Bolt body

Does anybody know why savage changed the bolt body design . It looks like the newer style is tapered or narrowed where the cocking pin goes through. Thanks , Jim

I know why, but it's a long story.

Fred , are they interchangeable as long as you use the new style cocking pin ? Thanks , Jim

The cocking piece pin is specific to the bolt body style. The new "relieved" style uses a cocking piece pin that has a thicker head on it. The old style full cylindrical bolt body uses a pin with a thinner head. The thicker head pin will not work on the old style body.
This all started about 1999 in the left hand models. One of the biggest problems was the cocking piece pin would drop into the sear slot upon cocking, causing things to bind terribly.The answer was to make the head of the pin wider than the slot, so it would not drop in. To accomplish this, the bolt body had to be relieved around the cocking ramp to accommodate the thicker head. It was then, that the powers that be, figured out they would have to make 2 different cocking piece pins. So to keep parts to a minimum, they changed the right hand models over to a relieved bolt body also to use the same pin.

Fred , thank you very much for the info . Good thing we have you around to keep us up on the changes. Thanks , Jim