RE: Be Honest about 3 speed
I've got a 3-speed in my as yet undriven Savage X. The solution to your problem is to get the X tranny case, then just dump all the internals from your old tranny case into it. Then, the top of the X case comes off without having to take the whole chassis apart, and that's how you can access the 1-2 shift point... An X case can't be too expensive.
Note 1: I haven't done this yet.
Note 2: Apparently this also means you can change the spur gear now without removing the engine... In theory anyway...