Certainly good work but I wonder if you had a pistol with a manufacturing error. I have several P17's and none are difficult to cock but I'm only 60 with just some signs of arthritis showing up and that may be the difference. In any event, good work making it function.
Glad you have it where it is comfortable for you. Enjoy it.
I just received my new Marksman 2004 pistol today, and the first thing I discovered is I did not have enough strength to cock it. I had to place the gun on my work bench and lean on it to get the gun to close.I am coming from a Gamo Compact, and while it was stiff, I used it for over 20 years until it finally fell apart! I then purchased an FAS 6004, which requires half the pressure of the Gamo to close it. The Beeman Marksman / P17 as it came out of the package, is a real bear to close. On the other hand the stock trigger released smoothly at 20 oz, and it appears to be very accurate. What to do?I took the piston out to see if I could turn the face down in my lathe. The first thing I found was the set screw locking the cross pin was loose. I took off as much as I could off the piston checking by firing a pellet each time. The elevation in the group never changed, and it was still too hard the close. Not wanting to get too close to the o-ring groove I started to bore material out of the center of the piston, again checking the elevation by firing sone pellets.After many times taking a little more out of the piston, it now cocks as easy as my old Gamo Compact, and the elevation has remained constant.In the future I may keep removing material from the piston until I start to see a drop in elevation making it even easier to cock, and surely saving stress on all of the gun's components.All the stress of charging this gun in it's stock condition may be the cause of all of the mystery failures we keep hearing about. I think my work so far proves that the charging pressure is way too high for 10 meter shooting.
Hi David, I made several trigger mods but finally found one that worked for me. Here's one idea:https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?topic=129587.0After the mod, the trigger was almost as good as my FAS 6004. What I've found with these high compression SSPs, is that you need to use the two-stage trigger to have a crisp (zero creep) break and still be safe. The mod only changed the trigger position for where it broke.... and the really nice thing - it fully resets if you let off without firing... Don't mess with the tension spring!I did not have the excessive compression (hard to cock) problem at 7000' elevation but I can understand that issue at lower elevations.No problems with pinching anything in this configuration - the scope makes an excellent cocking handle If you're interested, here's how I hacked it up:https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?PHPSESSID=e954948fe94de2ab9cf24294ace04a00&topic=122164.0https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?PHPSESSID=e954948fe94de2ab9cf24294ace04a00&topic=122165.0Wyo