B3 air rifle wrong spring?!

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I have recently worked on 3 B3 air rifles and was starting to feel pretty cocky (pun intended) about my understanding of these warhorses of the airgun world.
But the one I recently snagged for $20 as a "parts" gun (because it was missing parts) surprised me...
As it came, when I stripped the action, before removing the infernals, I tried to cock the "bare metal" (no trigger group installed), and it seemed to be totally seized. However, it came apart with no issues (I didn't notice that the spring was too long!), and when I cleaned and deburred nothing interesting showed up.
When I put it all together, I should have noticed that the free length of the spring was a little long. When I tried to test cock it it felt seized up... I really leaned on it and discovered that it was just extremely stiff - Impossible to cock. Took it apart and noted that the free length was 2-3/4". By my ballpark estimate that's roughly 100 lbs of preload! That works out (to my estimatin') to about 50 lbs just to get the underlever started!

My suspicion is that the previous owner had replaced the spring and got in over his head, and passed his fun project along to me.
Easily fixed by trimming a few coils, but gave me fits with it being so stiff that it felt totally seized up! I'll get back to it when a few days have passed and I've forgotten what a PITA it was...

Live and learn!
B3-Air-Rifle-Spring-Issue.jpg
 
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The B3 is a very cheap (Generally available for $60-$80 new, and typically $10-$20 used) Chinese under-lever gun that is shipped almost totally dry, with just a little vegetable oil (some have reported bacon fat) on the piston seal. The stock is often cracked, the wood finish looks like donut glaze, some parts might be hardened, or they might be dead soft. If you're unlucky, you might get one that can barely push the pellet out of the barrel!

They are often sold with two tins of 100 pellets that are sopping with oil and will diesel very satisfyingly.

If you totally tear them down, deburr and lube them, they can be very powerful and even reasonably accurate, with a cutoff and crown job. Great gun for an advanced tinkerer.

The factory sights are practically useless, but most models have 11mm dovetails milled in them, unfortunately at a random angle relative to the barrel. Expect to shim your scope one way or the other.

If you like to tinker (and don't value your time much!), and can resist the temptation to upgrade any of the parts, you can wind up with a cheap, powerful, and reasonably accurate rifle IF YOU ARE LUCKY AND DON'T GET A DUD!

They do demand some careful attention on the part of the tinkerer because the various ID's and OD's vary quite a bit - Don't be tempted to buy any upgrade parts because they likely will not fit (All four of mine have been unique!). Just work with the gun as you get it and you will get a lot of satisfaction out of making it perform. In fact, I'd say that you can learn more from messing with the B3 than you can from a better gun, because you won't worry about making a hash of it, and will probably be able to fix it anyway.

And you'll get a lot of exercise wrestling with the cocking lever!
 
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