Sold me on a new Savage

good choice

Same here! Bought my first Savage in the 70's and another one about a year later. Never had a problem & still have 'em.

I'm a long time Savage shooter. At one time I was the biggest Savage fan around honestly. I've owned Savage rifles in .243, .308, and 6.5 Creedmoor. I went out to Fireman's shooting class and he let me shoot his custom Tikka in 7mm-08. Since then I've sold off my savages and now own two Tikkas, one in .243 and one in 7mm-08.

When I ran the bolt correctly and tough I did not have eject problems. However, if you baby the bolt you will have a world of problems.

The most irritating thing and what put me off Savage for good is the "Savage Skip". Almost every Savage I've seen has a problem with chambering rounds and sometimes skips rounds. It seems the magazine feed ramp and rifle throat aren't in correct alignment. I used to fix this by getting new stocks and changing the bottom metal. Regardless, it didn't always permently fix the problem and I lost faith in the Savage rifles. The spike I shot this year with my Tikka .243 needed a second round. First shot hit at 175, deer started running at me, chambered a second and hit him in the chest, deer dropped. That's the performance I demand and Savage can't provide that. Fireman, I might owe you that deer. If I had my Savage it could of skipped a round and I would have lost that spike.

Here is a video which displays the Savage Skip perfectly. The guy clearly seats the magazine, chambers a round, fires, runs bolt, and the bolt skips over the round. My brothers Savage 6.5 Creedmoor does this all the time. We have to push the round forward a little bit so the bolt catcher the brass lip. Also, watch as he shoots the 2nd round then chambers the 3rd, the 3rd round almost binds up. IF he ran the bolt slower the bolt would have locked up, this has also happened to me several times with Savage Rifles.

Wow, you guys have convinced me I need to sell all my 110, 111, 116 and buy Tikkas... NOT

I even have several old 340s in 30-30. When your Tikkas are as old as my 340s and can feed and eject rimmed 30-30 then you might have a leg to stand on.

Sort of like comparing the latest polymer semi pistol to the original 1911s.

Half you fellows have to go buy a $350 stock for your Tikka because the original feels like a soda straw and sounds like a Tupperware box.

My Tikkas are 100% factory. You are welcome to shoot them anytime. All my old Savages needed new stocks to feed correctly.

We have 2 Savage rifles.
1 model 840 in 222 Rem mg in the 70's
and 1 new Axis in 243 Win.
I've never felt the need to soft stroke the bolt
when clambering a round and so haven't experienced
the failure to eject or feed.
I do know they are not perfect, same as any other
mass manufactured rifle. People have different priorities.
Me, I don't care for dangerously faulty triggers.

Savage's composite stock is even lower quality than Tikka. So much so, they are worth zero money after-market.

Respectfully, I doubt you've tried to run a Savage extremely fast, under tight time constraints in competition. They just can't do it, reliably.

There is a custom action maker out there that costs over $1k just for the action. And they have the same reputation, and I used one for a day last July, sure enough, it let me down. So I wouldn't give $100 for one, much less $1000.

You don't owe me a thing.

I let lots of guys shoot that rifle. Especially guys that have had the normal Savage issues throughout the day. Every single one of them say wow! They shoot a few rounds through it and really fall in love with it.

I only own one Savage rifle; a Model 99. Other than that, I own Tikka's, Winchester Mod. 70, Rem 700, Rem 600, Weatherby Vanguard, Blaser R-93, Howa and a couple of others. Some I've had to 'do something' to, change triggers etc.
The Tikka's and Vanguard/Howa's are the only one's I haven't had to mess with other than cleaning, scoping and shooting. It doesn't make them perfect, nor do they not have their faults. They do work, however. Then again, so do all of the other makes I own.

I don't know about the failure to feed or 'skipping' issue, nor the lack of ejection issue. I don't own a Savage bolt simply because I don't care for the looks of the barrel nut and the feel of the stocks - they all feel clunky to me. That's just a personal opinion but it is my personal opinion. It won't make me not suggest one to someone looking for a rifle. They are known to be accurate rifles. I just prefer something else.

Interesting old post...

I am thinking of buying one of these in .308. Savage is looking like the one to buy for me. It has the new accustock, accutrigger, and a built in muzzle break (which I'm not crazy about for a .308), and a 24" barrel.

The Remington 700 VTR has the tried and true 700 action, not pillared and bedded to my knowledge, a trigger that is more difficult to adjust, built in muzzle break, and a 22" barrel.

It seems like the Savage has more going for it. I think in a head to head compition the Savage might win in accuracy.

Do any of you have any experience in either of these rifles?

This old post is also interesting

I have a model 12 in .22-250 that prints sub MOA as long as I do my part and all I've done to the rifle is mount a scope on it, shoot it and clean it. It is a Coyote and Bobcat whackin machine.

I will be picking up my new one tomorrow! Sig226 hooked me up with a model 10 FLCP in .308 (the L is for LEFT). If your not left handed you don't know how hard it is to find a rifle that you want. He got that rifle into his shop in 3 business days. It'll come with a free floated barrel, Accutrigger, and the new for 2009 Accustock. I can guarantee it will be a great shooting rifle with no modifications needed.

Back in the day people would spend extra money to have a rifle accurized. Free float the barrel-factory from Savage, Adjust the trigger-factory from Savage, bed the action-factory from Savage. All I'll have to do is mount my scope, follow their barrel break-in procedure and enjoy a very accurate rifle until I'm too old to shoot it. Maybe I'll be buried with it...nah that's taking things too far

No doubt they shoot well. No one has said otherwise, because it just wouldn't be true. In fact I can't remember a single Savage I've been around that didn't do a great job shooting very consistently, 100 to 1000 yards.

But the mirror image to that is I can't remember one that didn't need to be double stroked, or had a weak or non-existent ejection, at some point during the day. Both issues due to bad design and/ or poor materials on both parts of the bolt.

Wow, just wow. I'll come back and address individual points later, but in 40 years of shooting, and 30 years in the gun business, I've never had savage action issues as mentioned above. I have had one magazine fail and allowed pop-ups, but that was the mag failure...

Vernon, I can assure you these are not fabricated stories. No different than Remington 700 trigger stories being fabricated.

How many rounds per year do I shoot or spot? I don't know how many thousands. And of those, many are from Savages, that do shoot well. But the double stoke and failure to eject does exist, as plain as the nose on my face.

One can deny their roof isn't leaking, but how does he explain the puddle of water on the floor every time it rains?

I usually blame it on a plumbing issue or dog

I always try to have a bit more fun than that. I'll blame one of my brothers-in-law or my nephews.

I'll preface my opinion with I only own 2 Savages. One is a Precision Carbine in 223 and the other is a Model 16 lightweight in 308. Both are extremely accurate but the 308 likes it rough to get reliable feeding. I can't be gentle or I will get a failure to feed.

I have owned exactly 2 bolt-action rifles (shot many others). One 308 Savage and one 223 Tikka. They were both accurate. There is no comparison between the reliability of the feed/ejection of the two. My Savage was fine...until I tried a Tikka.

Now I gotta weigh in. I own a couple of savages, one is a stock model 11 in 243 that's more of a walking around whatever gun for us. Only about 100ih rounds and no real issues ever but once again light use overall.

The other is a model from the late 90's that started out as a varmint model 12 in 22-250 with a crappy stock and blind mag. Over the years it's had an hs blind mag stock then a new barrel to 308 and then a cdi bottom metal and probably 2500-3000ish rounds over the years. I've had some failure to feeds but seldom and usualkynassumed it was operator error. Honestly it's gone away since the bottom metal and ai mag.
However, the failure to completely eject has consistently been an issue regardless of the changes made, from original form to now.

What I really want to know is how do I fix this and/or who? Mostly the ejection problem.
I going to assume some people truly don't have this problem but I know for a fact I do.

Buy lots of ejector springs. Buy one spare ejector, and one spare ejector retaining pin. As soon as ejection gets weak, change out the spring.

When you're ready, holler at me and I'll tell you what to rig up to do it. It will help if you have a second person to assist. It can be done solo, but it's tricky.

Ok, not trying to beat a dead horse. I have a legit question I think? All of my builds have been with 110 long actions even though I used them for short actions for 7mm08's. With the blind mags, I did adjust the feed ramps so I do not have any failure to feed once adjusted. I have not had any issues with ejecting whether I move the bolt fast or slow, most the time it is slow. I do have a couple of 300 win mags with bottom metal used with mags but most builds have been short action ammo. Question is, is there a difference with long or short action's as to the problems experienced. Have them mostly been long or short action actions with issues? This thread has me thinking about carrying an extra bolt in my case even though I have not had an issues over the years. I am not discounting what is said about problems that have happened just wondering if the problems could be narrowed down to a particular production action or older or newer productions?

JG just FYI, I have lost a ejector pivot ball before, I do think the way the assembly is made is pretty cheesy but I used #4, I think, shot out of a shotgun shell and it worked fine.

I do not have a Savage bolt handy. Does it look like there's enough meat there to deepen the hole for a longer ejector spring?

Just curious. I'm thinking that a longer, slightly stiffer spring should hold up quite a bit better.

There are TONS of aftermarket do-dads for Savages, and Savage owners have noted these issues for decades. I say it is a design flaw because with an aftermarket community like that, if a no-gunsmithing, easy fix was possible I am pretty sure that we would have seen it a long time ago.

This would also explain why Savage has not put a priority on resolving that issue. - Design changes can get to be pretty expensive.

I forgot about the 'ol #4 shot trick.

I actually replace the pivot ball on one of my past Savages with #4 steel shot. I read online that it gives a more positive ejection. It sure made that rifle eject a lot better.