love it but don't trust it.

Got a new axis 270 a month or so ago so I could reach out a bit more than my 20 year old Remington 30- 06.
I love the way this 270 shoots and I have shot it out to 300 yards and it's great. But my problem with it is that I have put 34 rounds through it and in those I have had 3 miss fires. Two of them dented the primer but never fired. The 3rd never left a mark. It did fire it aafter reloading the round.
I just don't trust it for hunting. Hate the thought of sighting down on a big buck just to have it go click.

What type of ammo ? Factory ? Handloads?

Make sure the BAS is tight

It's not that hard to check firing pin protrusion thru the bolt face.
After you check the BAS like Gmac mentioned...

I'm shooting the same ammo that I have trusted for 30 years of hunting. Remington Core Lokt in 130gr factory loads as I don't reload or shoot enough to reload.
I'll check out the BAS when I get home and measure the distance the pin is exiting also.

Try disassembling the bolt and cleaning it thoroughly; then relube and reassemble. Perhaps some swarf or schmutz from the manufacturing process is trapped in there impeding the firing pin travel.

PS: Both Swarf and Schmutz are real words.

So if I take it apart (have never done it before but there is a great write up on this sites main page) what is the best lube to use? I have found some info about filing the spring to remove burs that can hang up and make it misfire.

So first I checked the BAS and it was tight. Then I checked the penetration of the firing pin. It protrudes out of the head .052 so that is good.
Then I removed the BAS and handle and this is what I found. The spring is in three pieces. What I don't know is if it was meant to be that way by Savage. The front of the spring almost looks like the little "ring" could have snapped off it and then pinched close to form the ring and not a coil. But the other end near the BAS shows no signs of ever being one piece. Both ends of the spring are ground flat..

http://i1216.photobucket.com/albums/...106_093829.jpg

I don't have the numbers off the gun on me so I can't even call them on it. But I did find the spring on their website. Tried to order it to only have it say that I must be an approved gunsmith thru them to order this part. What a pain. I know they are going to want me to send them the gun to fix it. So remove scope, box up, ship it out have them spend 2 minutes to replace a $2 spring and ship it back to me. Then remount the scope and re-sight it. And opening day is a week away.
Thinking of adding an .125 shim "washer" to the back of the spring to add more preload. What say you?

Deleted my post as I had no idea that Savage now used a three piece spring in the new Axis rifles.
I learn something new every day on this forum!

Its not broken !
No brag , just fact

How did your cocking button come out ? Was the tail of the spring in it?

Its the new axis spring assem. I dont know when thy changed ,but nothing is broken .(springs anyway)

That's the way it's suppose to be,my new Axis 30-06 has the identical spring,so I contacted Savage yesterday,the rep said Savage changed the spring to the 3 piece set up about 6 months ago. However,I've not experiences any failures to fire with my 30-06 Axis,nor with my older 223 Axis,which has the 1 piece firing spring.

Jeff

I agree Gm it's not a broken spring. The front section was cut and had a wicked bur on the inside that is digging into the firing pin body. I used a fine rasp to file that off, a light clean up on the pin body to remove the bur that was caused by the spring and filed the 3rd piece of the spring to remove the burs on that. It seems to move much better.

The cocking button came out easy once I used the tip of an ink pen to push the spring back past the button shaft.

I will call savage tomorrow and see what they say about this. It's not broke but it's not right either. With the three piece spring thing it makes the spring pitch to the side when compressed. This is in turn putting side force on the firing pin. It's showing heavy wear on the opposite side of the pin near the cocking button and opposite of that at the tip. Which tells me it's not allowing the pin to travel true to the bolt.

I also notice that when the spring is assembled onto the pin the end of the spring sits flush with the end of the pin. When I compare that to the picture of the assembled spring on Thomae's writeup (found on the main page of this site) it clearly shows a good 2mm or more of the spring sitting past the end of the pin giving it more pre-load then I have.

Perhaps when this rifle was assembled the firing pin pressure tested to high or to low so to fix it they did this strange stack up of springs.

Ok so if you have already been thru this I'll take that is it is what it is. I think cleaning the burs off the spring will help a lot.

Its my understanding that the new spring design was to eliminate the spring from digging into the BAS , which gave hard bolt lift and under certain conditions would make the BAS begin to unscrew.

That make sense. Having the 3 piece spring does allow the spring to rotate where as a one piece wont. Only problem is the fix for one problem is causing new problems.

Well,so far,my 30-06 Axis has the new spring assembly,and has been 100% reliable,no failures to fire thru 927 rounds. So I can only hope it continues to be 100% reliable,knock on wood.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JRI

That's the way it's suppose to be,my new Axis 30-06 has the identical spring,so I contacted Savage yesterday,the rep said Savage changed the spring to the 3 piece set up about 6 months ago. However,I've not experiences any failures to fire with my 30-06 Axis,nor with my older 223 Axis,which has the 1 piece firing spring.

Jeff

---

My Sav axis .223 has the same 3 piece as fsr402

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Amistoso

My Sav axis .223 has the same 3 piece as fsr402

---

My 223 Axis is 2 years old,it has the single firing spring,unlike the new 3 piece firing pin spring in my 30-06 Axis,the 30-06 I've only had for about 2 months.

Now knowing the issues they were having with the one piece spring digging into the BAS I understand the three piece system. By having the front and rear springs separated by that ring it allows the two halves to rotate independently of each other.
As for my problem with the random misfires, I think it’s a problem with the execution of the three piece spring. They obviously took the one piece spring that they had on hand and cut the tail off it. Then added the ground end spring to replace the end that was removed. When cutting the first spring they left a huge hangnail bur where the spring was cut. When I say huge I’m talking the bur on my spring was all of .02 of an inch. That bur was hanging up on the firing pin. Also when cutting the spring, the cut end is not flat or square to the spring travel which makes the spring pitch to one side as it’s compressed. This pitching just made the bur dig in even more.
After removing all the burs and cleaning things up I’m 90% confident that it will not misfire now. Unfortunately I will not have a chance to confirm that it’s good before opening day. I’m planning now to have both this gun and my old trusty 30-06 in my blind. If I get a shot under 100 yards I’ll just use the 30-06 but if it’s out there 200+ yards I may risk the misfire and use the 270. It all depends on where the deer is and what it’s doing.
Thanks for all the help If not for you all and this site I would have been making a angry phone call and making an ass of myself.

The whole matter of rotation could have been handled with a single small captured Torrington bearing on the firing pin side and a small slot for the spring tail to chuck into on the other end and it would have been a lot more reliable and durable and would never apply any side loading or drag on the striker. Engineering fail. I wonder how much a 3-piece spring (jeebus I can't believe I just typed those words in that order, it's like contemplating a 17-piece hammer) costs to produce/purchase and how much man time it takes to make sure they put each of the 3 on in the right order.

I agree there are a number of ways this could have been fixed and all of them a better way then this. But Looking at it as this is their "cheap" gun and most likely they have a surplus of the old spring they must have felt that chopping the old spring and adding a "off the shelf" spring behind it was the fast and cheap fix. Maybe it will change again. Maybe this was a temp fix until a better way was made that still was not expensive.
Who knows.
If I do end up with misfires still I think I'll laser cut a few shims and adjust the pre-load pressure. I really do think that removing the burs will fix it. Though the side pressure caused by the 3 piece spring will cause premature wear on the pin and bolt.

why not hit up Numrich at www.gunpartscorp.com and get an old style single piece spring and retro fit it? If you can laser cut you can deal with any of the real nasty bits of modification from a retrofit and you can still use the laser cut shims as bearings if necessary. Having not taken my savage bolts apart I'm working off my view of a mauser bolt with is a bit dissimilar.

Unless i am mistaking your meaning, one can't put a bearing on the firing pin side (muzzle end) of the spring because the straight piece on the end of the spring is needed to go down the firing pin slot and capture the cocking piece pin shaft.
However, on the breech end, smoothing the spring end and the inside of the BAS (if there is a burr) helps a lot and is not hard. A thrust bearing that goes around the firing pin shaft shaft helps even more.

No you're understanding me but I hadn't noticed the pigtail before. The bearing plate should be able to be fabricated with a leg to do the same job but I see now why they cheaped out. The part would need to be pretty tough and have a polished surface to avoid galling. Dern. I'm going to take my bolt apart tonight and see if I can't actually design the part. Then I'll let the design out and someone else can manufacture them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by r3dn3ck

No you're understanding me but I hadn't noticed the pigtail before. The bearing plate should be able to be fabricated with a leg to do the same job but I see now why they cheaped out. The part would need to be pretty tough and have a polished surface to avoid galling. Dern. I'm going to take my bolt apart tonight and see if I can't actually design the part. Then I'll let the design out and someone else can manufacture them.

---

That would be awesome of you!

Thought I would give an update on this.
I got up to my hunting land in the afternoon of 11-14 opening morning was the next day. I went out to my blind and got things setup and then I set a pumpkin (about 6 inches in dia.) out on the next ridge. Ranged it at 160 yards so close enough. I then put 5 rounds thru the Axis without any issues. But being only 5 rounds I was still a bit leery of a misfire. So I left the gun in the blind over night and carried my old 30-06 out with me as a back up.

Here is my blind, I want to take down the little one in front of it but my old man wants to use it for turkey hunting in the spring.
http://i1216.photobucket.com/albums/...95977797_n.jpg


Well, opening morning came and at 7:22 am I seen a deer come out of some pines to my left. I pull up the Axis take a quick peek and what do you know it's a buck. We don't see a lot of bucks around us, they all go nocturnal in October.
Anyways it had antlers and I have an empty freezer. I knew that the area he was in was between 100-140 yards and he was moving closer to me. I set my parallax at 100 yards, turned the power up a bit on the scope (4-12X50 Nicon Buckmaster) and found his front shoulder. Luck have it he stopped and looked up at me. I moved to the back side of his shoulder as now I don't have to lead him any and touched it off. Axis fired as it should. Buck spun and ran over the next ridge and behind some pines and I lost sight of him.

I waited an hour then went for a walk. Found him about 200 yards from where I shot him. Lung and liver where hit hard and due to the angle he was standing Got just a bit of the guts on the way out but not bad at all.

He does not look all that big but he was just shy of 130 pounds dressed out. I would guess that the antlers are bad genetics, DNR aged him at 20 months.
http://i1216.photobucket.com/albums/...72549438_n.jpg

Sunday morning I had three does come out. The last one was the biggest. I put the Axis on her as she stopped to check out the pumpkin that I had test fired on Wednesday. Then she started walking before I could get the shot off. My next opening was about 40 yards to the north and she was heading for it. I waited for her to step out, found the kill zone and fired. Axis did it's job once again. She ran hard, the other two ran but not like she did so I knew I hit her. Waited about 30 minutes then went looking for her. She had only gone about 30 yards and left a good 2 foot wide blood trail. Sold heart and lung shot. She was just a few pounds lighter then the buck but I did not take a picture of her.

In the end I hunted for 7 days only seen 15 deer total and got the first deer and the last deer I seen.
The axis performed flawlessly and I really enjoy shooting it.
Next week I will take it apart and start working on the new stock for it.