Even with larger guns like the mid-sized revolvers I prefer or the full-frame automatics I sometimes use, the grip is very, very important.

Accuracy in a handgun is governed at the high end by what the gun can do.  Bolt it to a table and fire it and see what the grouping is, and that's as accurate as it gets.  That's often referred to as the weapon's accuracy potential.

When you put it in your hand, your hand becomes part of the weapons system.  When a gun recoils, it starts to move before the round exits the barrel, so the way you hold it governs, in a large part, where the barrel is pointing when the bullet leaves.  To achieve accuracy, you need repeatability, so you need to be able to hold it in such a way that the recoil changes the barrel's aim exactly the same every time.  You also need to work out how you pull the trigger so you don't move the muzzle in the act of pulling the trigger.  Achieving this takes lots of experimentation and practice because no two hands are quite alike.  This is a major reason we need such a variety of guns and a major reason you should shoot any gun you buy before you buy it or do what I do and go through several guns before you settle on one you like and can shoot well.

Lessons don't hurt either, but, remember, your instructor may merely be teaching you what has worked for the instructor, not what works best for you.

Jaguar report

As I said some time back, I bought a 99 Jaguar XJR on a bit of an impulse.  I've always wanted a Jag, and finally had a bit of cash.  Rather than buying an XJ8 with decent paint, I went with an ugly but mostly mechanically sound XJR.  It had sat for a while so had the usual issues related to that, and had over 100,000 miles on it, so had the issues related to that.  It had a recent transmission rebuild and the transmission is the weak part on that model, which is odd, because it is a Daimler transmission.  In a rare reversal, it's one of the parts not designed by Jaguar that has the higher failure rate.

You don't buy Jaguars because of reliability.  You buy it because of the grin it plasters on your face.  Today, while driving home, I got an opportunity to chase an Infiniti G36 coupe.  I was slowly reeling him in when my exit came up.  Slowing down for the exit, my transmission started randomly shifting into second gear, which made things interesting at 60 MPH, as each downshift caused the car to jump a bit.  I will have to figure out why it's doing that.  It only did it in sport mode, so I've stayed out of sport mode since.

Anyway, the coolant leak it has also reared up, so I had 'transmission fault' and 'low coolant level' alternating on the display, and the ECM had decided shifting was no longer an option and seemed to have locked the car in third gear.  I pulled over and topped off the coolant and restarted the engine to clear the transmission fault and drove the rest of the way home without any trouble.

Here's the amazing bit: before this happened, the transmission shifted hard.  Not jarringly so, but enough that it was mildly irritating, because the car would sometimes lurch.  I chalked it up to this car being a performance model and old besides, but, after the full-throttle freeway run chasing the Infiniti it has been buttery smooth since I haven't tried sport mode since.  I have to watch the tach to notice a shift.  It's not slipping; I did a few hard acceleration runs and there's been no loss of power.  The engine is quieter as well.

There's an old Jaguar remedy called a 'Tony tune-up' where it is recommended you put the thing in a lower gear and go as fast on the highway as you dare because these things are race-bred and don't do well if you don't air them out every so often, so maybe this thing is just being true to Jaguar form.  Maybe I'm in for an expensive transmission repair.

A funny thing is if you take my hourly rate and multiply that by the time I save commuting in this thing over my Expedition, it'll pay for itself in less than a year.  So there's your justification to go out and buy whatever madness you want, so long as it is old and eccentric.