A17 early range report

dodgeman308

dodgeman308

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Smiths falls, Ontario
So after getting off to a bit if a rough start, as I was not very impressed by the initial unboxing of the new savage A17, things are looking better..

Once I got it out to my dad's place we fired off a few magazines of hornady 17 grain ammo, the rifle failed to #### itself or chamber a round on the second shot.. Consistently for each of the 10 round mags..

I mounted a vortex viper 2.5-10 on top of it using burris sig zee rings, and just the look of the gun with a scope on it makes it look better lol

We then set up a target at 25 just to get it on paper, using winchester 17 grain ammo we had to adjust quite a bit but the scope tracked very well, each group of 2 rounds (marked in black) was adjusted up 1 full turn of the turret, and then adjusted left 1 full turn where we then took the target to 50 yards and fired the 5 shot group which was not bad..

We then took the target out to 100 and fired that last 5 shot group and honestly for being the ammo that it is ( we have not had luck with it in any of our .17's so we felt it good to waste) it worked very well for being a semi auto..

Now we didn't get very serious about it tonight as the scope is comjng back off and the +\- inserts are going in to adjust the scope a bit closer to start off, I really need to get some of the cci a17 ammo as well.. The winchester had a lot of fail to eject fail to chamber.. So as of right now I am seeing that this rifle will NOT cycle any normal ammunition contrary to what savage would have you believe.. Maybe it just needs to get broke in.. Time will tell..

As for the trigger.. It is horrendous.. Lots of creep and feels like it's 8 pounds.. As well as the accutrigger blade being equally as difficult to draw back to the trigger...

All in all I think the fit and finish is about standard for savage but so is the accuracy so far.. With the proper ammo and a serious trigger job, I feel this rifle has great potential to be very accurate semi auto 17 hmr.. And yes it is very fun to shoot..
More to come in the next few weeks..
 

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Didn't go into it yet, going to wait and see how it reacts to the cci a17 ammo, it's very possible that it just requires that little bit extra pressure to fully open the bolt and clock/chamber another round
 
I haven't tried anything but the a17 ammo. But I'm having a great time with mine! Disagree about the trigger comments mine is a dream! I've put over 1000 rounds of the a17 through mine I love it!
 
I picked one of these up last week and took it out to the range with two different types of ammo: Remington accutips and CCI v-max. I have read that these guns don't like old ammo but I didn't have any real issues. Out of the 100 rounds, the action didn't blow back far enough to pick up four rounds but there was no stove piping. The only thing that I did to the rifle before shooting it was to run a bore snake down the barrel. I have owned at least dozen Volquartsen rifles in the four rimfire rounds (17mach 2, 17hmr, 22lr and 22 magnum) and no the A17 does not come close to the quality of them, but I actually like this gun more than the Volquartsens. Once Boyds makes a decent replacement stock I will get one and trade out the factory one. The trigger, I can live with. As far as accuracy goes, the A17 is all right at 50 meters (1/2 to 3/4 inch groups) and my best 5 shot groups were around 2.5 inches at 100 meters. The Volquartsens would put 25 rounds into a 3/4 group at a hundred meters with the 17hmr. There have been quite a few stories about the Volquartsens firing out of battery and blowing the clip up and out of the magazine inflicting damage to the shooters hands and faces and while this never happened to me with any of my 17 caliber rifles, there have been incidents where the fired round was noticeably louder. In the end I felt that it was just a matter of time before something happened to me or to someone who was shooting my gun so I sold the guns . ( And yes, I did voice my concerns to the new owners). The people at Volquartsen have passed the message on that people shooting their 17hmr rifles should only use CCI or Winchester ammunition. While I won't hold my hand under the magazine while shooting the Savage A17 rifle, I am not worried that it is going to blow up in my face. I plan to go out tomorrow and shoot some other types of ammo to see if the gun will do better at 100 meters and if not, it will be my 50-75 meter gopher gun and I will have a blast. By the way, it is a $500 gun that works.
 
It's possible that I got one that has a bad trigger.. It is simply terrible, I also ran a bore snake down the barrel before shooting, the gun is what it is.. It's an affordable semi auto 17 hmr, it is definitely fun to shoot and i look forward to seeing how the A17 ammo will shoot out of it, I also really look forward to getting it into a Boyd's when they make one... I've got a second a17 rifle on it's way and should be here first week of July so I will compare the triggers.. I will also check the actual weight with the digital trigger gauge and get back to you, please comment with what your triggers are set at if you don't mind so I can compare... And as of right now mine is a $500 gun that doesn't work reliably.. Hopefully the cci A17 ammo will change that.. Maybe after a few hundred rounds the spring will soften up a bit and will allow for reliable cycling of the (slightly) lower velocity ammunition..
 
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Ok well as it turns out I must be just too used to shooting the target accutrigger... (And picky I guess)
The trigger pull gauge says the blade pulls back with 1 pound 8 ounces of pull and the trigger breaks at 2 pounds 10 ounces...which isn't bad at all by the numbers.. There is a bit of creep to it.. But again I guess I'm a bit spoiled with the target trigger..
 
Lol. I also might be looking at this perticular rifle wrong as a whole! I bought this just to have fun with. Maybe use to clean up the back yard. A toy in a sense. I did have expectations for it but really not to high! It is very cheaply made but that's why it's only $400. I put a reasonably cheap rim fire scope on it and I'm have so much fun with it. Anyways I'm glad a couple of you are being serious with it and I look forward to hearing more thoughts on it. :)
 
I think you are on the right path really, I think I had too high hopes for it and should really just treat it as a really fun alternative to my ruger 10/22.. Should be a blast in the gopher patch in July when I head out to Moose Jaw
 
dodgeman308 said:
I think you are on the right path really, I think I had too high hopes for it and should really just treat it as a really fun alternative to my ruger 10/22.. Should be a blast in the gopher patch in July when I head out to Moose Jaw
Click to expand...

Good luck in July! Our season around here is dwindling.. The alfalfa is getting way too long..
 
As an update.. Managed to get some A17 ammo, completely stripped the gun and fully cleaned everything and re lubed everything that needed it,
Went and fired the hornady again, failed to chamber and failed to #### every second round...

Fired the federal blue box and it cycled every round flawlessly...

Fired the A17 ammunition, failed to chamber, failed to ####, 1-2 of every 10 rounds...

Tried again with 5 rounds in the mag, cycled them perfectly..
So it seems to be hit and miss...

Also on another note, tried the A17 in the cz455 thumbhole and it fired very well and as good it better accuracy and consistency as the next best we have found.. Which happens to be the federal blue box 17 grain..

Going to put a couple hundred more rounds through the A17 and see how it works and I'll do another update
 
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This thread is bumming me out...I wanted one of these! lol Thanks for the report dodgeman308, I appreciate it..and..the honesty. I spotted some A17 ammo for sale a few weeks ago, so I grabbed 2 boxes of it. ($$$=ouch!) I'm hoping it shoots well out of my Marlin 917, might be a dandy gopher-spatter when the time comes. If it isn't accurate...I'll have a little laying around I don't need. lol
 
Dodge man! That's sooooo crazy! I would start thinking about sending it back! Mine has fired perfect out of the box! I've had one failure to load in the 1000 rounds I've put through mine
 
Yeah I'm going to fire some more and if it doesn't clear up then I will be contacting savage, there is another one inbound and should get here in the next week or two, I will compare the two and go from there.. It does shoot pretty accurately tho which is nice
 
I was reading about feeding problems on another forum (maybe rimfirecentral or savageshooters)...hopefully the issues get resolved, I want one soon lol
 
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