So it Begins

[Paul68]

Second replacement arrived today. Good news is that it appears unmolested, has a good finish, and all outward cosmestic features appear decent. The barrel is not German finish and bluing, but much better than the first two rifles I received. No opened bags, major nicks, scratches, zebra stripe bluing etc etc. One tiny silver nick on the receiver. I saved my tophat from the last 125 and still have the JM seal, so that will be going into this rifle.

The bad so far is that the piston has the now infamous chunk of casting flash at the cocking tab. Sizeable piece too. If it got loose, more than likely would cause some issues. Of course, it is dripping in oil Not even going to fire this rifle once.



It gets tore down straight from the box and gone over with a magnifying glass.

I just cannot bring myself to like the honking huge monster of a "moderator" they've put on the end of the barrel. It'll have to go as soon as I determine the best way to deal with it.

I'll be doing a detailed tear down and cleanup in the machine shop gate within a day or two. Tear down starts tonight.

[longislandhunter]

Looking forward to your review on it.  Good luck with it.

Jeff

[z28rod]

ok sounds great, take a pic of that casting flash in the chamber so e can see it tnaks brent

[Paul68]

Disassembled.

Not pretty inside.

At least the seal is in "better" shape. Not great, just better. The gouges are smaller and the metal embedded in it is smaller.

Inside the piston is loaded with metal shavings. The plastic button the spring rides on is covered with em. I pulled more out with my magnet but couldn't get the camera to focus. Also pulled some shavings out of the compression chamber.

Should have done this teardown before shooting with the first rifle and avoided the hassle. Those folks who are getting a strong 125-Sniper out of the box IMHO are EXTREMELY lucky.

This is just plain pathetic workmanship, even for mass production. None of the Chinese rifles I tore down were anywhere near this bad.

[fortyshooter]

That is rough looking work!  Will be watching your progress.

[bluzjamer]

I'm done.....putting my money back into firearms. Ordered three lowers and an upper this week.
Will start new Ar builds soon. Picked up a nice 44 snubby also. So long Hatsans.

[Paul68]

Well, the operation was a success and the patient is running around blowing holes in things

Not twang whatsoever, and it hits hard.

I'm done for the night. I'll put up pics and what not later.

[averagejoe]

Hmm, you should send all your pics to the Turkish Hatsan so you can see what a lot of customers are dealing with. It is really unacceptable. Maybe even post them on their facebook?

[sawtoothscream]

mines going out for  tune up and gas ram conversion soon.  cant even shoot mine right now, ill cock it then it will not fire for some reason. ill get it to go off then get it to fire good then it will do it again.    I dont feel comfortable pulling the gun apart so ill just stick with the disco and 2240 for now

[Novagun]

I am surprised to see that mess of a piston on a Hatsan. My mod55S(pre Quattro) had a very nicely turned piston. It was polished stainless steel. I ruined that one by drilling out too much steel to lighten it. Got another one out of a trashed mod70 and it was the same high quality machining. Lightened that one but not so much. The rifle shot very well for a while until I went too far playing with the trigger and bent the barrel twice. It is at the back of the cupboard for a while but one day I will ........
My mod 99 I have not touched apart from cleaning the barrel. With a 3-9 x 50 Leapers it is a very accurate rifle but does need to be held properly. The Quattro trigger is very light but after shooting a Diana it takes a two or three shots to adjust to the different feel and the very light first pressure.
 I can not say what the machining is like inside because there has been no reason to delve into the inside of the rifle. It just shoots well and I am happy with that. A bit noisy though in the spring area. For $NZ 299 it is very good value and nicely finished but not in the top league of air rifles.
Our rifle prices are much higher than in the USA even allowing for exchange rates.
That piston makes me wonder if they turned out some cheapies to ship to you or someone tried to make a dollar out of the rejects.
Even my  machining skills have turned out experimental pistons that are better than that.

[Ray]

Wow,cant believe it left the factory like that.Unreal.Send Hatsan those pictures.

[Paul68]

I am surprised to see that mess of a piston on a Hatsan. My mod55S(pre Quattro) had a very nicely turned piston. It was polished stainless steel. I ruined that one by drilling out too much steel to lighten it. Got another one out of a trashed mod70 and it was the same high quality machining. Lightened that one but not so much. The rifle shot very well for a while until I went too far playing with the trigger and bent the barrel twice. It is at the back of the cupboard for a while but one day I will ........
My mod 99 I have not touched apart from cleaning the barrel. With a 3-9 x 50 Leapers it is a very accurate rifle but does need to be held properly. The Quattro trigger is very light but after shooting a Diana it takes a two or three shots to adjust to the different feel and the very light first pressure.
 I can not say what the machining is like inside because there has been no reason to delve into the inside of the rifle. It just shoots well and I am happy with that. A bit noisy though in the spring area. For $NZ 299 it is very good value and nicely finished but not in the top league of air rifles.
Our rifle prices are much higher than in the USA even allowing for exchange rates.
That piston makes me wonder if they turned out some cheapies to ship to you or someone tried to make a dollar out of the rejects.
Even my  machining skills have turned out experimental pistons that are better than that.

These are problems that several of us here on this forum have run into. The unfinished piston with loose casting or machining flash appears to be commonplace as at least three others besides myself on this forum alone have reported it. What we are getting are nothing special. Hatsan USA puts in an order, and Hatsan Arms in Turkey ships em a crateful.

Some folks on here are reporting no problems and great performance from their Hatsans. Personally, this is my third attempt at getting a decent 125. The first was so bad internally that the loose metal shavings destroyed the walls of the compression chamber. The second replacement sent to me by Hatsan USA was manhandled, the wrong caliber and a serious mess. Finally, we have this one which I tore down before ever firing a shot, and you can see the internals.

I've decided to forget the step by step disassembly and rebuild post because frankly I just don't have the time for it and once you get past the cleanup of the loose shavings and boogered piston, the rest is pretty standard stuff.

Only actual modification I made was to install a tophat I made. I simply threw away the cheap plastic button they use and replaced it with a tophat and one polished washer between the tophat and the piston. Polished the spring ends up, polished the rear spring guide washer, moly'd everything and lightly tarred the spring, then put it back together.

The pics below show the rear piston slot after cleanup with a triangle file and the finished piston with new seal. I then went over the edges with a Dremel and 320 grit after using the file to smooth it all up. The tophat got a final polishing as well.

Although I won't go through the repair process, I will do a review once I get a chance to put 100 or so shots through it.



 

[WHITEFANG]

Piston seal looks like the one I took out of the 125TH. First time to replace a seal on the hatson and it was a job to get it on. I finally pressed it on. The strange thing is when I tore down the WFH after a year of shooting the insides looked great and the piston seal was good enough to re use. The rest of the pictures looked like my Remington NPSS. Metal everwhere.

[fortyshooter]

Would any of these internal parts benefit from anti-wear powder coatings,the type baked on?

[fortyshooter]

I'm done.....putting my money back into firearms. Ordered three lowers and an upper this week.
Will start new Ar builds soon. Picked up a nice 44 snubby also. So long Hatsans.

All good,and  I have several big guns...but some of us want something we can legally shoot in our city type backyard ranges. It's either throwing rocks or shooting air rifles,and bless the state of Va.,for giving me the allowance of shooting an air rifle!
Yeah Hatsan has their QC troubles,but a lot of other things do too.It's still a hard hitting .25 cal rifle,when all is well.

[WHITEFANG]

Ya got to love that .25 caliber. I am quite impressed with it.

[TlfT]

Thanks Paul, I am a step behind you in the playing out this cruel charade and now have an untouched/unfired replacement 125 sniper .22 still sitting in the plastic.  The debris in the cocking slot is visible through the plastic bag so I am now just shooting my compound bow and taking 30 days to plan my next move. 

Thanks again Paul you have been lots of help !

[Paul68]

Hopefully I can now just break it in and play with it without issues. Ordering a Chrony in a minute, so by next week I'll have some useful numbers.

Yeah, Forty, this thing is definitely a hammer now that it's smoothed out and shootable. It's putting 21 gr Barracudas through my fire barrel at 23 yrds

Still needs break in, but looks like I have another keeper.

@TlfT- If you haven't done any breakdowns on springers, I definitely would not recommend making this one your first. There are several small issues that can bite you if you aren't prepared for em. I'd suggest contacting Shadow or perhaps Mike Melick at http://Flyingdragonairrifles.com and see if they'll hook you up with a lube and tune. I'm very impressed with how smooth the shooting cycle is with the tophat added. No spring twang at all and I put only the lightest coat of tar on the spring.

[fortyshooter]

So the top hat,you made in middle picture, serves as a spring locator,to prevent the spring from bouncing around when fired?  I would like to get rid of most of that twang also. I might be getting into this thing soon.
Can't be much harder than rebuilding a Rochester Quadrajet carb...as far as lot's of little pieces! 
Will have to plan out the required spring compressor tooling.

[Paul68]

The tophat helps center the spring in the piston and allows it to coil and uncoil more freely. Mine is steel, so I made it as short as possible to avoid adding any more weight to the piston than necessary. I fitted it to slip into the piston with just enough room to move freely, but not rattle around. It fits in the spring with a very slight interference fit. It is loose enough in the spring to twist easily by hand, but with no noticeable play. I put a polished washer the same diameter as the tophat between the tophat and piston to try and reduce friction as much as possible. Everything got a smear of Moly as it was put in.

This arrangement worked very well on my Ruger Air Hawk so I applied it here. On the last 125 which I made this tophat for, it made a twangy beast into a slightly twangy beast considering the gun had a lot of other issues. I did not shoot this gun without it, but the other two I had were twangy as all get out. On this 125 the difference is night and day compared to them.

Bevel the sharp edges of the spring ends where they are cut with a Dremel or file and smooth em with 220 grit so they don't gouge the tophat or rear spring guide, then polish the spring ends, lightly tar the spring and moly all the contact points, and it should make a night and day difference.