Good luck. I saw your first video from a couple years ago and all those shiny new LoadMasters and I immediately felt sorry for you. I love Lee products when they're simple and genuinely good values but I had a LoadMaster .45 ACP "factory set up" and I'd done a little pre-purchase research and heard multiple mentions of primer system issues so I also ordered all the "recommended" spare parts and even a complete brand-new primer assembly. But my LoadMaster had problems everywhere BUT the primer system and it took a good ten hours of constant tinkering/tweaking to finally get 100 rounds "in a row" without a malfunction. I'm a 25 year diesel mechanic and I'd reloaded thousands of rounds of pistol, revolver and rifle ammo in 8 or 9 different cartridges on a single-stage for at least a year prior to that and was a lifelong shooter before I finally got into reloading 6 years ago or so. I "celebrated" having 100 rounds in a row by going out and "burning" some .45 ACP since I finally had a "working" progressive press at the height of the ammo shortage and would no longer need to reload 2-3 hours per night 2-3 nights the week after shooting 200 rounds in a weekend just to "restock" because I could load THAT MUCH in a couple hours EASY. Yeah. Right. I literally didn't touch the press for several days and left it in "perfect working order". I literally went back to start reloading again and within the first 10 rounds the primer system started malfunctioning. I replaced individual parts here and there because I immediately decided that press was gone. Period. I wasn't done with Lee but I was done with LoadMasters and anything else made by Lee with more than 5 moving parts. Done. After replacing a part here and coaxing another 25 rounds out of it and then replacing a part there and gettting another 20 or so I realized I was slowly replacing the entire primer tool one part at a time and judging by the number of parts and my replacement rate by the time I got another 200 rounds total out of the press, I'd have replaced all of it Johnny Cash-style and would be starting over. So I pulled out the brand-new primer assembly and installed it. It was junk from the word go. Okay. We're done. This thing is gone. I buy new tools to USE. Not to "restore" or "rebuild". Long story short and fellow and very experienced shooter/reloader/gearhead buddy of mine who loves tinkering with stuff and really loves tinkering with stuff and fixing things I give up on when I run out of patience said he'd trade me "an old Dillon 550 I got on trade eons ago and I think is all there with some extra parts but honestly I've never even looked in the box so it could be anything". I told him okay tentatively but that he had to have the Lee working "well" and have 100 rounds straight through it before he sold or traded it to anyone and that he was NOT to trade it to anybody I knew and liked or even didn't hate much. Well, he tinkered with it some and mixed and matched primer parts and got it up and running, took it to a gun show with a $175 price on it and sold it. I took the box o' Dillon parts and within and hour of digging into the box o' parts I had it temporarily mounted on the bench and another hour of tinkering and looking at the manual had it set up and adjusted close enough for me to adjust the dies and when i finally got the courage to "load it up" with primers and powder and see if I could beat the 25 rounds per hour "average" I managed with the Lee, I was so amazed and pleased to see such a simple and well-worn but well-built and properly designed to WORK WELL FIRST and SELL WELL SECOND working properly after years in a box and after being "thrown together" by a Dillon "rookie" with very low expectations for succcess and was so prepared for SOME kind of problem that I was PREPARED when it stopped spitting out primers. I'd already identified the Dillon primer system as the most likely "issue" given its complication level and having recent experience with much newer primer systems and I'd never been a fan of primers and priming period (had a Lee hand primer that was "tolerable" until I decided to try a Hornady and never went back) so it figured the Dillon primer system would be an issue. Because there was no way in what, 30 or 40 minutes of leisurely reloading watching the parts move and looking for malfunctions could have loaded 100 rounds with such "boring" ease. Gotta be something hanging up. But there is a pretty good pile of ammo there. But nowhere near 100 rounds. I'll just get a chunk of wire and stick it down the tube and at the same time make myself a "fuel gauge" so I can see how many primers are left. So I got a chunk of wire and did just that and when the wire dropped all the way in I figured I must have measured it wrong or bent it wrong and it was several inches short. Nope. She was plumb out of primers. 100 rounds in 40 minutes of messing around after a couple hours of "set up" and "adjustment" and it was obvious on its best day a LoadMaster would be hard-pressed to keep up with a manual indexing Dillon 550. I tried giving my buddy more money several times after that. He wouldn't take it although I do think he maybe wished he'd have paid me the $100 or so I was willing to take for the Lee outright and taken BOTH of them to the gun show, lol. When he sold that LoadMaster for $175 without even trying I think he realized he could have shown up with that 550 and big box o' parts and sold a complete press set-up for probably $500 and then parted out the rest and probably made close to another $500. Maybe more like $400 and $400 but given there's roughly $1000 of parts and press there by my calculations and lots of "high wear" parts like primer and powder measure bars and primer system tubes/pickup primer charging tubes etc, $800 for a dusty box of Dillon parts I think he said he though he had about $125 in would have been quite a payday. It ain't all been smooth sailing with the Dillon and I've dumped several hundred more dollars in additional powder measures to have a dedicated tool head/powder measure for 9mm, .40, .45 ACP and .223 and have purchased a few bucks in other small parts here and there. But I literally wouldn't take a LoadMaster today if you gave it to me. I'd have to sell it, trade it or give it away as a gift to get any "good" out of it and I honestly wouldn't feel right about doing any of those. They're just not good presses. Period. Lee could have put a little more time and money into engineering and materials and had a 1000% better press for probably 10% more "capital investment" and could sell them for 50% more money minimum and they wouldn't be able to build them fast enough. As they are they literally require more work than they do. And there IS no "fixing" them. The same problems they have today they'll have tomorrow and next week and next year and ten years from now.
Wow, when I got my first one it had a lot of the issues you mentioned. Over the years I have learned to fix issues and I have made several improvements. When I sat down I usually reload around 500 to 1000 rounds. I do run into few issues but I can reload around 300 rds with no issues. Each one of my presses are set up for that caliber. I built primer alarm, primer feed, round counter, powder inspection system added new powder drop and purchased a bullet dropping system. I have made my presses user friendly and improved my process time. Thank You for watching my video, and feedback is always welcome. I know my trouble shooting video's will help other reloaders.. Good Shooting my Friend
A little wrk on tweaking is well worth saving several hundreds of dollars vs a Dillon with different needed tweaks... but at exaggerated price margins and the same OAL variance results
I’m 9min in... not sure I can take another 30. Love what you do for the community and I subscribed to support... I just hope the rest of the videos in the series are less... gummy.
LOL - You pulled an Elvis Ammo dropping something on the floor !!! Many UA-camrs are using a stunt man or body double to do the Elvis Ammo stunt. Elvis does his own stunt work. Thanks for an informative video on this misunderstood press.
You're Welcome, Elvis Ammo is one of my favorite channels, we show real time in our video's. I don't do any editing, I drop my fair share of things. lol :) Good Shooting my Friend
Thanks for the recommendation on the "clean ride lube", I picked some up and it sure beats what I was using. My biggest problems so far has been adjusting the primer seating depth, looking forward to seeing how you et yours adjusted.
We will be covering that in video 4 , it is important that I cover the case feed and how to correctly set that up. It will flow right into the depth of the primer. Just to help you now, set your bolt on the left side of your press, lower the bolt all the way down until you only see 2 or 3 thread above the bracket that is made in the frame. When you have this set up correctly that you should not see a dimple in the center of the primer. Lots more to share, this should help you. Great Question
I got it figured out but I'll admit I smashed a couple primers in the process before I had a "Duh" moment and just set a primed case in the press, ran the ram up and adjusted the linkage to the primed case
Thanks, very informative series, but please consider two things: 1.) Mounting the camera closer to the press and 2.) watch out for that chewing gum ( it's rather unprofessional chewing with an open mouth like that while recording yourself)😉
Do you know of a fix to mis aligned priming pin? I saw this in another you tube video which causes tipped primers. I think it was RJ video...not sure. Also another you tube video shows the index lock up and the owner peening the case ejector to prevent the shell plate from rotating clockwise. Do you have a simpler fix without peening the ejector? Thanks
I did all the primer steps but I get where it feeds only part way into the shell or not at all I have full hopper og primers and working with 223 any ideas?
Instead of removing the primer stud with needle nose plyers why don't you just push down on the priming arm on the left outside of the press then you can remove the primer stud with your fingers.
Lol, loose the gum! Holy cow!
Man spit the gum out.. I can't stand to listen to the smacking.. great info just can't listen while your smacking..
Good luck. I saw your first video from a couple years ago and all those shiny new LoadMasters and I immediately felt sorry for you. I love Lee products when they're simple and genuinely good values but I had a LoadMaster .45 ACP "factory set up" and I'd done a little pre-purchase research and heard multiple mentions of primer system issues so I also ordered all the "recommended" spare parts and even a complete brand-new primer assembly. But my LoadMaster had problems everywhere BUT the primer system and it took a good ten hours of constant tinkering/tweaking to finally get 100 rounds "in a row" without a malfunction. I'm a 25 year diesel mechanic and I'd reloaded thousands of rounds of pistol, revolver and rifle ammo in 8 or 9 different cartridges on a single-stage for at least a year prior to that and was a lifelong shooter before I finally got into reloading 6 years ago or so. I "celebrated" having 100 rounds in a row by going out and "burning" some .45 ACP since I finally had a "working" progressive press at the height of the ammo shortage and would no longer need to reload 2-3 hours per night 2-3 nights the week after shooting 200 rounds in a weekend just to "restock" because I could load THAT MUCH in a couple hours EASY. Yeah. Right. I literally didn't touch the press for several days and left it in "perfect working order". I literally went back to start reloading again and within the first 10 rounds the primer system started malfunctioning. I replaced individual parts here and there because I immediately decided that press was gone. Period. I wasn't done with Lee but I was done with LoadMasters and anything else made by Lee with more than 5 moving parts. Done. After replacing a part here and coaxing another 25 rounds out of it and then replacing a part there and gettting another 20 or so I realized I was slowly replacing the entire primer tool one part at a time and judging by the number of parts and my replacement rate by the time I got another 200 rounds total out of the press, I'd have replaced all of it Johnny Cash-style and would be starting over. So I pulled out the brand-new primer assembly and installed it. It was junk from the word go. Okay. We're done. This thing is gone. I buy new tools to USE. Not to "restore" or "rebuild". Long story short and fellow and very experienced shooter/reloader/gearhead buddy of mine who loves tinkering with stuff and really loves tinkering with stuff and fixing things I give up on when I run out of patience said he'd trade me "an old Dillon 550 I got on trade eons ago and I think is all there with some extra parts but honestly I've never even looked in the box so it could be anything". I told him okay tentatively but that he had to have the Lee working "well" and have 100 rounds straight through it before he sold or traded it to anyone and that he was NOT to trade it to anybody I knew and liked or even didn't hate much. Well, he tinkered with it some and mixed and matched primer parts and got it up and running, took it to a gun show with a $175 price on it and sold it. I took the box o' Dillon parts and within and hour of digging into the box o' parts I had it temporarily mounted on the bench and another hour of tinkering and looking at the manual had it set up and adjusted close enough for me to adjust the dies and when i finally got the courage to "load it up" with primers and powder and see if I could beat the 25 rounds per hour "average" I managed with the Lee, I was so amazed and pleased to see such a simple and well-worn but well-built and properly designed to WORK WELL FIRST and SELL WELL SECOND working properly after years in a box and after being "thrown together" by a Dillon "rookie" with very low expectations for succcess and was so prepared for SOME kind of problem that I was PREPARED when it stopped spitting out primers. I'd already identified the Dillon primer system as the most likely "issue" given its complication level and having recent experience with much newer primer systems and I'd never been a fan of primers and priming period (had a Lee hand primer that was "tolerable" until I decided to try a Hornady and never went back) so it figured the Dillon primer system would be an issue. Because there was no way in what, 30 or 40 minutes of leisurely reloading watching the parts move and looking for malfunctions could have loaded 100 rounds with such "boring" ease. Gotta be something hanging up. But there is a pretty good pile of ammo there. But nowhere near 100 rounds. I'll just get a chunk of wire and stick it down the tube and at the same time make myself a "fuel gauge" so I can see how many primers are left. So I got a chunk of wire and did just that and when the wire dropped all the way in I figured I must have measured it wrong or bent it wrong and it was several inches short. Nope. She was plumb out of primers. 100 rounds in 40 minutes of messing around after a couple hours of "set up" and "adjustment" and it was obvious on its best day a LoadMaster would be hard-pressed to keep up with a manual indexing Dillon 550. I tried giving my buddy more money several times after that. He wouldn't take it although I do think he maybe wished he'd have paid me the $100 or so I was willing to take for the Lee outright and taken BOTH of them to the gun show, lol. When he sold that LoadMaster for $175 without even trying I think he realized he could have shown up with that 550 and big box o' parts and sold a complete press set-up for probably $500 and then parted out the rest and probably made close to another $500. Maybe more like $400 and $400 but given there's roughly $1000 of parts and press there by my calculations and lots of "high wear" parts like primer and powder measure bars and primer system tubes/pickup primer charging tubes etc, $800 for a dusty box of Dillon parts I think he said he though he had about $125 in would have been quite a payday.
It ain't all been smooth sailing with the Dillon and I've dumped several hundred more dollars in additional powder measures to have a dedicated tool head/powder measure for 9mm, .40, .45 ACP and .223 and have purchased a few bucks in other small parts here and there. But I literally wouldn't take a LoadMaster today if you gave it to me. I'd have to sell it, trade it or give it away as a gift to get any "good" out of it and I honestly wouldn't feel right about doing any of those. They're just not good presses. Period. Lee could have put a little more time and money into engineering and materials and had a 1000% better press for probably 10% more "capital investment" and could sell them for 50% more money minimum and they wouldn't be able to build them fast enough. As they are they literally require more work than they do. And there IS no "fixing" them. The same problems they have today they'll have tomorrow and next week and next year and ten years from now.
Wow, when I got my first one it had a lot of the issues you mentioned. Over the years I have learned to fix issues and I have made several improvements. When I sat down I usually reload around 500 to 1000 rounds. I do run into few issues but I can reload around 300 rds with no issues. Each one of my presses are set up for that caliber. I built primer alarm, primer feed, round counter, powder inspection system added new powder drop and purchased a bullet dropping system. I have made my presses user friendly and improved my process time. Thank You for watching my video, and feedback is always welcome. I know my trouble shooting video's will help other reloaders.. Good Shooting my Friend
A little wrk on tweaking is well worth saving several hundreds of dollars vs a Dillon with different needed tweaks... but at exaggerated price margins and the same OAL variance results
Very impressed with all your loaders.
Great video, very informative! But man get rid of the gum! Chomp, chomp, smack, smack!
I’m 9min in... not sure I can take another 30. Love what you do for the community and I subscribed to support... I just hope the rest of the videos in the series are less... gummy.
@@PcGeek04 I agree. great info and tips for the loadmaster, and you can chew gum, too, just close your mouth, please, sir. :)
cant watch this vid for the gum
The Chiqulet though!!!! Great Content! If you got your settings more on treble,,,, That Chiqulet gets annoyingly louder.....
LOL - You pulled an Elvis Ammo dropping something on the floor !!! Many UA-camrs are using a stunt man or body double to do the Elvis Ammo stunt. Elvis does his own stunt work.
Thanks for an informative video on this misunderstood press.
You're Welcome, Elvis Ammo is one of my favorite channels, we show real time in our video's. I don't do any editing, I drop my fair share of things. lol :) Good Shooting my Friend
Thanks for the recommendation on the "clean ride lube", I picked some up and it sure beats what I was using.
My biggest problems so far has been adjusting the primer seating depth, looking forward to seeing how you et yours adjusted.
We will be covering that in video 4 , it is important that I cover the case feed and how to correctly set that up. It will flow right into the depth of the primer. Just to help you now, set your bolt on the left side of your press, lower the bolt all the way down until you only see 2 or 3 thread above the bracket that is made in the frame. When you have this set up correctly that you should not see a dimple in the center of the primer. Lots more to share, this should help you. Great Question
I got it figured out but I'll admit I smashed a couple primers in the process before I had a "Duh" moment and just set a primed case in the press, ran the ram up and adjusted the linkage to the primed case
Copy, good deal
Thanks, very informative series, but please consider two things: 1.) Mounting the camera closer to the press and 2.) watch out for that chewing gum ( it's rather unprofessional chewing with an open mouth like that while recording yourself)😉
Good video and information
Thank You, Good Shooting my Friend
Seriously why not put the camera closer to the press and lose the gum. Holy hell.
Do you know of a fix to mis aligned priming pin? I saw this in another you tube video which causes tipped primers. I think it was RJ video...not sure. Also another you tube video shows the index lock up and the owner peening the case ejector to prevent the shell plate from rotating clockwise. Do you have a simpler fix without peening the ejector? Thanks
I did all the primer steps but I get where it feeds only part way into the shell or not at all I have full hopper og primers and working with 223 any ideas?
My primers kept tipping... I got only 63 out of 84 loaded successfully. Couldn't figure out why. Maybe I half stroked? Wow.
Instead of removing the primer stud with needle nose plyers why don't you just push down on the priming arm on the left outside of the press then you can remove the primer stud with your fingers.
I slowed down my stroke at the very bottom and top of the cycle, and primers stopped feeding bad too