Steyr M95 bolt questions

I've have a trio of M95 straight-pull carbines...two Steyrs and a Budapest. All refurbs in 8x56R chambering.

Anyhow...the Budapest and one of the Steyr carbines work slick...the one peculiar Steyr has a bolt issue and tends to drag in the action because the bolt head is wanting to rotate all the time(if that makes sense?)....most noticeable when you remove the bolt because as soon s the bolt head clears it rotates and causes problems. I can pull the head back into foreword position and the bolt will insert back into the receiver fine. However you can feel the bolt wanting to rotate as soon as you open the action. The gun does work fine otherwise....just has something worn or out of whack with the bolt.

I took the bolt apart and cleaned the cosmoline out and inspected the parts....managed to get it back together. In my minds eye it looks like the extractor is the part that detents the bolt head in open position....and mine might be worn or wonky. Cleaning and lube didn't help.

So all three carbines have Steyr marked bolts(the Budapest may have a Budapest bolt head)......I thought about simply swapping another bolt into the carbine with the issue(just to see if the drag issue goes away and not to shoot)....or maybe stripping the problem bolt down and trying an extractor from one of the other bolts in it. So maybe my first question is just how interchangeable are M95 bolts and parts?

Any advise on the issue as far as cause and cure?

Thanx HT

Not going to hurt anything to try swapping one of the other bolts and trying it in the problem rifle and the problem bolt in another rifle. That might at least show whether it's an issue with the bolt or an issue with the receiver.

Extractors are getting hard to find for these. You can also swap out the extractor and see if that solves the problem. If it does, get another extractor while you can and hang onto the worn one just in case. It does at least work.

I stripped all three bolts one at a time and inspected the parts....no obvious issues with the problem bolt except some wear on the extractor tail detent. The problem bolt is also the easiest to take apart.

The Budapest bolt has a M marked bolt-head while the other two have Steyr K marked bolt heads. The M marked bolt head and one of the Steyr marked bolt heads have a small 1 stamped on the shank...the problem Steyr marked bolt has a small 3 stamped shank. Makes me wonder if These old guns have different size bolt-heads to make up/take up wear for headspace(like Lee Enfield No.4/No.5 rifles)

Anyway...I tried the Budapest bolt in the problem gun and it cycles fine and works like it should. I was leery of just cramming another bolt in a different gun fearing it might get stuck.

It appears to me there must be some wear to either the cam surface inside the bolt body or some wear to the spiral grooves on the bolt head itself....whatever is worn causes the bolt head to not rotate quite enough to detent 'open' and stay.

I at least understand how the Steyr M95 bolt works now....about all I accomplished besides cleaning the old grease out of the M95 bolts

The Mannlicher M90 system is a fairly complex and odd system. Even though I have had a variety of variants over the years (unrefurbed 8x50r M95s, refurbed 8x56r M95s, Yugoslavian M95Ms, Swiss K1893), I have never been able to figure out specifically what makes one bolt slicker than another. I am sure it is wear or some sort of binding on the bolt, but it seems to differ bolt to bolt. Maybe one of these days I shall completely and carefully strip all the bolts I have at the moment down, marking down which ones were smooth and see if there is wear or surface finish differences between them all. My K1893 is the smoothest one, but sometimes the most worn looking one is the next smoothest. This would be a good project for a rainy day, maybe able to bring some life back into these bolts.

Attachment 111886

This attachment is from a website than no longer exists. I hope it addresses your problem successfully. Tom

Reporting back....ordered an extractor and got a nice Steyr extractor and stuck it in the problem Steyr carbine bolt and as simple as that the draggy bolt problem was gone!....Got the part from Apex