I have to agree. I once bought a used Savage 22 semi auto and the first time I tried to fire it, the weapon fired eight rounds full auto and then jammed. I took it to a good gunsmith who discoverd that someone had tried to convert it to fire fully auto. It cost me more to fix the darned thing than a new one would have cost.
Ha. Yes. A cousin had a Ruger 10/22 that he’d converted like that. He’d filed down something.
Once you pulled the trigger, it’d fire until it ran out of ammo, jammed, or until you grabbed the bolt.
I fired it one time (I was fully aware of how it would “hang”) and as I rotated it to try and grab the bolt, a cartridge was ejected down the neck of my shirt somehow. It was hot and got lodged between me and the waistband of my pants. I thought I’d somehow managed to shoot myself (ricochet or something) in the bladder area.
Years later it’s sort of funny, but at the time it scared the crap out of me.
Like the Old Man said – it’s a good way to mess up a perfectly good little rifle.
You might have found that a Stevens 87J, a Winchester '07, or a Remington Nylon 66 could be so modified to exhibit more reliability than those in the Savage line. Even the Mossberg 151 and Marlin A1 could be so arranged with good results, though the later Marlin model 60 is a notorious jam-o-matic due to its underbarrel tubular magazine. The ones best suited for reliable feeding are those with their tubular magazines mounted solidly inside the buttstock, feeding straight into the barrel's firing chamber directly.