Savage Mod. 25 .223 Walking Varminter problem

[gerry303ca]

I bought a new Savage walking Varminter in late May and am still not satisfied with it. The first box of Winchester wouldn't extract from the chamber without being fired unless I tapped the bolt handle numerous times with a plastic hammer. The case would extract easily after being fired but gave poor groups. The first cartridge in a loaded mag took several attempts to chamber, the second not quite so bad. The last 2 fed OK. I then tried a box of Fed. American Eagle. Three didn't fire leaving a shallow dent in the primer. The group size was much better and there was no extraction problem. I called Savage (Canada) and they told me to send it back which I did. A week or so later I received a rifle in return, but it was a .22LR semi-auto, not my .223. Called and complained and was told to send it back and they would try to locate mine and return it. It eventually arrived, with a note that they honed & polished the chamber, fired 4 shots through it, and it functioned OK. There was no difference. I called again and they told me to return it again, which I did. It was returned, missing the screw behind the trigger guard, but still worked the same way. I found the missing screw in the plastic bag the rifle was in. The note on the Repair Tracking form said: Loaded rounds and spent cases ejected freely with no effort.. no malfunctions found. Head space gauges normal. Firing pin strike is good. There was a hand written note saying "Any further issues, please contact Paul Smarrelli @ 1-413-568-###X". I called, he wasn't available, I left a message. I called back 6 hours later and got to talk with a real person. He seemed very helpful and promised to get right back to me. He informed me I had contacted the U.S. plant. That was over a week ago. Since then I bought 2 more boxes of ammo, Winchester & Federal. This time the Winchester didn't fire 2 out of 17, again with a shallow dent in the primer. I'm also still having a feeding problem and the mag fell out once.
So far I've only fired factory ammo, but intend to load my own when these problems are solved. I did pull a bullet, dumped the powder, and re-seated the bullet to it's original OAL. When I chambered it, the bullet was pushed further into the chamber. I then full length re-sized a FC case fired from this rifle. The unloaded case loaded and ejected smoothly before and after re-sizing. When I loaded a Hornady 52 gr. BTHP it chambered OK, but stuck when I tried to eject. I simply could not open the bolt without tapping it numerous times with a plastic hammer. It was seated to 2.248". The Lyman Handbook recommends a cartridge length of 2.250. When I did eject the bullet, it had been pushed further into the cas neck. I had to further seat the bullet to 2.186" in order to eject the cartridge without using a hammer, although it still took a lot of force to open. It seems to me that the chamber is too short, the firing pin is defective, and the mag does not function properly.
Has anyone had any of these problems with a Savage? I have 9 other Savage rifles that I'm very happy with.
Sorry for such a long post.