Did I get a lemon Marauder pistol .22? Groupings

[Death_By_Air]

Well im getting frustrated with my Prod. I just cant seem to get a good group at all. I have done all of the fixes that I have read so far short of changing the barrel. I ran patches through the barrel until it wiped clean. Then ran dozens of patches to remove any solvent that may be lingering.  Checked the breech oring. Picked the best looking pellets out of the tins. I had a LDC on the gun so naturally I thought I was getting clipping. So I removed the LDC, same issue. Tried stock setup, same issue. Then I removed the stock air stripper thinking maybe that was clipping, same issue. Tried just the bare barrel same issue. Chrony is mid 600's in the .22 14.3 range. A little lower with heavy pellets, high 600s with lighter ones. Filling to 2800 psi shooting down no less than 1500. And get about 32 good shots before I hit the 1500 mark. Here are some of the pellets I have tried and the groups Im getting. This is from only 15 yards(measured) and in a bench rest with a Hawke scope. Just did 4 shot group to make it easy with the 8 round mags for this demo.

(Read like a book across and down in the pics)

H&N Baracuda Hunter Extreme
H&N Crow mags (only pellet that seems to group with not insane fliers)
Benjamin pointed
Benjamin hollow point
Benjamin round nose
Benjamin expanding point
Ruger pointed
CPHP
beeman Kodiaks
HN match green
(Middle) group JSB jumbo heavy(was doing well until the crazy flier-all other groups i try get the same thing)

I feel like this is so off for 15 yards. I have been shooting air guns for a couple years now and dont think im a garbage shot. My other cheap 1322, 1377, 2240 QB's, other PCPs run circles around this Prod

any other suggestions? I got this from a family member who put less than 200 rounds through it and put it back in the box for about a year until I got it so I dont know about contacting Crosman or what they would be able to do at this point.

[Death_By_Air]

Forgot to add this is in an indoor range. No wind or elements. 

[larspawn]

Did you check the crown on the barrel?  Then I'd check to make sure that the breech end isn't nicking the pellets.  Did you try single loading pellets to see if the barrel isn't lining up right and getting damaged loading from the magazine?

[gendoc]

if it didnt print the cphp's within 1" at 20yrds....
send it back if you bought it new, they have a great warranty 

[archellas]

Unfortunately, some Prods came with a "bad" barrel. You may doing everything right, but the barrel is not helping .....


I have no fix to give you short of contacting Crosman with the serial number to your gun and talking to them.


Even if you have to buy a new barrel, it will certainly fix your gun, and it is a great little gun.

[Death_By_Air]

Did you check the crown on the barrel?  Then I'd check to make sure that the breech end isn't nicking the pellets.  Did you try single loading pellets to see if the barrel isn't lining up right and getting damaged loading from the magazine?

I did think about this. Im going to try that next. I noticed some pellets types were a little difficult to load. Just a bit of friction involved.  However, other pellets that seemed to feed like butter still shot awful. Ill hand feed a few and see what happens. One other thing I noticed, when I removed all the parts of the end of the barrel I saw scattered, small metallic fragments around the air stripper. I assume from pellets leaving the barrel? is that normal after say 500 or so round through it?

What am I looking for in the crown? The end of the barrel, correct?

Thanks for you advice!

[Death_By_Air]

if it didnt print the cphp's within 1" at 20yrds....
send it back if you bought it new, they have a great warranty 

Lol yeah the CPHP's at 15 yards gave me about the worst group with the H&N match coming in a close second!

[Death_By_Air]

Unfortunately, some Prods came with a "bad" barrel. You may doing everything right, but the barrel is not helping .....


I have no fix to give you short of contacting Crosman with the serial number to your gun and talking to them.


Even if you have to buy a new barrel, it will certainly fix your gun, and it is a great little gun.

Yeah I was super excited to shoot this baby! I was crushed when none of the various grain and shape ~15 tins I had on hand would shoot worth a "dang". I had some RWS pellets I tried (not in these pics) that my 1322 and 2240 absolutely loved that ended up just like the groups here.

[larspawn]

Well the typical way to check crown is to swirl a Q tip around the crown to see if it snags or inspect by eye. If you need to polish what I do is push a pellet in from muzzle backwards. The skirt acts as a plug.  Then chuck up a brass round head screw in drill. Using some compound like rouge or even gritty toothpaste, polish away. (Can’t remember for sure but iirc a 8 screw works.) Light pressure rotating it around to get an even crown.  Oh and I usually drewl some spit in there to make a nice slurry eww. Then shoot the q tip out to clean it. You can further clean if you want but I’m lazy and call it done. Recheck to see if crown is good. Repeat if necessary.

[larspawn]

BTW I shoot offhand and at 15 yards a magazine leaves a big ragged hole with the cheap cphp.

[screwwork]

Did you shoot a shot string and have erratic fps readings? The other quick thing to do is remove the shroud & air stripper, shoot a group with CPHP pellets and see if the grouping gets better.

[Death_By_Air]

Ok just did a hand load single pellet group with the pellets I have been getting the "best" groups with. Seemed like it didnt make a real improvement. MAYBE the Crow mags got slightly better?


Red is the Crow mags.
Im so baffled how these are the ONLY pellet that can even come close to a quarter size hole at 15 yards, clamped on a bench rest.

Blue is the JSB's.. 3 in the top and two in the lower group. still quite a bit of  spread.

Black is the CPHP...lol still awful. Ironic because this is one of the most uniform skirt-ed tins I have received in a while.

Green is the Beeman Kodiaks. I shot more of these because I thought I was on to something hand loading these. However then began to spread out and had a crazy flier at 2200 psi so it didnt drop off.

Yellow was the Benjamin HP...two in the same hole with the mark, others spread out.

silver is the H&N green light weights...still a good spread.


So still not where I think they should be clamped in a bench rest at a measly 15 yards. Im still baffled byt the HN crow mags being the only thing that even comes close to a group I would expect from a Prod.

[gendoc]

appears you have a poor made barrel, if your crown and your breech oring is ok.

the prods usually are not pellet picky...at least the 3 i had were not. 

crony your shots to see if there at least consistant speeds.

[Death_By_Air]

Did you shoot a shot string and have erratic fps readings? The other quick thing to do is remove the shroud & air stripper, shoot a group with CPHP pellets and see if the grouping gets better.

Yeah I did shoot them in the stock shroud setup and stripper both on and both removed and got the same results as I mentioned in the first post. That was my first thought was something was clipping or air was being disturbed with them on. No luck

[screwwork]

Remove the barrel and push a CPHP pellet through it, inspect head for damage, could be the transfer port was modded for more fps causing all of the problems.
My first Prod was used and the guy I got it from said it shot great.. NOT. I disassembled the gun and found the rear trigger to end cap screw was loose. fixed that and my groups looked a lot better.

[Death_By_Air]

appears you have a poor made barrel, if your crown and your breech oring is ok.

the prods usually are not pellet picky...at least the 3 i had were not. 

crony your shots to see if there at least consistant speeds.

I know that is what I had read and have seen on many post here in this forum and elsewhere.

I just tried the Q-tip in the front of the barrel. Didnt seem as if it snagged to much. Tried 3 different Qtips to maybe get a better snag rate! hahaha  . Im having fun with it now as im not having too much fun shooting. I will try and chrony a full 2-3 mags of the same pellet from a full fill tomorrow and see if I am getting any insane spikes and go from there

[Death_By_Air]

Remove the barrel and push a CPHP pellet through it, inspect head for damage, could be the transfer port was modded for more fps causing all of the problems.
My first Prod was used and the guy I got it from said it shot great.. NOT. I disassembled the gun and found the rear trigger to end cap screw was loose. fixed that and my groups looked a lot better.

Ok I will try that. I do know that nothing like that was modded with the gun. My father just bought it (new) to plink around with (his first airgun) and barely finished a 250 round tin. then  put it back in the box. So I picked it up in near new condition. He is more of a .223 / 7.62 guy so I offered to take it off his hands .

[SpeedyBB]

Last year I ordered another crosman .22 barrel for my marauder, it grouped a lot worse than yours is, they exchanged it for another at no charge, now I have a good one.
Crosman has been known to have .22 barrel issues for a long time now, you can lurk old threads on various forums and read about it going way back to when the marauder first came out. I wonder what exactly is going wrong with some of them. I know that with that really bad barrel I briefly had in my possession felt too loose pushing a pellet through, and then way too rough and snug at the very last .75" or something, it was all kinds of messed up compared to the barrel my marauder came with and the third one I got.
Does crosman do a 10 yard group with the prod at the factory like the marauder? That test ought to catch really bad barrels and stop guns shipping with them.

I suspect the barrel lottery issue is not fixable for some reason and it's why they started selling them with lothar walther barrels, right now it's just an option but maybe it'll be standard eventually.

[Rico14]

A pellet not on your list that is very accurate out of my p-rod and accurate for many others also is the H&N FTT 14.66.  Give them a try.

[nappyman]

Also h/n copper, don’t forget polymag shorts hole in hole @35y