My friend Brian Miller aka @bkmiller556 on Instagram, loves to tinker with guns for the purpose of USPSA competition. When the Ruger PC Carbine came out I agreed to buy one if he would make upgrades for me. Here are some of the Ruger PC Carbine upgrades he has made.

Barrel Optic Mount

The first thing we realized was that the barrel is take down and there is the possibility that zero could shift with the optic mounted on the receiver. So Brian made a dedicated optic mount that replaces the rear iron sight. His first optic mount was designed around the C-More RTS2 micro red dot.

The sight picture is awesome. Just like the C-More Railway red dot, the window is large and round. And given the low profile body there is not a lot of issue with height over bore.

25 yard group test with RTS2 mount

Next Brian made a mount that fits RMR pattern optics. Here is my NC STAR solar powered dot on the Ruger PC Carbine barrel.

Brian also made a dedicated mount for a Burris Fast Fire. As you can see, the mount is made of 3D printed material. He has been experimenting with 3D printed risers for his race gun setups and they have held up fine. However that is on an AR style receiver top rail and Vepr12 barrel mounts. We will see how well they hold up on a 9mm PCC.

While the dedicated mounts were great I told Brian that he needs to make a more universal mount. So he made an aluminum picatinny mount so I could mount this budget red dot sight.

This mount also allows other optics like the MRO to be mounted. Although I preferred the sight picture of the optic above.

The final evolution of Brian’s optic mounts is the second version of the picatinny rail that keeps the rear iron sight.

It does reduce the sight radius a bit but it is just a backup sight for the red dot. The sight picture is slightly obscured by the budget red dot emitter. But you do get a lower 1/3 cowitness with the iron sights.

Flared Mag Well

The second piece of Brian’s Ruger PC Carbine Upgrades was a flared mag well to assist in faster mag changes. Flared mag wells is crucial in USPSA competitive shooting. Sure you can practice and get better at mag changes but there is a reason Open Division and leading PCC shooters have them on their guns. It makes it easier and allows you to go faster without hanging up on inserting the magazine. It is basically a funnel for the magazine.

I don’t have a video of a reload since in USPSA the only time you need to reload is during a classifier stage if it is mandatory.

The red dot made it much easier and faster to get sights on target. And I actually had an incident where the barrel was not entirely installed properly. I had shot a stage with the barrel slightly canted. But since my optic was mounted to the barrel, it did not affect my POA/POI.

The only upgrades left to be done is an extended mag release lever that will pull the mag catch out using your trigger finger. At the moment there is nothing that we could come up with to switch the safety on or off for left handed shooters. If you are left handed you will just have to suffer with it.