Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Ever have a 99 with a terrible trigger?

I bought this 1958 99F and the trigger is like a striker fired pistol. You just keep pulling until the thing finally goes off. It’s not even 2 stage. Just one long steady pull. I can’t even squeeze it at the range. I start panicking thinking it will never fire so I just simply pull the trigger like you do on a shotgun

Sounds about right.
Have you tried using 2 fingers?

Someone mess with it?

Sounds like you were lucky to get one with an extraordinary amount of sear engagement. They aren't usually all that bad, but may seem so if the shooter is uncompromisingly used to light crisp trigger pulls - which frankly are not a feature of 99's. It can be fixed but I'll not be the one to recommend messing with that engagement, it's a job for someone who's versed in the trigger geometry of the 99. Not a commentary on you by any means, rather a statement concerning 99 triggers in general.

No offense. I won't be trying to fix it. It needs too much to be good. It's not even close. And no it hasn't been monkeyed with

I might add that it doesn't reset the same everytime either. Sometimes, instead of a 6 pound trigger that seems to pull forever, it feels like a 12 pound trigger with a more crisp break. It's weird

What gnoahhh said. I have worked on a lot of these and he is right.

I owned and shot dozens of 99s and there is a lot of variability in the triggers.

I've had 99s with just flat ass awful triggers like the one you describe and some that were actually reasonably tolerable and everything in between. I can put up with a 5lb trigger if it isn't mushy and full of slack. I don't work on 99 triggers or have them worked on. I either tolerate them or I don't. The worst have found new homes.


I can tolerate a gun with a less than perfect bore, but I simply will not tolerate an awful trigger.

That is weird, maybe the firing pin travel is severely gunked

I've heard the triggers are too complicated and scary to work on and should be avoided at all cost.

Same with the rotors. Scary. Springs and screws and stuff. Maybe even a pin or two!

The reason that my 99F is my backup rifle is because like most of you, I’ve been spoiled by outstanding bolt action triggers.

The negative responses to info requests for improving the trigger pull are driven by the fact that too many people have bubba'd the trigger/sear engagement and made the gun unsafe.

The trigger pull can be improved by simply polishing the mating surfaces of the trigger and sear. But! you have to resist the urge to file off the sear to try to shorten the pull. If you watch the trigger/sear engagement through the full cocking cycle you will see it gets very sort at one point in the travel. When the lever is fully closed the engagement is greater than during the cycle. Hence the seeming long pull. It has to be that way to maintain the safety of the mechanism and prevent slam fires.

So, polish to your heart's content and leave the files in the drawer.

It sounds like your gun needs a serious cleaning.

Ditto to Lightfoot’s comment. While I completely agree about not modifying the trigger mechanism, a careful inspection and cleaning is quite easily done by removing the stock. Especially considering the degree of variation that he described.

Also, how briskly you work the lever will often affect the amount of sear engagement. Slowly can equal less, brisk equals more. Use an aerosol cleaner, after removing all the wood, to blast out everything. Lightly oil the inside, very lightly. Then very lightly grease the sear engagement using a high quality synthetic gun grease. I like the little tub Brownells sells with a fine painters brush. I bought mine years ago, I've about used up what was stuck to the lid.
Use it sparingly.

Thought the same thing. I took the stock off and cleaned but everything was pretty clean to begin with

Yeah cleaning the internals is one of the first things I did

I do have a 99 takedown with a trigger that shames most bolt rifles. It's lovely

Do you think somebody may have worked on it?

And so endeth the lesson for the day. Take heed, brethren, lest ye fall afoul of misfortune. (Spoken as someone who's not afraid to doctor, customize, and otherwise despoil sacred artifacts to suit my needs. Look closely, under magnification, at the subtle angles and engagements engendered by the mating surfaces of said 99 trigger/sear engagements. I'll bet the designers/engineers/tool and die makers who perfected the M1899 spit, cussed, and argued until they got it right -what, you think Old Arthur did it all??? - and I for one am quite prepared to let it go, with maybe a bit of stoning to smooth things a bit.) If you want a sweet crisp light clean let-off, buy a Remington/Savage/CZ/etc. new bolt gun, otherwise learn to live with it.....it's not the end of the world.

And these aren't bench guns. That engagement you see while it's sitting nice and peaceful on a bench also has to be enough to survive you or the gun falling out in a field and taking a he**acious smack and STILL be absolutely guaranteed that nothing will slip inside.

I personally don't want to do 5' or 10' drop tests on my guns to see if they'll fail. Polish surfaces and practice. You got used to a light trigger bolt action, you can get used to this.