MRodAir Air Max Varmint in .177

[.]

Not quite as I see it.

If your plan is to have a couple of PCP's, then it makes sense to detune them(which is what is going to happen with regulating a Varmint if you want more shots).

If you foresee owning more PCP's, then let them live where they want to live.


I've no problem with really fast/powerful PCP's with a short shot count living side-by-side with moderate power PCP's with mega-shot counts....each has a really good use, just not the same use.

I am gonna tune my .177 to 8 fpe, Ribbs, and the .22 to 30 fpe. The Lane regs I bought are set for 80 bar and 160 bar, because I want to test them at the extremes of their potential, let's just see what kinda shot counts they can deliver. From there, I will have a better understanding of what can and cannot be done, and what it takes to get there, and whether or not it is worth the trouble...

For the most part, I could live with them as they are, but enquiring minds wanna know, ya know? 

At this price point, I have no reservations about tearing into a whole lot of 'em, just to see what I can see...

[Ribbonstone]

Give it time....may come a time when you converte it back.  Know I've been down that road, and if you stay an "air head" ong enough nd collect end rifles about the pace, maybe you will too.


Are some PCP's that want to run low-n-slow for a "ship"load of shots...are others that want to run fast-n-hot for a smaller number of shots.  FEELS LIKE we have a control of that  by tuning.....but (IMO) it turns out better to let them live in the area they want to live.

May not make sense to you now...but give it 20years.

[.]

Most of what I will build in the first wave are already spoken for by family and friends, so no worries there. Just gotta do the work and see what can be done before starting on the more conservative builds. Everybody will feel better with a new set of quality O-rings, and a good look-see and clean-up inside, and/or some simple tweaking of the stock innards and trigger. I'm doing two-stage trigger mods on mine, I might even end up fabricating some new blades before it's all said and done. We'll see. The more I shoot these, the less I think they need. I like that kinda trend! 

[Wayne52]

The only thing that I'll change on mine is the trigger mod to take up the creep and general maintenance!

[avator]

Day three and pressure right where I left it. I guess I can officially call it fixed. Time to direct my efforts to different areas.

[.]

Day three and pressure right where I left it. I guess I can officially call it fixed. Time to direct my efforts to different areas.

Good job!

So far, I've seen reports of O-ring leaks at the gauge, the fill port, and one at the valve. Simply simple stuff, really...

Glad your's is holding air, Bill! Yay!!

[avator]

Thanks... 'cept now I gotta shoot the darned thing down to twist my trigger job back in to make the safety work.
Check the safeties when ya'll make trigger mods guys.... and girls.

[anti-squirrel]

I have nothing to add except I need want desire crave must have would like an Air Max Varmint.  I don't regret getting my PP700 MKII one bit, but I find myself enjoying rifles more, especially with Fall/Winter Squirrel Season coming around the corner.

[.]

Thanks... 'cept now I gotta shoot the darned thing down to twist my trigger job back in to make the safety work.
Check the safeties when ya'll make trigger mods guys.... and girls.

Yup, good point...

That's one reason I may make new trigger blades, to allow the safety to work as designed. Prolly do the Ribbie 'tube' mod at first on the original blade, until I have the shop up and running, at least..

[.]

I have nothing to add except I need want desire crave must have would like an Air Max Varmint.  I don't regret getting my PP700 MKII one bit, but I find myself enjoying rifles more, especially with Fall/Winter Squirrel Season coming around the corner.

I am putting in my pre-order for a Stormrider in both calibers from PA today. For only $20 more it will be worth it to have the latest incarnation of the PR900W, plus they actually send tracking, and will take returns, etc...

Says 10/6 for availability, and that is perfectly fine with me, even a bit longer will be fine, no worries!

[avator]

I'm considering another Plinkster. I bought the one for Betty Lou to shoot when I shoot the Varmint. She has no desire to fool with HPA. So now I'm thinking I want to even the playing field. Basically selling guns we don't shoot for guns we do/will.
Don't get me wrong... it's been a wonderful 4 years of buying one of everything I saw. I've seen first hand just how green the grass really was on the other side of the fence. Now that I've been there/done that, it's time to replace the novelties with the realities. We have several twins that we enjoy shooting together and we have the loners. Guns that she has no desire to have a twin of. I do have my "keepers" and they will be kept. But if I look in the back of the closet, behind the gun case and under the bed there is a lot of stuff that is taking up space.

[gendoc]

I'm considering another Plinkster. I bought the one for Betty Lou to shoot when I shoot the Varmint. She has no desire to fool with HPA. So now I'm thinking I want to even the playing field. Basically selling guns we don't shoot for guns we do/will.
Don't get me wrong... it's been a wonderful 4 years of buying one of everything I saw. I've seen first hand just how green the grass really was on the other side of the fence. Now that I've been there/done that, it's time to replace the novelties with the realities. We have several twins that we enjoy shooting together and we have the loners. Guns that she has no desire to have a twin of. I do have my "keepers" and they will be kept. But if I look in the back of the closet, behind the gun case and under the bed there is a lot of stuff that is taking up space.

Let me know if you part'n with the xs-60 and the h/w in .20.....

[Wayne52]

Well Bill it's my turn now, my Varmint is all apart with a broken bolt handle, dang I shouldn't have put the red loctight on there, you were right but that was already after you said something about not putting loctight on yours, well this will give me a chance to look things over while I have it apart and take up the creep on my trigger as well.  Right now I'm taking a smoke break and after that I'll be working on getting the broken part out of the bolt   

[avator]

The XS-60 GenI will be staying.... The VMX in a Hatsan dress?.... Not sure... other than a change of clothes it hasn't been on the bench. The VMX was a $100 gun new. The Hatsan 1000s stock is a really nice addition as far as look and feel. And the chopped 1000s action in the green VMX stock.... well, that's a sweet run and gunner.

[avator]

Well Bill it's my turn now, my Varmint is all apart with a broken bolt handle, dang I shouldn't have put the red loctight on there, you were right but that was already after you said something about not putting loctight on yours, well this will give me a chance to look things over while I have it apart and take up the creep on my trigger as well.  Right now I'm taking a smoke break and after that I'll be working on getting the broken part out of the bolt   

Betty Lou and I have both developed a habit of constantly checking the cocking knobs on all of our bolted guns. Even the lego guns loosen. Matter of fact... the old brass knob 760s loosen. The only one I've seen not work loose is a custom one I made using a wood bead. The shaft remains tight and the bead spins freely.

[KnifeMaker]

I ended up using archery/arrow tips for the bolt handle for the Maximus until I could get a factory replacement. LOL!

Knife

[keithd]

I ended up using archery/arrow tips for the bolt handle for the Maximus until I could get a factory replacement. LOL!

Knife

adapt, improvise and overcome

[avator]

I ended up using archery/arrow tips for the bolt handle for the Maximus until I could get a factory replacement. LOL!

Knife

adapt, improvise and overcome

'zactly..... tinkerers creed.

[MikeH]

Thankfully we did not get much severe weather here on the Georgia coast from Irma, but I was going absolutely stir crazy for about two days watching it rain.  So on hurricane day I decided to tear down my .177 Varmint and see what she was all about on the inside.

The first ting I noticed was that every fastener was just barely seated, or loose.  When I first got the rifle I snugged up all of the loose screws, but after 600-700 pellets down range things loosened up again.  Reassembly will be performed using Loctite 222MS.  The valve and gauge block took some force to remove due to machining burrs in the air tube, as well as swollen and cut O rings causing significant binding while trying to push the parts out of the front of the reservoir.

A good visual inspection indicated a nice simple design with good engineering, but it was painfully obvious that there was zero attempt to deburr the hammer screw slot, and the remainder of the various holes in the reservoir tube.  I honestly did not expect that the die stamped holes and slots would be perfectly smooth, but I find it ridiculous that anyone would force parts with O rings past these rough surfaces.  I knocked down the large burrs with some jewelers files then polished the edges with some Cratex cones on my variable speed Dremel tool.  After a good cleaning I used some of the crappy supplied spare new O rings to reinstall the valve, gauge block and fill cap.  I coated the seals with some Dow DC 111 and everything slid together like butter.

The quality of the barrel bore and rifling seemed to be good as evidenced by the incredible accuracy my rifle had out of the box, even despite the marginal trigger.  After cleaning and inspecting the barrel closely I found it to be extremely well made, with the exception of some minor finishing and details. The crown and breach ends were a bit rough but not terrible, so I reworked them a bit.  Cambering pellets always seemed to take too much force, so I put more chamfer on the breech end, then followed up by polishing the new chamfer with 300, 600, 800 and 1000 grit Micro Mesh.  I gave the bolt/pellet probe the same polishing job as well.

The trigger sear and hammer looked like they were machined with a butter knife!  A close examination of the engagement surfaces of the sear and hammer show that both contact surfaces are radiused!  This is why there is no clean break on trigger let-off.  I sanded/polished the outside diameter of the hammer so that it would slide in the reservoir tube without making all of those nasty grinding noises, I also added some additional radius to the sear "cocking ramp" area to allow smoother/reduced cocking effort.  I removed the silly little set screw in the trigger blade that is used to adjust pre-travel, and replaced it with a screw with the head facing upward toward the sear.  I deburred and polished the sear, and sear to hammer engagement surfaces then reassembled the hammer and trigger assemblies.  I ground/filed the head of the screw that I installed in the trigger until I had the majority of the pre-travel removed and the safety would still engage.  I made new trigger and sear pins from the shanks of a #40 drill bit which is just a hair larger diameter than the stock pivot pins, which also removed some of the free play.

A few hours of exploratory surgery left me with a huge all around improvement.  Accuracy did not change, which is a good thing since it was a tack driver before, but the action is remarkably smoother and it takes far less effort to chamber a pellet, or to cock the hammer.  The trigger has zero grittiness now and is smooth as glass.....but....there is no perceptible sear release point or even a notable increase in trigger pull weight when the rifle is fired, it's just a smooth, steady, medium length pull that feels like its on rollers the whole way.  Despite the fact that there is no pull weight "stack-up" to help you judge when the trigger is about to break, I found the rifle was still extremely accurate!  After a few mags of pellets I started to figure out how much trigger travel I could use prior to concentrate on aiming, and I was back to one hole 9 shot groups. 

My next mod may be to remove the sear and hammer and use my TIG welder to build up the radiused sear engagement surfaces and machine them so the trigger will have a proper "stop" before the let off.

 

[.]

Mike,

Thank you for sharing your journey inward, nice write-up!

:-) chickie