Good Morning!Just had a chance to play with my 1960 produced Savage 99F in 300 Savage,the gun is slightly used and should make a great rifle for our deer drives.My problem is that when I fire the rifle even with factory loads the lever is super tight to open. If I pull back slightly it will open,the lever really doesn't drop on firing just fractionally. My question is is this normal or do i have a problem? Thank You in advance.

If you dry-snap it with an empty chamber, does it still act that way? I have seen M99's that were hard to open with factory loaded .308 Win. ammo, and had to be used with slightly reduced loads to function smoothly. It is possible that you are experiencing the same thing-what ammo are you shooting in it?

I had a similar problem with a 300 99. I put some polishing rouge on the end of a dowell I attached to a drill and polished the chamber a bit. Easy extraction after that.
Frank

I am shooting 150 grain Winchester power point factory loads and some middle of the road handloads,I like the chamber polishing idea as after the initial break open using the same fired case it works very smoothly. Thanks Chris

Savage produced some very poor products in the 60s and the M99 was not omitted from the list of bad news they spread around.

I owned two 99s in .308 and both were problem children. Accurate as all get out. But problems with functioning caused me to sell out and never again buy a Savage.