A short note regarding old and new style R9/HW95 cocking shoes

[jdub]

I have an old style HW95.  The one with a cocking shoe that rides on the piston liner.   After seeing some of the discussion regarding old and new style shoes and seeing the Tom at Vortek sold the new style shoe for $5 I went ahead and added one to my last order from Vortek.

A quick description of the difference:  The old style cocking shoe rides directly on the piston liner or external spring guide in the case of a Vortek kitted rifle.  The new style is supported by the cocking lever slot--having grooves on each side the ride in the slot--so it never touches the liner, spring, or spring guide.

I had my HW95 apart the other night so I installed the new style shoe.  It's a simple drop-in replacement--you just have to remove the pivot bolt to free up the end of the cocking lever to access the shoe.  It took a couple extra minutes.

The results:

-- It fit perfectly--no modifications of anything were required although I did make sure the slot was very smooth.
-- There is a little bit of noise from the metal sliding on metal that wasn't present before but you really have to listen for it.
-- Cocking it doesn't feel any smoother or rougher than the old style to me.
-- The slight cocking lever rattle that is present with the old style shoe when the gun is *not* cocked is gone--no rattle at all.

It turned out to be one of those things that I don't feel strongly about either way.  On the one hand it should last longer and prevent wear on the liner or spring guard, but after having shot 1500 pellets through it with the Vortek kit there wasn't any hint of a mark on the external spring guide from the shoe riding on it.  However I polished the bottom of my shoe when I got the rifle and I have seen photos posted that showed wear on the guide so at some point it will begin to wear although even then I don't think it will cause any problems.   And there is now some metal on metal noise that wasn't present before but like I said--you really have to listen to notice--and it did eliminate the rattle, which was probably more noticeable.

I installed it because I like tinkering around with my guns but having done it I don't think it's a critical upgrade.  I'd be interested in hearing from anyone else who has swapped them out.  I had read that some guns didn't have a piston liner and it was possible for the shoe to *dive* into the mainspring in which case I'd definitely add a new style shoe. 

[nced]

Pretty good review! When my latest R9 was "fresh from the box" the cocking action was very rough but a bit of receiver cocking shoe slot smoothed it out a lot. Now that my new R9 has a couple thousand shots on it and after lubing the cocking shoe slot and shoe with Krytox GPL205 about a thousand shots ago the cocking action is a nice and slick as can be!

IMHO, one of the benefits of the new style cocking shoe is the fact that I'm not getting a false sense of barrel pivot tension like I got with the old style shoe. With the old style shoe needed to do a pretty tedious polishing and shoe thinning so it would slide between the piston liner and the receiver tube slot.

Anywhoo........I'm liking the new style shoe and I even ordered a spare from Vortek along with a new VAC seal for testing with the Krytox lube instead of the oring sealed piston cap that I've installed in my HW springers and used for many years.

New style R9 cocking shoe.......


Old style R9 cocking shoe...........



New style R9 cocking mounted to the new R9, however the new R9 piston was fitted with an old piston liner just because I liked the liner addition......


Old style cocking shoe in R9 on the piston liner & under the receiver slot.......

[jdub]

Thanks for the photos and a different perspective!

As you mentioned I did have my old style shoe highly polished so I'm sure that made a difference in my results when I compared the two.

[Protos]

Very interesting, thanks for posting fellas.