I have a 99E. ser. 1027475. Three to four times out of 10 the rifle “fires” when I pull the lever up, not touching the trigger at all. Except for one time, this has only happened if there was a cartridge involved. If the rifle is unloaded, and I work the lever, it functions normally, just staying cocked when the lever is fully up. It will stay cocked overnight. In the one exception, I loaded a dummy round, and closed the breech, and it did not “fire”. I opened the breech and ejected the dummy, and closed the breech again with the lever, and then it “fired”, not thouching the trigger at any time.


If I load a dummy round, (and sadly in one case, a live round) the rifle “fires” when I close the breech by pulling the lever up. If a dummy round is used “firing” means it just clicks and the little brass pin drops down and after the click the trigger won’t click it again because it is no longer cocked.


I don’t always hear the click when I pull the lever up because that makes some noise, but I see the brass pin (cocking indicator?) drop. The one noise masks the other.


After the accidental discharge I stopped using live ammo, so I’ve only discharged the rifle once since I’ve owned it. During subsequent testing, on two occasions the the lever came all the way up, breech closed, and then after about a one second delay the rifle “fired”.


I’m using “fired” in quotes to indicate that I’m not using live ammo anymore. All “firing” is just clicks, except for one firing which was with live ammo.


Anybody out there seen this before? I’ve been to two good gunsmiths. No joy.