Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Savage 99 bolt

Hi guys, i bought a savage 99 358 win brush gun off gunbroker about 3 years ago, i thought a good shape gun. Fired a few shots through it and noticed the firing pin would strike towards the outside of primer. I took the gun apart and saw that the previous owner had ground the bolt down on the bottom, back of bolt on an angle from about and inch from the back of bolt clear down to the firing pin channel, why I don't know. So now I am looking for a replacement bolt. I am assuming is need a bolt from a 308,358 or 284 and not one from the 300 length calibers. Am I correct? Also will the headspace need to be checked/redone? Anything else need to be done? Thanks you, guys have always been a big help in the past.

I have a 358 brush gun that I bought new in 1979. I can't tell you off hand what the bottom of my bolt looks like but I can tell you the firing pin strike has always been somewhat off center on the primer. It's never failed to fire.

What you describe as 'ground off by the previous owner' sounds vaguely familiar but I haven't seen the bottom of my bolt in a long time. After deer season, if nobody has provided a picture for you, I'll pull my stock and get a picture.

Dale

Thanks Dale maybe that's the way they were made. It wasn't done very professionally, burrs shape edges ect, so i figured it must have been done post factory. Mine also fires every time. Good luck deer hunting. I envy you as are season has already close.

You would need to remove the bolt and take a length meaurement. Gnoahhh did this on a gun he was putting together as a gift for a new shooter and I was able to send him 4, all longer than the one he had, of which he found the one he needed and sent the rest back.

Yep. Bolt length and resultant headspace is the big bugbear whenever you talk bolt replacement. Savage did the try-and-fit method of setting headspace at the final assembly station, via bolt swapping. It saved a lot of expensive meticulous fitting of parts beforehand. I picture the assembly guy having bins of different length bolts at hand for the task (and mighty dammed handy at dis-and-re-assembling Savage 99 actions!).

As for which bolt is correct for a Brush Gun, you're on your own. I don't know post-mil parts at all.

Thanks gnoahhh and fireball2, after hearing from Dale I am thinking that might be the way they were made, crude as it may be. It always fires, hasn't blown up yet even with buffalo bore ammo that is way to hot for it and my blr. Maybe I'll just load up some mid range loads and leave well enough alone. Thanks

Savage would file each bolt down/etc to fit a 99 exactly. I'm sure they swapped bolts until a close match was found, but they still did final fitting.

Any chance you could post a few pictures? The angled portion to me sounds right. The bottom of the bolts were not finished . Off center firing pin strike would not bother me unless it failed to fire

Thanks for all the info, i had no idea the bolts were fitted this way. I still haven't figured out the picture posting yet and we are still busy at work so i won't be able to try to post pics right away, winter time project. Thanks again to everyone.

The easiest way to is scroll down the list of forums until you find the "Image Gallery". You can create a post there and upload full sized pictures. Then just come back here and tell us you uploaded them there.

I don't recall the exact source - JTC or SavParts - but during assembly headspace was adjusted by grinding off the bolt face. That is how these bolts got to be different lengths in the first place. I'm sure there was also variation in the original milling process so it was likely a combination of the 2.

I guess I always thought the rear of the bolt was ground down if the front would have changed firing pin protrusion

I looked at some of my 358 brass. Some of the strikes are off center and at least one shows it was snapped twice. I'll reload for the brush gun today and hopefully get to the range tomorrow. I've had accuracy problems with 250 grain bullets. Will try some 200's.