A22 magnum

[Dinosaur1]

Just got this a week ago and I’m disappointed. Cleaned it and took it out. The magazine will not clip in with the action closed but that is just a common Savage trait. It is a pita to load. That comes with the Savage magazine design but I wanted a flush magazine. This action would be better in a B style stock. Don’t know why they don’t use that more often. Two piece scope bases. Would be better with one. It doesn’t look like mine are exactly straight or level with the action or each other but some of that could be stock to action fit. Fit and finish are good. Mounted the scope and out to the back yard with CCI 40 grain hp. A lot of fail to fire light strikes. Looked on line and apparently this is a common problem. Several times it let off two or three shots at what appeared to be full auto. Thought maybe it was me being clumsy so I adjusted the trigger pull up ( strange looking tool there ). Still letting off two shots for one trigger pull at times and I was paying attention. I quit monkeying with it. I realize that Savage makes a price point rifle for the most part and they are “shooters” and not collectors but this little rifle has some design problems. My question is, has anyone else had one go off twice or three times with one trigger pull? Anyone have light strikes?

[J A XSP]

I obsessed over getting one of these for quite a long time before I finally found one. Paid full price. Never been very happy with it. The trigger was atrocious but worked pretty reliably. I did some spring work and got it down a lot in weight but then it would double fire occasionally. Finally got it settled in and decent but the safety trigger won't reset when the trigger is released slowly and you have to push it forward. That part's all me, though. If I could live with the weight and feel of the factory trigger, it would have functioned fairly well. As it is, the trigger is fully functional and feels good but it's just quirky.

Only ammo that won't feed and fire and eject pretty well is the 35 grain stuff. Anything in the normal weight bullets functions okay. I found that the ejector notch on the barrel was mis-aligned with the ejector claw so I made a barrel wrench and rotated the barrel slightly to fix that. I haven't had time to shoot it much to check if that helped with the sporadic ejection problems, especially on the lighter stuff or whether it helped or hurt the accuracy.

In terms of accuracy, it's always been just so-so. Not terrible for a rimfire semi but nothing I'd consider particularly good. Probably 1.5 MOA is about the best with any ammo. I worked on bedding the stock screws and the recoil lug but that didn't seem to help at all and in fact seemed to make it less accurate. I suspect that screw tension is a big factor whether it's bedded or not. Even though it's probably throwing good money after bad, I'm tempted to see how it does with a decent laminate stock - the factory plastic thing is just worthless for a lot of reasons.

I didn't find that the magazine was much trouble on mine, I'd already read all the reviews that noted how finicky it is and so I open the bolt to change mags and really seat the magazine forcefully. As a result, it almost always locks in and feeds fine. It's still a total PIA to load, though.

I did a comparison between the A-22M and the much cheaper Rossi 22mag semi and wrote up a post about it. You might look that up. The bottom line is that for the money, the Rossi is totally solid and is at least as accurate as the Savage, at least as far as I've been able to get it to shoot.

[Dinosaur1]

Thanks for the reply Jaxsp. I agonized over getting mine too and paid the full price. Good to know I’m not the only one getting double fires. Like stated above, the only reason I got it was for the flush mag. When you’re thrashing through the brush in pitch black the mags that stick out get caught on everything. I read some good and some bad reviews. In fact I think I read yours before I bought. Should have paid attention. My bad. Waiting on Savage now.

[J A XSP]

The thing about that rifle is that it's still the best looking 22 mag on the market IMO and I like having it. I just hope I can eventually get it to shoot with some real accuracy (without investing a bunch more money). When I get a chance to get back to the range with it, I'll be able to see if my barrel-timing had any impact. Extraction and ejection has been bad on the light-weight stuff and it would be nice to be able to see if that stuff shoots accurately. The CCI A-22M ammo is supposed to be designed for this rifle and should do some good. I'll keep messing with it. I don't see selling it off...for one thing, I'd have to rebuild the trigger to factory specs before I'd want to pass it on to anyone else. :)
Let's just keep shooting them and hope they break in eventually and settle down. :)

[J.Baker]

And now you know why I don't own an A-series rifle. I tested two different A17's when they first came out. The first would barely function with the supplied magazine jamming up after almost every shot. Savage sent me out three replacement magazines to try and they were each better to differing degree's, but none of them cured the problem 100%. Savage then sent me a second rifle to test and it was better (worked right 95% of the time), but still not 100% reliable.

I also had two or three of the multiple round strings on a single trigger pull incidents during my testing. I don't recall if I mentioned them in my review, but I did let Savage know about it as that's a HUGE issue in terms of both safety and legally in regards to NFA compliance.

The other problem I had with the rifle was getting peppered in the face right below the eye several times with what I assume was unburnt powder kernels. Being a lefty that kind of comes with the territory when shooting right-hand semi-auto's, but it occurred so frequently with these rifles that I would never be comfortable shooting one without wearing safety glasses. No other right-handed semi-auto rifle or shotgun I've ever shot had pepper my face soo much or so consistently.

I think most of the reliability issue stems from how the magazines lock into the stocks, more specifically the consistency of the height of the lock-in notch from mold cavity to mold cavity which allows the height at which the mag locks in to vary slightly. Given the locking notch on the magazine is also on a molded plastic piece and also likely varies slightly from mold to mold, it can easily become a matter of stacked tolerances that while each piece on it's own falls within the accepted tolerance - once the two tolerances are combined they fall out of a workable range and cause the inconsistent feeding issue.

I also feel the version of the AccuTrigger used on the A-series rifles is a complete pile of crap. One thing I noted in my testing of the two A17 rifles, and experienced again in the A22 I tested, was that the feel of the AccuTrigger on these guns was oddly inconsistent shot-to-shot. Measuring a large number of trigger pulls with my gauge showed the pull weight was fairly consistent, but the feel of the pulls with the finger would noticeably vary. Some would be nice and smooth, others would feel gritty or notchy. Even a total disassembly and cleaning/lubing of the trigger assembly didn't help it any.

Like most things Savage these days, I think the A-series rifles are of a good design - they just need to pay more attention to the details and spend those few extra pennies per unit to make them right rather than cutting corners to hit a price point by using plastic bits at critical points. That's been an industry wide trend in recent years though so I wouldn't hold my breath on Savage changing their ways anytime soon.

[Back2Wyo]

I have one of each of the A series, 22, 22M 17HM2, and 17HMR. Yes you have to put the magazine in with the bolt open. I looks that it was designed that way. As to the triggers, I have Jards in all of mine and they are in Boyd stocks.
You need to pull the bolt apart and clean the bolt, firing pin and the lock bolt on the 22M and 17HMR. Put it back to gather and I use MPro synthetic grease on the bolt and lock lug.
Also check the recoil spring and make sure there are no coils binding. You might have to twist the spring to reduce the bulging.

All 4 of mine shoot without issues.