savage 17hm2 problem

hollywood88

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 23, 2010
Messages
78
Location
Linton, Indiana
i have a savage mark2 chambered in 17hm2, i love the gun but there is one major problem with it. about 5 out of 50 shots it will split the shell case and it gets stuck in the chamber. its easy to get out you just take a pocket knife and slip the blade under the rim and pop the casing out. i dont know what is wrong with it, been like this since i bought it new. like i said, not a big problem but it gets really annoying. what could be causing it?
 
There is a lot of information over on rimfirecentral on the 17hm2. There is some major debate on what causes this problem. Some of them are a dirty chamber (shouldn't be a problem on a bolt gun), bad lot of ammo (I shoot Eley now), one of the main problems seems to be if there is chamfer at the back of the chamber (this is a bad thing). Anyway there is lot's of information over there if you want to dig.
 
i've been thinkin about sellin it, i already have a 17hmr that gets more use. unless i drive an hour and a half i cant get ammo for the hm2 but everywhere around her has the hmr amma. i thought it was a bad lot of ammo too so i went out and bought a box of cci,eley,remington, federal, and hornady and it didnt change a thing. the eley only did it 5 times out of the box but its still unaceptable. so right now it is just a pretty conversation piece.
 
I have 2 semi autos, one is a 10/22 built with a Magnum Research barrel and the other a Volquartsen Custom. I had a live round stick half way in the chamber of the VQ when I was unloading it, it let the bolt go to rechamber it and BOOM. I had to dig metal out of my fingers and hand for a couple weeks. If I can dig up the photos I'll try to post them. Yours sounds like a head space problem or the chamfer at the back of the chamber it to big. This is based on what I've read. I've never had a problem with my HMRs and I've always shot Hornday ammo in them.
 
well, i finally made the drive for some ammo. bought 3 boxes of eley, a box of hornady, and a box of cci. went to my buddies for some shootin. 3 rounds out of the cci split after being fired. 11 out of the hornady split, and none out of 150 rounds of eley split. i switched from my bore snake to an actual cleaning kit which was a pain to find to fit down the .17 barrel and it cost me 60 bucks. im going to stick with the eley ammo and see if it continues down the road. it also held better groups with the eley ammo.
 
The chamber in the neck area may be a bit over standard specs. That would allow the neck to expand to a point where the cases splits. Neck splits will happen when a center fire case is reloaded a number of times, the brass gets hard when worked. The little rimfire brass may not have ben annealed in the neck area and is to hard to expand so they split, I have not had any split necks from various brands of 17 HM2 or 17 HMR ammo that have ben fired in my Cooper 57 M LVT rifles..
 
Just for a different point of view, I have experienced the same thing in my Marlin 917V w/ 17 HMRs.... so i started looking at my ammo. I found several ever so slightly split necks (at the case mouth) in my ammo boxes. So I started opening new boxes, and was finding some there too! I usually find one or two in every 500 that is split in the box... Hornady and CCI stuff is what I shoot.
 
I have a Marlin 717 hm2 that had a round blow back through the rim. It set off the next round in the clip and cracked the stock in two places, broke the trigger guard and ended up with the bullet in the barrel. I sent it back to Marlin and received it today supposedly fixed and tested. I took it right to the range and fired the first shot, no problem. The next shot split the rim and blew back through the bolt area splattering residue in my face. Well, it's going back to the factory, AGAIN! I started looking at the CCI amo and discovered some split necks in some spent casings. Also, I found that with slight pressure, I mean slight, the bullet would slip right into the case. Yikes! This is the first thread that I have been able to find on the 17 hm2 problem so I wanted to share what I am going through with it. I am hoping the factory will check things out closely like the issues in this thread. In the mean time I am going to contact CCI and get rid of the rest of the ammo with the same batch number. Looks like Eley may be the best 17 hm2 so I will give that a try when the gun gets back to me.
 
Last edited:
Nelson_from_Maine,
You might want to give out the lot number for the readers.. I'd hold onto the ammo until the CCI contact was made, then save one box for yourself'..., along with any fired case's.... you never know.
Good luck
436
 
To the OP, look at sgammo.com they have the cheapest price on Eley. If you have decided to go Eley, buy a case or two and then you won't have to worry about driving to find any, and you can shoot for less than half the price of the cheapest HMR.
 
well, i found a place in the town i work that carries eley ammo for my gun. went out last night and shot some, not a single problem. its good to see it wasnt my gun but rather just bad ammo
 
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