Design issue with Lightweight Hunter trigger guard vs. rear action screw?

In stripping my Lightweight Hunter I've noticed something strange. First, the Savage manuals and parts diagrams are wrong. The LWH has a plastic mag well through which the front and rear action screws go into the pillars thence into the action. Savage was very smart and put two steel bushings of different heights that nest into the mag well holes. Thus when the action screws are tightened, it's action screw to bushing, bushing to pillar, and pillar to action; all metal to metal. EXCEPT: the rear action screw first goes through the front hole in the plastic trigger guard. So there's a layer of plastic between the screw head and the steel bushing which fits under the trigger guard. This seems like a big problem as a) relates to maintaing torque on the rear action screw, and b) longterm damage from the steel to plastic trigger guard.

Has anyone looked at their rifle that has this kind of setup? I have messages into Savage, but this just looks bizarre.

Thanks,

Robert

I broke my trigger guard the first time I tried to reassemble the rifle. I was pretty upset with such a poor design and called them and told them so! They sent me a new one. Now I am extremely careful when I tear it down and I don't torque it down like my other rifles.

That's just what I didn't want to hear. So if you can't torque down the rear screw all that much, how does the rifle shoot with unequal torqing? Mine is in 6.5 Creedmoor and I haven't fired it yet.

This is a bad bad bad design. I may have to ponder a rework. Which would have to mean adding 3rd screw, probably a wood screw, into the trigger guard and drilling out the action screw hole to allow it to snug up against the rear steel bushing in the mag well.

well there's no place for an additional screw. Tomorrow I'll measure everything carefully to see if a new bushing design will work.

Two possible fixes, replace trigger guard with metal one, or make a metal bushing & epoxy it into the trigger guard. Make the bushing to thick & you may need longer screw.

I have a SA and LA LWH. The plastic parts suck eggs. Solved the dilemma by switching to a Metal BBR trigger guard.

I don't have any other savages with the bottom bolt release but I was under the impression that they are the same as the lwh. Em I wrong?

Today I spent some time with a caliper, and magnifying glasses, and as a result have a complete understanding of the design (I think...), and have even learned a hidden surprise.

The bad news is, indeed there is some amount of plastic in the steel sandwich when the rear action screw is tightened down. To be fair, it's less than I thought. You see, there is actually a metal bushing that is either pressed or molded in to the action screw hole in the trigger guard. A magnet is how I found it. Sadly this part does not go all the way through the thickness of the trigger guard. This leaves (by my visual guesstimate) 0.060-0.70 thou of plastic that is put under pressure when you tighten the rear action screw.

To remove this plastic from the equation is somewhat simple. A bushing that resembles the rear action screw bushing that protects the hole of the plastic mag well should be fabricated. The hole in the sheet metal part that holds the bolt release spring needs to be reamed out so it's slightly larger than the newly fabricated bushing.

Now, the bushing height must be the distance from the assembled parts that is measured from the bottom of the rear pillar, through the rear action screw existing bushing, through the enlarged hole in the sheet metal part, to the exterior/top of the rear action screw bushing. hole formed in the trigger.

I.e. when the screw is tightened it would apply force directly to the bushing, which would transmit the force directly to the existing bushing for the rear action screw, which then transmits force to the pillar; all metal to metal.

The above design is a bit of a kludge though (obviously). Ideally there would be a single long bushing from the trigger guard to the pillar. However Savage uses the existing rear bushing to hold the mag well in place, which means a single bushing woul need a flange at the top and somewhat midway down. If this were done however you couldn't slide the bushing in during assembly.

An alternative would be to make a long bushing that telescopes inside the existing bushing and holes. Unfortunately there's not much room for that. The action screw is 0.248 in diameter and the hole in the existing bushing is 0.432. And there's still the issue of the action screw needing to compress plastic...

I may order some spare parts and see about making a prototype stackable bushing.

Today I spent some time with a caliper, and magnifying glasses, and as a result have a complete understanding of the design (I think...), and have even learned a hidden surprise.

The bad news is, indeed there is some amount of plastic in the steel sandwich when the rear action screw is tightened down. To be fair, it's less than I thought. You see, there is actually a metal bushing that is either pressed or molded in to the action screw hole in the trigger guard. A magnet is how I found it. Sadly this part does not go all the way through the thickness of the trigger guard. This leaves (by my visual guesstimate) 0.060-0.70 thou of plastic that is put under pressure when you tighten the rear action screw.

To remove this plastic from the equation a the existing bushing needs to be removed from the trigger guard and a new one fabricated that is just long enough to make contact with the existing sheet metal part that holds the bolt release button in place.

When the screw is tightened it would apply force directly to the bushing, which would transmit the force directly to the the sheet metal part, which would transmit force to the existing bushing for the rear action screw, which then transmits force to the pillar; all metal to metal.

The above design is a bit of a kludge though (obviously). Ideally there would be a single long bushing from the trigger guard to the pillar. However Savage uses the existing rear bushing to hold the mag well in place, which means a single bushing would need a flange at the top and somewhat midway down. If this were done however you couldn't slide the bushing in during assembly.

I may order some spare parts and see about making a prototype stackable bushing, and see if it's viable, or if it gives me any further ideas.

[Some time later]

Actually the simplest solution for this might just be a steel washer machined to the thickness of the air gap between the bushing in the trigger guard, and the sheet metal bolt release button retaining plate. I know what I'll be doing tomorrow.

Side note: there really aren't that many threads on either action screw that engage the holes in the action. I wonder how much other rifles use?

The simplest solution is get a steel trigger guard....