At the moment, I have 3 Savage centerfire rifles on-hand. The oldest, a late pre-bankruptcy long action that I now have a .243 barrel on, has a bolt which is assembled differently than 'normal.' I bought this gun new, and nobody has ever had the bolt apart, so I know it came from Savage this way. Honestly, I've never really even looked at it and actually noticed this before, but the 'bent' washer is between the bolt head and the baffle, rather than behind the baffle. Why is this? Does it actually matter? Can I reverse the order to make it like my other Savages?

This all came about because I was looking at taking the longer baffle/bolt stop out of my 10FP's bolt and swapping it with the 'std' baffle out of this long action which is now a 243. Then the 243's bolt wouldn't have quite so much 'extra' travel, and the 223 FP could cycle the longer-COAL cartridges I want to load & shoot. Yes, I know I need to remove the magazine spacer, too.

Thoughts?