What do you guys know about any factory headspacing problems on new Savage rifles. Just bought one of the cheap Savage/stevens in 300 win mag. I like everything about the gun except I took some measurements off my once fired sight in rounds and found that they had grown .030" from base to shoulder. These were fed casings. I have some new rem casings on order just in case the fed's were a little short for some reason. I have a small fine screwdriver I was able to run inside the case mouth and feel for cracks near the base but nothing yet on these first firings. I've set my dies to make up for the "growth". Wierd thing is after resizing they didn't need a trim which I expected.

Anyhow another poster said that sometimes savages come with the barrel slightly loose and it's possible it just needs tightening.

Input please....... Thanks Kraky

my guess would be that a belted magnum heads spaces on the belt not the sholder .
Chamber lengths are nominal so they will chamber all brands of ammo.
Dave

Just adjust your die so that it headspaces on the shoulder, it will save your brass.
Good luck!

quote:

Originally posted by kraky:
What do you guys know about any factory headspacing problems on new Savage rifles. Thanks Kraky

If you find that the chamber is cut to far forward would you please post that. Maybe even a call to Savage will shed some light on the problem. It sure is a pain in the butt when you leave 3/4 of the brass in the chamber. roger

It is possible that the headspace is set incorrectly. You can adjust headspace on a Savage if you have the right tools. You need a special wrench for the barrel nut. They are about $30 from Midway. Put the barrel in a vice and loosen the nut. Put a headspace guage in the chamber and turn the barrel in until it touches the guage. Check with the no go guage to make sure it will not chamber with it in place.

The 300 Win mag headspaces on the belt not the shoulder. The headspace is likely set properly and as noted above the chamber is a bit sloppy to allow easy chambering. This is something I`ve head of with more then one belted mag chamber, and is a common reason for the claim of short case life with them. Set your sizeing die to just bump the shoulder. This will increase case life and should help accuracy.

First look at the brass. I had some Norma headstamped 7mag brass that was darn near .1" short at the shoulder. I ended up fireforming the whole lot to make it work. Interestingly enough, it is within 0.002" on the belt headspace dimension.

Belted brass is not know for it's dimensional tolerances at the shoulder..... JMO, Dutch.

Kraky, I just had a Colt Sauer in the shop where the customer was complaining about his cases beginning to separate ahead of the belt after 2 firings on his 300 Win Mag. He had previously had the headspace checked and it was within specs.

After confirming the headspace was good to go, I took a factory round, measured it to the shoulder, fired it and re-measured it. The case grew .026 in length. I checked his dies against the fired case and found that the dies would push the shoulder back .032 with the dies set up to touch the shell stop at top stroke of the ram.

I presented the customer 2 simple choices. Either I could set the barrel back and rechamber it to the proper specs, or, where he was only loading for 1 rifle, he could simply toss his old brass, fireform new brass, back the die off the shell holder 1 full turn, holding well short of the neck/shoulder junction, and size all his new brass to this mark.

This he did and noticed a huge improvement in the accuracy of the rifle (duh!) and an increased life of his brass... Sooo, once you are sure that your rifles headspace is good, you might want to try this approach.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm using a stoney point headspace bushing kit to make my measurements. And yes, I know tchnically the belt keeps the shell from moving forward but there seems to be excess chamber space.....or, as was noted above what got me to thinking it might be a problem with the new brass was that after setting my sizing die to just bump back the "new dimension" slightly it shocked me that I didn't have to trim--I fugured I'd be overlength about .015" at the least.

So, before I get my undies in a bind I'll wait for the new batch of rem brass to get here and take some measurements off of it.

Thanks again for all your input. This little gun looks like it will be a keeper for just $279. It's lightweight, has a fully free floated barrel....I found the trigger adjustments screws and got that good. For $279 I'm kind of happy with my "underdog".