Broken bolthead retaining Pin

While trying a new stock on my 110E 7mm Rem Mag I noted the bolthead retaning pin had broken. The bolt wouldn't work, and I noticed it lodged in the bolt raceway, not letting the bolt rotate. I was able to dissassemble the bolt and extract the whole bolt and recover the broken parts.
Looking up online I note that Midway sells a small and large one, apparently differing by date of manufacture - 1999 onwards.
The large hole .150" prior to 1999 and the 0.100 one after that.
I called Savage and was only told no further information was available except that the gun based on the SN was manufactured prior to 1995 and to call Numrich.

Numrich has a "Bolt Head Retaining Pin, Firing Pin Hole 0.140"

Anyone knows of all the guns prior to 1999 had the large hole pin, I can easily confirm with calipers that it is not the 0.1, but not sure if the Numrich 0.140 would fit better than the Midway 0.150?

Thanks

Dry firing has been suspect for broken Bolt head Retaining/Cross pin.


What does your firing pin measure?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Robinhood

Dry firing has been suspect for broken Bolt head Retaining/Cross pin.

---

That's what I read

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Robinhood

What does your firing pin measure?

---

will measure as sson as I can when I get home. If under .140 I assume either one will work, but is tighter fitting better in this case?

I am sorry for your annoyance.

I had not read that dry firing can break it so new to me and good to know (I do have snap caps for both my current calibers and use them for the most part) \\

Make that SOP now.

The older large hole cross pins have broken due to improper heat treat, not dry firing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sharpshooter

The older large hole cross pins have broken due to improper heat treat, not dry firing.

---

Will replacement ones suffer the same fate? Luckily it happened at home, not during a hunt.

My understanding was that the original firing pin was large diameter at the cross pin.
The small diameter was introduced for magnum calibers(if I remember right, it was so there was more meat left in the center of the pin).
Now all use the small diameter firing pin / cross pin.

I believe a large diameter firing pin setup can be replaced with a small diameter firing pin / small hole cross pin / small hole bolt head.
Not something that I would do for no reason, but if changing calibers / bolt heads and only small hole bolt heads are available, then it
would be another story.

Hope that helps,
Adam.

^^^^yep. I had the same problem a couple times. Freaked me out the first time. Could not figure out right away what had happened. Best bet is what adam said. Easier route would be to just replace the pin with original style, but it will likely break again.

The pins that were more apt to break were older vintage manufacture, around late 80's, early 90's. According to my source it was only one batch.

I measured the firing pin. It is 0.146", that answers the question, Only the 0.150" will fit. If I purchase a new firing pin, and smaller retaining pin, will anything else be needed to make it work, or bolthead for small firing pin would also be needed?

You would need a bolt head for the small diameter firing pin.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by adammiddagh

You would need a bolt head for the small diameter firing pin.

---

The other way around.

Since his bolt head was built for a large pin, it is fine.

If he was putting a small pin bolt head on a large pin, he'd have to drill it out. I've done that to a couple bolt heads just to make sure they will work on all my bolt assemblies.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Robinhood

Dry firing has been suspect for broken Bolt head Retaining/Cross pin.



What does your firing pin measure?

---

Yikes, I was under the impression that it was safe to dry fire centerfire (without snap caps).

It is safe, the situation has nothing to do with dry firing.

I know this is an old thread but it was the one which got me started in the right direction to repair my 110 and I'm sure its already been addressed. So I thought I'd pass on what I've learned on this. I have an old 110 which was originally a 270 from way back, then a 280 AI, and now a 9.3x62. This rifle was seldom if ever dry fired so I don't believe this causes this problem. This was a design flaw which is why Savage went to the .100" diameter firing pin. This makes the retaining pin thicker and stronger where the firing pin passes thru. Years of opening and closing the bolt on tight neck sized ammo no doubt contributed to this. In my case, the pin had been cracked on one side for some time and having rebarreled to 9.3 and the heavier recoil and tight headspacing snapped the other side. The fix is a new bolt head for the smaller diameter firing pin, new smaller firing pin, and new bolt head retaining pin with the small firing pin hole. I recently bought the parts from a place in Texas for about $60. Put it together and its good to go. I hope this post helps someone like me who had this happen but never knew why or how to fix it. Thanks for heading me in the right direction. I still have another one even older that I need to disassemble and check. The place where I found all my parts is The Gun Shack. https://www.gunshack.com/savage-parts

Yep, clearly it had to be a design flaw. :rolleyes: 40+ years of 110's out there equipped with the larger firing pins and we rarely ever hear of one breaking.

As Fred (sharpshooter) noted, it was limited to one batch of cross pins that had a bad heat treat. NOT from dry-firing, NOT a design flaw.

Is the newer small FP design stronger? Yes. That doesn't necessarily make the old design flawed or defective. There's plenty of 40-60 year old 110's out there with the large FP that have bad the bolt cycled or been dry fired tens of thousands of times and never had an issue.

Sorry, but I just get annoyed when people hypothesize and and make assumptions and then spread it around the internet like it's fact because then others who don't know any better read it and pass that bad information along like it's the gospel.

I dont believe its bad information for a couple reasons. 1. the pin is super thin and in a stressful spot. 2. Savage no longer makes the large variety and told me to replace the parts with the smaller version.
I agree there are thousands out there that have never had issues but who knows how many times they get fired or if they are fired with tight fitting handloads.

I’m going to go J.Baker on this one. All too often we call a design compromise a design flaw. All systems, machines and part have weaknesses due to compromises that are made during the design of a produce or part.