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Author Topic: Savage 93R17  (Read 1588 times)

Offline armed and humorous

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  • Join Date: Jul 2009
  • Location: Lincoln, NE
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Savage 93R17
« on: August 15, 2009, 03:20:01 PM »
Anybody out there have any experience with one of these?  This is the first rifle I've owned that was a bolt action with a clip-style magazine.  (My other bolt actions had the tube under the barrel.)  I bought this gun a few weeks ago, and from the start, I thought the magazine fit into the gun was rather sloppy and not designed very well.  I'm used to precision machined parts (I am a machinist) that (when they meet specs) are a proper fit with each other.  Sometimes you have a press fit, sometimes a slip fit, etc.  The fit of the magazine into this gun was more like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole; if you make the peg small enough so it rattles around like a piece of gravel inside a hub cap, it will go, but it still doesn't fit.  Even the first time I loaded it, I literally had to put upward pressure on the magazine  in order for a round to be properly fed into the chamber with the bolt.  After the first round was in and fired, the next four loaded reasonably well.  I went through about 50 rounds the first time out.  I thought the problem might be with the magazine rather than the gun, so I ordered two more magazines (which I would have wanted anyway if the gun worked correctly).  The second time out with it, I had the same problem with all three magazines.  However, the problem seemed to get progressively worse the more rounds I fired.  Eventually, even the second, third, fourth, and fifth rounds did not want to feed correctly.  On the last clip I shot, I had to eject the third and fourth rounds because they wouldn't go into the chamber, and the fifth round (though it went in with some effort) would not extract after it was fired.  I had to pick it out with a screw driver.  I took that gun back to Scheel's, and they had no qualms about simply exchanging it for another gun.
Gun related issues are, by nature, deadly serious.  Still, you have to maintain a sense of humor about them.

Offline armed and humorous

  • NFOA Full Member
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  • Join Date: Jul 2009
  • Location: Lincoln, NE
  • Posts: 535
Re: Savage 93R17
« Reply #1 on: August 15, 2009, 03:31:09 PM »
I'm replying to my own post, because of problems.  I'm not sure why, unless there is supposed to be a limit on the length of a post, but when I get to a certain point, my typing goes off the bottom of the screen so I don't know what the hell I'm typing.  Do others have the same problem?

Anyway, I took the "new" rifle out today.  It seemed at first to work a lot more smoothly.  But, after about a dozen rounds, it seemed to be doing the same thing again.  I really wasn't sure if I supposed to have the bolt open or closed, or the safety on or off, or what when loading a magazine.  I would have thought the safety should be on and the bolt could be open or closed, but I wasn't sure what the book said and didn't have it with me.  Regardless, I tried every combination of bolt open/close, safety on/off, and it didn't seem to make any difference.  (By the way, there was no one else at the range, and I kept the rifel pointed down range the whole time anyway.)  Eventually, I got a magazine inserted, and it seemed to function properly for all five rounds.  And after that, I had no more problems, though it still didn't seem like a well machined fit when inserting the mag.  I got home and checked in the book.  It says to open the bolt with the safety on to load a mag (which is what I would have thought was proper from the beginning).  It seems to be fine now.  Not sure what was going on.  Anyone have any ideas, comments, suggestions? :-\
Gun related issues are, by nature, deadly serious.  Still, you have to maintain a sense of humor about them.