Magfire Ultra .177 arrives tomorrow

[splitbeing]

Have you tried the NP in any other, even non-crosman rifles, Alton?

Hmmm.... curious what PCPs you are considering.

[ALWIII]

  No, I haven't tried any other NPs. I sort of stumbled in to airguns a few Christmases ago when my daughter moved to the mountains and took up hunting rabbits. I got her a Benjamin NP XL, and a couple months later I bought the Valiant for me so we'd have something for some father/daughter time. It snowballed from there. LOL I now have her Benjamin, the Valiant, my own Benjamin NP XL in .25, and the Vantage. I got a Shockwave in .22 for my girlfriend, and it's probably the nicest shooter of the bunch. Almost as much power as the modded Vantage, but it's quieter, shoots much smoother, and all the moving parts feel like they're on bearings. Except the trigger. I don't much like the Shockwave's trigger, but it doesn't get in the way of the accuracy. All I did was change the NP to an NPE and pay attention to every point of friction between parts. Sanding, mixing my own lube, trial fit, rinse and repeat until it has that slick feeling operation you get from machinery with many, well maintained, hours on it.

  For PCP I've been looking at the Air Venturi Avenger and Avenge-X. Great reviews, and what seems to be great pricing on some accurate and hard hitting rifles. The availability of wood stocks on either one is also a big plus for me.

[mikeyb]

Update (long one!):

Tearing down this rifle for no other reason than I'm curious.

Lots of GREASE for a gas spring rifle. Made in China so extra grease likely added to prevent corrosion during long sea voyage and warehouse storage?

I measured 33mm OD tube with 29mm piston seal. I always get a twinge of annoyance when Gamo stresses their 33mm tube. That's OD for their tube also :-/

Stroke length, as best as I can MEASURE, is 102mm (the typical 4"). Same as the old B19 engine.

Overall swept volume is ~35% LARGER for this rifle over the old B19.

The piston is buttoned! However the "buttons" appear to be steel AND are FLUSH with the rest of the piston body. WHAT? That's completely USELESS! Since the "pockets" are already drilled I may try to clean them out and insert some fitted UHMWPE buttons.



Maybe the button design INTENT was not properly conveyed to the China factory? Whatever the reason this is another good design idea that was a FACTORY FAIL.

Piston is welded and then machined. Pretty heavy also. I think better than the average crimped-head-pistons, but not by much.



AND... NO polymer-donut piston-BRAKE!

I've been curious how they implemented the brake IDEA since I first saw their videos.

To be fair, I'm certain that an anti-piston-bounce mechanism is mostly a SOLUTION LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM. I think this one was a good idea because it's the simplest one I've seen and may actually be able to brake the piston bounce without breaking itself!

However, all my simulations indicate even an "ideal" piston-bounce-brake would have a BARELY MEASURABLE impact on rifle performance. If the Crosman brake-donut design adds too much cost and/or CAUSES MORE PROBLEMS than it solves I'm not surprised it was omitted here.

OR... is this a design idea that was another FACTORY FAIL?

Gas Spring is part number B24-00-7 oriented with the BODY inside the piston resting on a small steel button. Looks like the button was added to get proper PRELOAD on the Gas Spring? Another FACTORY FAIL PATCH?

There is a traditional transfer port measuring
~3mm ID
~15 mm Length

... then there is the ADDED auto-feed transfer TUBE measuring
~3mm ID
~63mm Length

There is a typical breech seal AND an internal barrel o-ring to seal the transfer tube to the bore.

This mechanism SEATS the pellet ~2.5mm deep into the breech.

With this system there is no "cork to POP". In a normal springer the pressure builds HIGH until the pellet POPS the leade and gets a big KICK START down the bore. We all should know by now that seating a pellet deep into the breech eliminates this POP and reduces muzzle velocity.

Deep seating pellets MAY help with shot-2-shot consistency but it will lower muzzle energy. I don't normally seat pellets deeper than FLUSH with the breech face in ANY of my springers.

The total volume of the transfer tube+port is ~5x larger than normal which means the THEORETICAL PEAK PRESSURE is 5x LOWER in this rifle. Not good.

IMO this super-long (large volume) transfer tube is severely limiting the potential muzzle energy POSSIBLE considering the increased swept volume of this larger engine. Remember, the SPRING is the energy SOURCE. The swept volume of air is only the TRANSFER FLUID, but there needs to be ENOUGH air to transfer that spring energy to the pellet.

B19s can shoot up to ~18fpe under good working conditions.
That means THIS PLATFORM should be able to shoot up to 24fpe.
From the SIZE and WEIGHT of this rifle it really SHOULD be shooting in the 20-24 fpe range, NOT the weak sub-15 FPE measured here.

I don't regret my $53 clearance purchase. It was/is a learning experience and may be one of last Crosman rifles I acquire (waiting to see what happens under new ownership?). I'm going to have some more tinkering FUN with this rifle and may try to see if it performs differently with a coil spring installed :-)

Should anyone be interested in buying this rifle my advice is:

NO!  if you just want a repeating springer to shoot. Gamo is a better choice I think.
MAYBE?  if clearance priced LOW,  AND you are looking for a PROJECT RIFLE or just some Crosman "parts".


Just thinking about how sweet that cheap-simple-small-light-FUN Crosman Vital-Shot coil spring rifle performed after a simple cleaning/relube. Now THAT is what a cheap springer SHOULD BE!
Very educational dissecting this beast. The MagFire Ultra really IS a Frankenstein's Monster of springers ;-)
I do enjoy ALL of my OTHER Crosman rifles. In that respect Crosman has done an EXCELLENT JOB for a very long time. I've been a fan since the early 1970s. This is the first time I can recall that I would advise AGAINST buying a particular Crosman rifle :-(

Cheers :-)

edit: Piston seal was fine, no assembly damage from sharp edges. Gas spring MAY be weak (leaky?) but I'm pretty confident the multi-shot design is the fpe killer here.

[splitbeing]

Wow! I know so much more about this rifle now!  Thanks, Mikey!

Is there anything you can think of doing to address the tranfer bottleneck?

[mikeyb]

Hope you don't mind that I'm adding to this MagFire Ultra thread.

Quick/short update...
Piston "buttons" looked like blackened steel but were a black polymer. Since they were flush (or below flush) with the piston body the factory buttons did NOTHING. I easily drilled out the black polymer (moly loaded poly?) and will replace with some UHMWPE* which is almost as slippery as Teflon (PTFE). I didn't push too hard on the drill press because I did NOT want to drill the blind button hole clear through. Regardless, the piston steel IN THAT AREA felt like it had been HARDENED. I believe it is common practice to harden/temper the skirt area to minimize wear. The trigger latch force/area is quite large in spring-piston air guns.
More later :-)

*Why I prefer UHMWPE in this case.
https://info.slideways.com/blog/uhmw-vs-teflon-packaging-machinery-conveyor-applications

[splitbeing]

Keep the info comin, Mikey!  This thread is the best source of magfire ultra info on the web to my knowledge, primarily due to your investigative reports.  We've come this far, keep postin' here, magfire foreman!

[mikeyb]

Another (long) Mag-Fire Ultra update:

No piston buttons yet.

Have TEMPORARILY replaced the gas spring with a custom spring guide and an old (weak) coil spring I had that just happens to fit the rifle internals. With the coil spring the rifle is shooting at ~7.5 fpe, or about HALF of what the factory gas spring was shooting. Obviously cocking effort is LIGHT and shot cycle is a very mellow thump. As-is it would make an EXCELLENT youth springer for ADULT SIZED children. Wait... that's ME!

Accuracy has not improved.

Shot cycle is actually refreshingly PLEASANT, but the gas spring will be going back in soon. This was mostly research to determine internal dimensions in case I wanted to try a coil spring in the future.

Trigger was really crunchy/creepy so I polished a couple rough sear lever surfaces. Added a slightly longer adjustment screw with a rounded and polished tip. Added a couple extra polished washers to minimize some sear side2side slop. Polished the large burrs off some factory installed wobble washers that were TOO TIGHT and adding to the trigger pull effort. All the little changes did lower the trigger force but it is still a little higher than I prefer and trigger blade travel to release seems LONG to me. Blade travel IS much smoother after the polishing.

I get no first stage because the adjustment screw on this Clean Break trigger is PART of the trigger blade. With my longer screw adjusted all the way IN the sear overlap is about 0.030". That is as SMALL as I'm willing go on a springer trigger. In my experience less than 0.030" overlap risks a hair-trigger or a bump-fire.  On the older Crosman trigger the adjustment screw preloads a lever from the trigger frame. That, and a lighter trigger blade spring, can provide a super light (fake) first stage which shortens the trigger blade travel for the 2nd stage to release.

The Clean Break trigger IS easier to disassemble/assemble and only has one (1) coil spring. The older style trigger has three (3) torsion springs and it can be difficult to work on getting all the springs and sears properly located/positioned. I KNOW WHY Crosman liked the new trigger design. Less parts & easier to assemble means more profit. I still prefer the older style because I can get exactly the trigger "feel" I like from it.

Important info regarding wadcutter pellets...

I loaded the Mag-Fire magazine with some Excite Plinking wadcutters. Got 4 shots almost in the same hole then DRYFIRES. Auto load mechanism was JAMMED CLOSED. It would not open to cycle next pellet. Managed to get it unjammed and a sliced pellet skirt "hoop" fell out. Tried shooting the rest of that magazine and got more jams, dryfires, and lead hoops. Apparently the bore LOVES these pellets but the autofeed HATES them!?

Cleaned out all (or so I thought) the leads hoops and lead fragments and reloaded the magazine with round nose Daisy/Winchesters. Got through one magazine with scattered 1.5" group (pretty lame). Next magazine was inserted and the auto-loader was jammed before I could even cycle the first pellet. That's enough of that.

Took the action out of the stock and removed the barrel from the action so I could get better access. Found another lead hoop (pretty certain from the wadcutters) interfering with the loader cycle. THEN I looked closely at the internal bore o-ring and saw something SHINY. ANOTHER lead hoop EMBEDDED in the o-ring groove along WITH the o-ring! I fished out the o-ring and after some EXTENDED probing with a dental pick finally got that LAST lead hoop out of the o-ring groove.

Lubed loader parts with some light oil and reassembled rifle. Loader is back to cycling round nose pellets with NO PROBLEMS. Won't be trying wadcutters in the magazine again.

This reinforces my opinion that the added complexity of an autoloading springer can be a giant PITA!

I really like the feel of the stock and I like the size and potential of the large powerplant. I really WANT to like this rifle... but I'm just NOT liking the magazine & autofeed on this springer!

At this time I can't think of an EASY way to bypass this "defect".

Have one pretty drastic idea to move the barrel all the way back to the transfer port and completely bypass that autoloader MESS. Not a reversible change and will likely need some luck and a hydraulic press.

As previously stated I think the A/O scope is worth about $30 so my cost for the rifle itself was about $23. That's GOOD because I may have to get medieval on this rifle.

In the past I've only slightly modified springers to get them shooting the way the manufacturer intended. This one I'm probably going to SCRAP much of what the manufacturer intended and substitute how "I" think the rifle SHOULD perform.

Good or bad results, it will be educational ;-)

[splitbeing]

Great updates, Mikey!

Studiously taking mental notes, following along!