Well, an update here. I got home from work Thanksgiving morning and after my wife woke up, started checking out the guard I bought off GB. It looked real good when I took it out of the packaging, so I got the Springfield out and went to install it. And that is where I promptly ran into a problem. Once I removed the 03-A3 trigger guard, I went to install the new guard and the trigger wouldn't fit into the trigger slot in the new trigger guard. It seems the Timney trigger on my gun has a wider trigger than the stock trigger on a Springfield. So I spent most of the afternoon filing the slot wider on it. And wow, that's a lot of filing too! I went ahead and used the follower from the 03-A3 trigger guard as it has already been modified to be able the close the bolt on an empty magazine without depressing it. All I have to do is go to the range and make sure there are no problems feeding rounds into the chamber.

Anyways, I finally got the trigger slot opened up enough to install the new guard and boy, it looks so much better than the one (03-A3) that was on the gun. And while not perfect, the blueing on the new guard and floor plate looks quite good and really matches the rest of the rifle.

I will take a couple of pics of the gun with the new guard installed tomorrow and post them up.