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.
I only have one other PCP, a .25 caliber Impact. The impact is absolutely amazing, but I think I NEED to have another carbine or light weight rifle in .177 or .22 to play with. I cannot figure out where to go next. For a few hundred more than the price of most of the mid-range non-regulated rifles, I could just man up and get something like a Streamline in walnut or even laminate.Suggestions?
Quote from: MikeH on September 15, 2017, 01:45:32 PMI only have one other PCP, a .25 caliber Impact. The impact is absolutely amazing, but I think I NEED to have another carbine or light weight rifle in .177 or .22 to play with. I cannot figure out where to go next. For a few hundred more than the price of most of the mid-range non-regulated rifles, I could just man up and get something like a Streamline in walnut or even laminate.Suggestions?Compatto?
Great bunch of info to know, thanks Mike !!! I've yet to take mine apart yet, maybe I should while I'm presently using my Dominator.
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