R1 vorteked but seal is too tight

[fishhuntmike]

Just got a Vortek kit for my 25 year old R1.  It was easy to take it apart without a spring compressor.  I decreased everything and used Krytox which works great in my air arms springers so I decided to do it.
I replaced the piston seal and when putting it back together I noticed it was an extremely tight fit.
Not too worried (figuring it would break in) I put it back together.  I thought it was supposed to be easy since I thought the vortek website said no compressor was needed during reassembly.  I spent over an hour trying to put most of my weight on the spring while trying to twist my whole body in a circular fashion trying to get a few threads on the endcap.  What a pain!!!

After succeeding, I put the gun back together in the stock and when outside to shoot it.  The first thing I noticed is the cocking effort is much much harder.  When I pulled the trigger, I could hear the piston slowly push out air but not enough to even move the pellet from the breech.  It seems that the seal is such a tight fit that the powerful spring can't even push it forward fast enough to push out a pellet.

I'm dreading the idea of taking the whole thing apart!

Any suggestions?  Will letting it sit over time and  repeatedly attempting to shoot it get it to work again?

Thanks in advance!

Mike

[TOM aka critter99]

if its not able to shoot a pellet ya have more troubles than a tight piston seal.  NO MATTER WHAT YA GOING BACK INSIDE to size seal or replace damaged kit parts

I will bet when you take it back down you will find some damages to the Vortek parts during the assembly fight from not being aligned perfectly

Time to build spring compressor

Let us know what ya find upon teardown

[grauhanen]

A spring compressor is recommended when disassembling and reassembling an air rifle like the R1.  Based on your description, something certainly is amiss and you'll have to take it apart to determine what the problem is.  If you have to resize the seal, you can do this by putting the piston with the seal on it on a drill press and turning it against some fine wet/dry sandpaper.

[LAalex]

Yes, spring compressor by all means.  They are easy to build.  I wonder if maybe the seal has come loose from the piston???

Scotty

[T-Higgs]

Mike,
Time will not fix your R1.  Half the fun of air-gunning is the tinkering.  My honest opinion is to first build a spring compressor.  It will aid you with future work and help you immensely with repairing your current problem.  Lots of info on builds and many different ways to build one or buy one.  It also adds an element of safety which is hard to put a price on. Then it's time to disassemble the rifle. It sounds like you may need some seal sizing or perhaps, and more likely,  there is a problem with the piston liner interfering with the kit.  Not all r1's have a liner but your might and I've heard the pg2 kit can interfere with the liner.  But do not try to cock and fire the rifle until you find and understand the problem. The R1 is a great gun and deserves a good rebuild.

[MikieG]

When i rebuilt my R1s i used factory parts from SSSO. Right out of the box my rifles shot 995. Now there are a few thousand pellets thru them. I really need to check the velocities.

I thought the same way. A tight seal will wear in to a perfect fit.

[anuthabubba]

Yep. The piston's internal liner should have been removed because the Vortek kit uses its own liner/spring guide to control the spring vibration/twang. Should not have had difficulty putting the R1 back together if you had none on disassembly. Did a Vortek kit on one of my R1s by hand, as I have with every other spring change/kitting on various HWs, RWSs, FWB124s and China copies for many (30+) years.

[fishhuntmike]

Thank you all for the advice!  I'm not sure when I'll take it apart again.

When I do I will inspect the inside of the piston for a liner.  The spring guide probably has some damage, although cocking seemed smooth. I'll try the drill and sandpaper on the seal.  Good idea.

Not sure if I want to invest the time on a spring compressor.  I might just go with a 12 fpe kit.

[Frank in Fairfield]

Mike,
When Scott (Motorhead) put my VORTEK in the R! and the RWS48s, the seal was a little tight. He put them on the lathe and shaved them a bit. I think Tom makes them tight. Better a little tight then a little lose, huh?

[T-Higgs]

Sizing the seal is the last thing you do.   Make sure all other parts are working correctly with each other then explore seal sizing.

When I rebuilt my R1,  the original spring had little o no preload.  The new Maccari full power kit needed the spring compressor to assemble. And that's a good thing.

[fishhuntmike]

Ok

Finally took the R1 apart and figured out that stupid me the piston had a liner in it.  Turns out I was trying to resize the vortek spring guide into a smaller diameter when I cocked the rifle.  No wonder it was so hard to cock and would only push out air slowly as to not even push out the pellet.  Thanks for pointing that out!!!!  I had to drill a hole in the piston liner in order to have something to grab onto to get it to slide out.

I ran the piston in my drill with some sandpaper to resize the seal (thank you for that idea!).  Reassembled the whole thing (no spring compressor, not so hard as before) and took it out to fire.  Shot ten times then got the chrony and shot 3 over it!  820, 820, 819 (beeman Kodak) for an fpe of 19.8!

Man this gun seems way more powerful and snappy!  Now I need to mount a scope and see what it can do!

Thanks again for the advice!

Mike

[fishhuntmike]

Mounted a leupold 2-7 rim fire scope on it and zerod it at 50 yards.  Then shot a five shot 1 inch group.  Didn't try hard but that was all I shot for groups.  Took a ground squirrel with it already and am extremely pleased with the handling of the gun and quite excited with the new power as it was only 14 fpe with the 25 year old spring that had a bend in it.

After shooting my two under levers in the past year I have found a new love for the beak barrel!

Now I am considering an hw50 for something lightweight!

[palonej]

I love a happy ending Mike!!
Sounds like she is shooting super sweet too!!
Get more lead down the tube and it'll settle in....won't be so snappy.