Sako a7 mag problems

prairie lover

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southern MB
Have sako a7 300 win mag. Bought a spare mag as cabelas was clearing them out for 100 bucks. Due to them being discontinued and me wanting to take it on an elk hunt late this month I figure this was a solid idea.

Gun has only fired 50 rounds for load development. I generally single feed at the bench. If I inserted this new 3 shot mag with the bolt closed, and tried to cycle a round, the first round will not feed. Rounds 2 and 3 will.

What happens is the rear of the round doesn't lift. Bolt rides over top. You can see the clear gap in the rear of the feed lips, it raises fine in the front. The new mag does this 9 times out of 10. Low and behold I try the mag that came with the rifle and it does this 4 times out of 10. Opening the bolt slower makes it worse.

I have another a7 in 6.5 creed with 2 mags. Flawless

I've had 2 tikka 6 round 223 do exactly this. They were replaced under warranty and the replacements have worked fine ever since.

Anyone else have this issue with the bigger cased a7 mags?
 
I had to squeeze the steel lips together on my A7 [gently], maybe when you single load you have been spreading the lips further apart, that is what happened to mine after I fixed it I was careful to load the mag by sliding the rounds in from the rear of the magazine, never happened again.
 
I had to squeeze the steel lips together on my A7 [gently], maybe when you single load you have been spreading the lips further apart, that is what happened to mine after I fixed it I was careful to load the mag by sliding the rounds in from the rear of the magazine, never happened again.

I load them by sliding under. The new one has only been filled 10 times. Malfunctioned on 9 of them.
 
One came with the rifle new. The other one was new out of the box, clearly said 300 win mag. They are identical. The spring on them is just lackluster. Nothing like a x bolt mag.

That is strange. The only problem I read about before buying my A7 was that the cartridges could pop out of the mag on their own. You're having the opposite effect.
 
That is strange. The only problem I read about before buying my A7 was that the cartridges could pop out of the mag on their own. You're having the opposite effect.

I've seen pics of the early mags beside the later updated mags, the later mags had the feed lips come around the round further. I sent both mags off the the warrenty center today. Hopefully they can do something in a decent time frame, I have an elk tag for the end of the month and was hoping to carry the sako.
 
I was on my elk hunt last year and had a similar thing happen to me. From what I assume is because I may have sat on the mag at one point during transit. The rounds started to be difficult to extract from the mag. Upon inspection the metal lips appeared separated further than necessary when the bolt was grabbing the cartridge it would try to go up(instead of forward) and get caught between the lips. It would still feed but I had to jack the new round in there very fast in order to not get hung up. I did some research and found that it was a common problem with 300wm mags. I decided to leave it alone until the hunt was done. I ended up putting 3 rapid shots in a bull without any hiccups. But when I got home I bent the lips slightly in and it seemed to be feeding better.

I also purchased a new mag from cabelas on their sale and assumed it would be a fine mag without issues but now I need to test mine sooner rather than later. Thanks for the heads up.
 
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