I'm on my 2nd ARH hornet spring in my R9. Unlike my first ARH spring and my OEM spring, this one has an extremely tight spring guide, which I am unable to remove. The other two guides were just snug, but nothing like this. When I cock the gun, the spring "squeaks" as I cock it. After more than 1000 shots, it still does. Sometimes I think I detect unevenness in the cocking pressure. I'm imagining that the tight guide might be grabbing the spring both in the cocking and in the release. What do you think? Is this kind of tightness normal. Thanks, Tom.
I managed to remove the guide. This guide and the my older ARH guide both measured 13.55 mm OD. The old spring measured 13.75 mm ID, the "newer" spring is 13.35 mm. I slathered the guide with krytox. (the gun was committed to krytox shortly after I purchased it.) Put the kit back in the breech/barrel assembly w/o stock or trigger. Went through cocking motion and the squeak/groan was still present. This time, when I rotated the guide to remove it, the rotation caused the spring to expand with a "sproing" sound. So there is some binding occurring... not sure how significant.The gun is back together with the OEM spring in it. The spring is in good shape and the gun now cocks and shoots without any spring noise. I'll give it a few days of shooting to see if my POI anomalies have gone away.
So, in addition to the cocking noise after I put the ARH kit in, my groups spread out a bit, though still mostly under an inch. But the spread was more vertical than before. Also every 5 or six shots I'd get a pretty good flyer, primarily in a vertical direction. Without a chrono, I guessed the spring was grabbing and giving uneven pellet velocity. I asked ARH if they would trim the guide for me. No problem, but they first suggested I leave the gun cocked for an hour or 2, and see if that fixed the problem. It did.