Yes the early two spring 703's had a spring issue and the knife was upgraded and became a 3 spring knife. Anyway, I thought a 703 would be a great gift for a certain friend of mine. So I hit the resale auction sites for a purchase in my price range. The first one I got was a two spring with what I could see was a hair line crack in one of the springs. OK, I'll buy another and if it also has a bad spring they will go to Buck to see if they can make one good knife out of those two and sure enough the second one had a crack also. Then I narrowed my search to a 3 spring knife for the gift.
Now when I sent the two 703's with bad springs back I thought if I was lucky I would get one 703 back and maybe a 303 as a replacement. However, I would be ok if they sent me back replacements for both damaged knives as I understand these have been discontinued for some time now. I wrote a knife stating please try to at least make one useable 703 from the two knives and sent them in. Some time later when the box came back from BKI I was surprised to see two repaired 703's that looked like new inside.