Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires marlin 917 trigger swap

I recently purchased a marlin 917, the trigger pull resembles dragging a dead horse. I see Rifle Basix has a replacement adjustable trigger for them but I read in a review on one site that the safety will no longer work. Is this really true and has anyone any experience with them? Thanks in advance.

prredog,

You may have read my post somewhere. I have the 917VS and the RB trigger would fire on safe and slam fire when I bought the rifle used. I corrected the slam fire by adjusting the sear engagement on the trigger but the rifle would still fire on "Safe".

I called Bob at Rifle Basix and he sent me this letter......

When shooters are convinced that their safety is operating �normally� BEWARE!
�Normally� would indicate that the safety is operating like most safeties do. This
brings up a basic discussion of the dangers of usingmechanical safeties.
In a bolt action rifle, when a live round is left in the chamber with the bolt closed, the
action is �cocked� and the firing pin is pointed directly at a live primer! The firearm is
configured to fire, in spite of any other outside influences like a mechanical safety.
Personally, I will neverplace a safety lever in the �SAFE� position with a live round in
the chamber, ALLKINDS of bad things can happen. First, it is possible that the safety
lever and related parts may have tolerances which would prevent the safety from
blocking the firing pin at all! Secondly, firearms can and DOdischarge when safety
levers are moved from �safe� to �fire�! This is common when triggers are adjusted
with minimum sear engagement.
Asafe firearm is achieved through safe handling techniques. To insure a bolt action
firearm is safe with a live round in the chamber, it is only necessary to raise the bolt
handle. Abolt action firearm cannot firewith the bolt raised in this manner.
It is especially important to instruct youngsters in safe firearm handling techniques
when a live round is present in the chamber.
Bob Brasfield
Rifle Basix

I sent the trigger back to him because he stated that the spec may have been "off". He exchanged the trigger for a new one and I still had the same problem

Well I also have a Marlin 15 YN Youth 22LR that I bought for my kids and decided I would try something. Since the trigger and safety mechanisms were the same I pulled the afety from the 22 and installed it on the 17........Problem solved. The 17 no longer would fire in the Safe position. I then installed the 17's safety on the 22 thinking it would now fire on safe and to my surpise it worked fine. It seems that the 22's sear engagement is so sluggish that the extra play in the 17's safety didn't matter as it wasn't enough to cause the sear to drop. So in the end they both work perfectly but it took a while. Also the 22 has a stainless safety on a blue rifle and the 17 has a blue safety on a stainless rifle. I also tried to order a new stainless safety from Marlin to see if it would work as well as the 22's safety but you have to order through an FFL so I dropped it.

Here it is while I waiting on the new trigger...Notice no trigger.



Hope this helps,

Bruz