Savage 99 E question

[762shooter]

I recently picked up a Savage 99 E. It uses the sliding bar on the bottom of the receiver tang as a trigger safety and lever lock. There is very little resistance on this slider, it doesn't stay reliably in the safe position. I've looked at a poor quality schematic that seems to show a "Lever lock spring" but I can't see the spring clearly. What I found when I took the slider out was that there was a felt pad a bit thicker than the sliding bar itself in the square hole for the spring. Is this the correct method of adding some resistance to this safety bar or should it have an actual steel spring?

As always, thanks for the help guys!

 

[MadDog]

It should be a steel spring, Savage never used felt pads on any gun, I highly doubt any gun company did.

I don't have any 99E's or I'd get you a size. Wonder if it's the same size as the pre-mil 99F's and EG's, doubt they changed the sizes from model to model to keep assembly easy.

You could try Western gun parts in Edmonton, or maybe Wolff gun springs in the U.S.