Firing pin spring tension
I'd heard in the past from an experienced competitor that he changed the firing pin spring in his custom actioned rifle every year to avoid ignition problems causing vertical downrange. At the time I had a bunch of rounds over 5-6 yrs thru my main comp gun and no indication of any problem, so I just filed it away under "interesting, but not sure if I buy it".
More recently a friend was having some issues with erratic ES using a known good load in his comp gun - with a custom action. After some discussion, I mentioned the bit about the spring as I was out of any better ideas. Lo & behold, it worked.
After asking around a bit it sounds like this is a somewhat common thing with some of the custom actions out there... but I don't think I've run across anyone with a factory action - Savage or Rem-chester - that either has this problem or that changes the firing pin spring regularly.
So.... figured I'd ask here: has anyone else ran into this, or otherwise gave experience with it on their Savage action?