Perfection!

Finally! After 2 years of trying to make my gun work, it’s perfect now. (for now) !!! yay!

Here’s the story of my condor, and what it’s been through, and the nice people along the way.

Back when I got it, it worked well. I noticed the pumping was a lot easier than it was supposed to be with the handpump. After asking some people about the problem, shadowstalker (now HALF~DEAD) gave me his number to call him, and we, for the most part, figured out the problem. The problem was, the airforce tank adaptor did not have an o-ring in there, so I couldn’t fill it. Fortunately, we had a nice guy on TOG name gamebred, and he hooked me up with a good o-ring. Problem solved… for now.

Everything was great for a while. I got a shroud from YN. Awesome hunting. Well, then, accuracy started falling off rapidly. I was getting 3″ groups at 20 yards, compared to the one holers it shot before. I aked YN about it. He said he had no idea. I noticed though, that when I tilted the gun, I could hear something sliding around in the shroud. I guessed that the pellets were clipping. I also saw a spot on the end of the shroud that looked like it was chipped. So, YN said to send him the shroud, and he’d fix it for free. He also said he would do some modifications for me if I sent him the whole gun. Of course, I said yes. So, I sent him the gun.

Turns out I was right. The pellets did hit the shroud. But, the shroud took one hit from an eun jin that was dead on, and it took a large chunk out of the shroud. YN built me a whole new one. He also: did a trigger tune/mod, put in a swivel stud so I could mount a harris bipod, drilled a new hole to really lock down my shroud, Installed baffles in the shroud, and chronied it to make sure it was working right. Talk about an awesome guy!

Everything was good. New trigger mod was awesome, gun was extremely quiet, and it was accurate and powerful. All of a sudden, it just stopped. It would shoot extremely slow, or the pellet wouldn’t even make it out of the barrel. After talking to YN some more, we figured out that I had tightened the overtravel screw of the trigger mod down to much, and it was holding the sear against the trigger. This made the cheap steel of the sear get screwed up and it had a bunch of burs on it. I polished them out, and again, it was working. And again, for now….

Not too long later, I was in the mood for .25 caliber. I talked to anthony, he gave me a price, and had the barrel to me the next week. This thing was extremely accurate. With eun jins, I was getting half inch groups at 50 yards. About this time, sturgell started modifying ar-15 grips for people. He didn’t charge much of anything, so I asked if he’d make me a foxbat grip. He did, and it rules. Still though, something seemed slow…

I was setting up 2×4’s, and shooting straight through them. Then, one day, it didn’t go through. Then, it just didn’t want to shoot anymore. Very bad. The pellet wouldn’t come out of the barrel until the tank was at 150 bar. Then, it got worse, it wouldn’t shoot until it was at 100 bar. I decided I wanted to try to tune it myself, so, I bought a chrony. I was playing with the tophat, back and forth, day after day. I even took the valve spring out just so it would have a little resistance as possible. It got back to where it would shoot at 150 bar, so I lived with that. It still wouldn’t shoot through 2x4s, but it wasn’t getting any better, so I left it there.

It still never worked quite right. It would vary from 600 to 800 between each shot. Insanely inconsistant. And, not nearly as fast as it could be. But, I lived with it for several months. But, of course, I got tired of shooting at something, just to have the pellet drop straight down. Then, to beat it all, it got worse! Started only working sometimes. I started using my crossbow for night hunts, just because I knew it would work.

So, after too much of this, I was in that “somebody fix it, I don’t care how much it costs, or how long it takes, just fix it” kind of mood. I talked to cygnus. He said to send it to him, and he’d fix it up with some home made stuff and make it work. For free! Again, totally awesome.

So, I did that. He had it over the weekend, and got it back to me that next week. Worked great. Took it a few shots to break it in. It settled down. Worked great. I had a small issue shortly after that, where it got really weak again. But, I noticed the bottle collar was loose. I tightened that, and it fixed the problem. Once again, for now.

It started doing this thing where the hammer wouldn’t lock. It had done it for a while, but the other problems were bigger, so I never payed attention. I tried to get it to work, but it never did, so I ignored it. Until that is, it stopped shooting. As in, when it would finally cock, I could pull the trigger, and nothing happened. Hammer wouldn’t go back. I would have to take the gun apart to get the hammer dislodged.

Again, I talked to cygnus. (I’m glad this guy is patient, he has to put up with me texting him every day going “it broke again” He’s probably sitting at his computer cussing me out. 😛 ) He told me to use a shotgun rod with a sock around it wet with alcohol and clean everything out. The inside of the hammer and weight was pretty gunky. I also took the sear out, just to humor my desire to check it out. It had this itty bitty burr on the tip of it. So small you couldn’t see it. If I ran my finger up it, I wouldn’t feel it, but if I ran my nail up it, I could feel it. Again, I polished it out.

Holy crap. It works! Those little things combined to really screw it up. Now, it cocks every time, shoots from 3000psi, shoots every time. Shoots accurately. Powerful. It’s awesome. I’m so happy.

But, I’m hoping it doesn’t have a mood swing and quit. I’m going to go bury all of my tools so I don’t try to do something and screw it up again. 😛

So. I owe a big massive gigantic thanks to cygnus, YN, game, tony, shadow, and sturgell.

Thanks for helping me get this thing to the point it’s at now guys! You rule!