BRK Ghost Review

[ladwict]

Maximum positions on the wheel always create the same preload on the hammer spring, given that the same spring is being used.

You're asking me to stuff some shims in there or use a heavier hammer spring than BRK OEM? both of which I have no interest in, nor does it serve the purpose of reporting on the Ghost that I am doing here.

To summarize, with the 0.051" wire hammer spring that BRK supplies, the maximum foot pounds from this Carbine .177 when converted to .22 with a 23 inch OEM Ghost barrel is 48.8foot pounds. Which is obtained at about 128-130 on the regulator, with the power wheel at MAX, and the threaded nose of the hammer extended 1/8 of an inch.

Sorry that I expressed.myself not clear to you. What I mean is not to question if a certain number causes always the same preload nor ask you to put a shim in or heavier spring. I just want to know if the hammerspring maxes out during your last test. This can be checked by the fact when at e.g.reg setting 140 any further more tension on the hammerspring would not give more speed. for examples setting 18 would be faster or as fast as setting 20 …. In that case one knows that at 18 you are at the absolute max setting for that reg speed . In your testing I see always still velocity increase till the MAX setting hence optimum velocity could be higher at that reg setting in case hammerspring pre-load was a bit higher. Please understand that I am not trying to sable down your great posting here but I want to understand and make sure what is happening from my restricted perspective.

 

[Franklink]

Welp, first 25ish shots on paper with the .22 barrel.

55 yards. .22 Monster RDs at about 48fpe.

Top five were initial five, then adjusted scope down to shoot the right group and there's 8 or ten in there, couple clicks here and there during that group. Then shot the left group, the one in the sun. Ten shots there, no adjustment of scope turrets.

Just a bit bigger than my thumb nail. I can work with this!!!

More to come, got paper set out at 95 yards right now too, but company coming over so we'll see how that goes. First bucket is the 55 yards I just shots, far bucket is on the back irrigation berm. Can go to 140 yards in the far right of this photo, if I get time for it.

 

[Gear_Junkie]

The two I've handled/am aware of came from BRK with trigger weights in the 1lb, 4oz range, as OEM, measured as delivered. The 1lb, 4oz I cite was a 10 shot average with a Lyman digital trigger pull gauge (photos earlier in this review).

The adjustments to the trigger mentioned in the manual on page 12 can make the trigger feel much better, but won't lighten it much (in my experience).
View attachment 299996


Both the review Ghost I have and Arzrover's required lightening of springs to get the trigger down into the 6-8ounze area. We also both made adjustments as shown above, to get the triggers the way we like them.

While Arzrover went the more elegant route of actually replacing the two springs that I will mention now for lighter ones, I went a more crude route. I removed the spring above the "B" arrow above and compressed it, quite forcibly, in needle nose plyers. That helped get a reduction in first stage.

The biggest gains to be had in helping the trigger are on what we've been calling the trigger bar return spring, circled here...

View attachment 299998

And a photo of that spring.
View attachment 300004
This is how the trigger cassette "catches" that bar.
View attachment 300005

I hate to clip a spring, much preferring to replace with lighter springs so that both ends are finished, but after a failed attempt at sourcing a lighter trigger bar return spring, I did the dastardly deed. I only clipped half a coil at a time, and then reassembled to test the trigger weight.

WARNING-I cannot recommend anyone attempt this!!! If you don't use heat to counteract the thread lock on the brass "eared" piece, you WILL DESTROY IT. (don't ask how I know). And even with heat, that thread lock is serious business. I don't think BRK intended for this to be a user-serviceable part, so fair warning. For the most intrepid, it might be safer to clip coils with wire snips, while leaving the brass piece threaded onto the bar, and then bending each coil off of the bar with needle nose plyers on both side of the snipped coil. Even with that process, you run a high risk of messing something up.

It is also tricky to get that brass piece threaded back on to the exact depth required for the trigger to function properly. So, if you're brave enough to try, take careful measurements.

I also applied a small amount of moly to each of the contact points in the trigger, here are a few of them. It has migrated a bit and looks like more than I originally intended.
View attachment 300007

I did no stoning or polishing of any contact points anywhere in the mechanism.

Trigger on the Ghost in my possession breaks quite crisply at 6-7ounces now. It is at a point that the trigger isn't making accuracy difficult, as I find some heavy, gritty, or unpredictable triggers can do.

This post is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO helpful! THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL OF YOUR HARD WORK AND REPORTING!!!

 

[Franklink]

I was able to get 2 fills shot through the gun at 95 yards today.

The first 4 shots were taken by my nieces fiance, his first experience with any sort of PCP. They were the company coming over that I mentioned earlier. He saw the Ghost sitting there on my high quality bench on the back porch and expressed some interest. I told him to plop down and take some shots. I figured he'd go for the 55 yard trap but he blew dirt up right in front of the 95 yarder. I chuckled and told him lets give it about 25 clicks on the elevation turret, knowing that it was sighted in for 55, and that 25-30 clicks (1/10th mil) is usually just about right for 100ish yards with any diabolo going around 915-920. He proceeded to shoot another 3 shots and acted impressed with the results. Of course I couldnt see how he did at that point but he excitedly threw a bunch of questions at me, and I enthusiastically answered them. And then we went on with their visit, returning inside the house.

Here's my super stable bench set-up.

Later that evening I took a walk down range to add another pellet trap next to the one already there. I was surprised to find that he'd shot at least three 8's and probably one of those would plug up to a 9. Laughed to myself and shook my head. He'd done pretty good!

I went ahead and shot another 3 at the the target right below my future....nephew-in-laws? group, and then moved over to the other bucket and shot 6, 5 shot groups. I was still above reg pressure and moved back to the first paper and shot another 2, 5 shot groups (circled in red on right side).

So 46/47 of those shots from that first fill are on this paper (his first shot hit the dirt b/c I didn't have the elevation dialed into the scope for him).
These were all taken with a batch of MRDs that is so-so, not best I've come across, but certainly not the worst.
The red arrow is pointing at nieces future husband's group.
The blue arrow is pointing at my sighters.
The red circle is around the last 2, 5 shot groups I took, at the end of the fill.

(I dug out a swamp last winter to create this little pond at the back of my property. I'm hoping to get around to pumping the water out pretty soon so that it'll have time to dry up so I can get back in there with the tractor in the spring to get it dug deeper. Judging depth from Colben standing out in there this summer after an irrigation, it's only about 4.5 feet deep right now.).

But back to the reason you guys are reading this.....accuracy results!
There were a couple of MOAish 5 shot groups in there ("ish" b/c it was 95 and not 100 yards and if you look close you can see the edges of the holes peeking out from under the coin).

This is what it looks like scored. The "or" is totaling it with inclusion of either lowest 5 shot group.

I filled the gun up again and shot another 2 cards as well. All shots taken are shown here (no sighters). All from one fill. These 50 shots are with my best batch of MRDs.

The card on the left was taken last. If you look at the middle target on the right column of the left card (the one that scored a 41) you'll see that low shot down into the next target. The gun was off the regulator here and that's why the shot struck low. I made a box around all 6 shots that were off the regulator. In order to get those last 5 shots to roughly center on the bull I started holding about 1/2 mil high, and kept holding just a bit higher with each shot, eventually getting up to around 3/4 mil holdover, knowing the shots were decreasing slightly in fps as I kept going, trying to stretch a full two cards out of one fill of the gun.
One of those in these two groups was MOAish also, the 48 (photo taken before I wrote all over it).

My Take....
Not too shabby. I had just a slight bit of wind, (mostly left to right) to deal with, but nothing too drastic. I don't shoot over wind flags so I'm usually one shot behind what the wind's doing. It really only pushed two of the shots far to the right. There was also a shot that hit far lower than it should have, I'm chalking that one up to the always present MRD flyer. Now I could have shot a ton of groups and only shared the good stuff, but I didn't. This is all of it, and taking that into account, I'm fairly pleased with how it did. It doesn't seem any less accurate than the personal long range gun I've been shooting for Xtreme Field Target for the last 2 winters, and that gun has turned in some decent scores in matches. In short, I think it can be competitive at this tune. I'll definitely need to play around with various batches of on-hand MRDs and figure out if the barrel has a lube preference and arrive at a cleaning interval, but, promising first long-range showing. Quite promising.

I was really surprised with how many shots I'm getting from that little 300cc bottle. As noted above, the last 6 of the second fill were off the reg and impacting low. That means I'm getting about 42-44 shots "on the reg." And it's at that same 128 bar setting I last reported. So, we're talking 42-44 regulated shots at 48foot pounds. That's rather impressive, in terms of efficiency, shot count, and overall energy output for the air being used. I didn't expect to get so many shots/fill from the Carbines 300cc bottle. Quite pleased with that actually.

I ran 30 shots over the chrono in the garage a few nights ago, high was 932 and low was 914, for an ES of 18fps. There are some caveat's with that though. I was using some pellets that I had sized (using a TR Robb sizer) as part of an experiment a year or so ago. This particular batch was purposefully undersized, to see if it could increase fps but retain accuracy. The experiment was a flop but I still had the rest of the pellets. So THAT was the tin I used for the 30 shots over the chrono, mostly trying to burn them up, but potentially gaining some information about the Ghost from them. So the spread can't be fully trusted to be accurate, since the pellets were messed with. However, from today's long range shooting, it's obviously keeping a tight enough spread to not effect the impact points at 95 yards until shot #43 or 44.

During this long range/high power session today I had a bit of a dejavu moment. In the first couple shots I was reminded of the firing behavior of a Delta Wolf. With the Ghost in .177 Carbine config I never had that sensation. With any model of gun, it's always more enjoyable to shoot a low power gun over a high power gun, but I will say the .177 Carbine config's (at 20fpe) firing cycle is short and crisp and clean. The Ghost at 48fpe is less so, as I've also found the Delta's to be, when cranked up. Maybe it just needs tuned differently, or maybe that's just the way they are at higher power, and maybe that's just my opinion, but that's the impression I get. Perhaps simply that equal and opposite reaction physics thing at play too.

I'm pretty enthusiastic for the .22 barrel in the Ghost!!!

 

[L.Leon]

Would love to get my hands on a .22 BRK Ghost…

 

[mr. earl]

I hope you find out why the twenty three inch barrel is not producing the energy that it should and keep us updated on that. I would like to know why they went to a elongated transfer port and pin probe instead of a round one and a flow-through probe like is used on the Delta Wolf? I wonder what would happen if you put Delta Wolf probe in? My .177 HP is set at 150 bar shooting 16.2 JSB's, average930 FPS, E.S. 6, and S.D. 2. That is the claimed 31 F.P.E. Mine has the .051 H.S.

 

[Franklink]

I hope you find out why the twenty three inch barrel is not producing the energy that it should and keep us updated on that. I would like to know why they went to a elongated transfer port and pin probe instead of a round one and a flow-through probe like is used on the Delta Wolf? I wonder what would happen if you put Delta Wolf probe in? My .177 HP is set at 150 bar shooting 16.2 JSB's, average930 FPS, E.S. 6, and S.D. 2. That is the claimed 31 F.P.E. Mine has the .051 H.S.

Yes it is quite the mystery.

Couple things though......BRK advertises their Ghost HP .22 at a max of 65fpe. What I'm playing with is a Ghost Carbine .177 with just a .22 barrel swapped onto it. I was told there's a different valve for the UK market. I'm not saying I got a 12fpe valve b/c theres no way a 12fpe Valve will put out the 48fpe that I'm seeing, but I am wondering if, since some low power parts obviously exist, perhaps some of those are in the .177 Carbine? to make it more efficient at 22fpe and down? I just don't know. Doesn't sound like there's been too many .177 Ghosts convert d over to .22 so I'm not sure anybody has the answer....which leads me to......

@SorenDrost mentioned that he has a .22 barrel and probe coming to swap out on his .177 Carbine. I've been anxiously awaiting his fpe reports after performing the caliber swap. Mostly interested b/c it sounds like his .177 Carbine maxes out at about the same 22-23fpe that the one in my possession does. So it'll be another useful data point.

I sure hope it's not the air passageway from valve to barrel that's part of the actual chassis, THAT would make getting more oomph very difficult. But for the life of me, I can't see them making a different chassis for the .177 Carbine than all the other configs.

At this point I'm debating working up my 20-100 yard dope with the .22 barrel at the current 48fpe, or pulling the valve and comparing specs with @Arzrover.

 

[Arzrover]

@Mr Earl... the pin probe has yielded higher velocity in every instance that I've compared. It's always a tradeoff in just about everything in an airgun and in these cases, the ported probe will consistently deliver the projectile straight into the bore with very little or no damage where the probe can dent the projectile or deliver it off center but flow more air. The barrel @Franklink received from me was elongated from DS as you should be able to see in his pic, with no evidence of being modified. This one was intended to test the max power capabilities along with the 25 cal barrel currently residing on mine. The DW probes, barrels, valves, and many other parts are interchangeable with the Ghost... a cool feat of engineering to me, but important in terms of economy. Not sure of the story behind the grips, though. I did compare and the AR15 grip fits the DW but not the Ghost (without modifications).

Bob

 

[mr. earl]

Pull the valve and sort it out ! It could be a heavier return spring causing a dwell that is too short for the higher power.

 

[SorenDrost]

@SorenDrost mentioned that he has a .22 barrel and probe coming to swap out on his .177 Carbine. I've been anxiously awaiting his fpe reports after performing the caliber swap. Mostly interested b/c it sounds like his .177 Carbine maxes out at about the same 22-23fpe that the one in my possession does. So it'll be another useful data point.

I sure hope it's not the air passageway from valve to barrel that's part of the actual chassis, THAT would make getting more oomph very difficult. But for the life of me, I can't see them making a different chassis for the .177 Carbine than all the other configs.

At this point I'm debating working up my 20-100 yard dope with the .22 barrel at the current 48fpe, or pulling the valve and comparing specs with @Arzrover.

I am getting the .177 longer barrel and larger 480 cc bottle to convert my .177 Carbine to the .177 HP edition

 

[Franklink]

I am getting the .177 longer barrel and larger 480 cc bottle to convert my .177 Carbine to the .177 HP edition

Ahh bummer, yeah that makes sense with your countrys laws. I was optimistically mistaken.

Although, Arzrover figured out why the one I've got won't make the same fpe in .22 as his!!!!

Detailed report to come later tonight. I'm super excited, b/c it's an easy "fix."

 

[XSUltimate]

Edge of the seat, commercial break, call it what you will but inquiring minds want to know! Thats okay, take your time, don't hurry on our account
Thx
Dan

 

[Franklink]

Edge of the seat, commercial break, call it what you will but inquiring minds want to know! Thats okay, take your time, don't hurry on our account
Thx
Dan

Lol. Sorry Dan. Taking kids trick or treating and all that fun.

It was quite the epiphany though...... And it wasn't the valve or chassis porting. In fact, I've already shared photos of the culprit earlier in the review.

 

[Franklink]

I've got lots to report on, specifically of interest to most will likely be the explanation of what was keeping me from getting the fpe we thought I should be seeing, but first....

I've wrenched on the Ghost A LOT!!!
And this has been all that I've needed,

The long 2mm is necessary for reaching the threaded nose of the hammer through the rear of the gun without disassembly (although this one is a couple inches longer than it needs to be).

Now, I know some of us geek out on tools, and I realize Eklind is on the lower end of the quality spectrum, but it's not quite harbor freight, and I've gotten a ton of use out of his little set. This set and range of sizes is everything needed for the Ghost though (minus the loooong 2mm).

On this same topic, you can start to see the quality of an airgun through multiple disassembly/reassembly sessions. Take Crosman/Benjamin for example, I started with a 1377 pumper and then a Benji Disco was my first PCP. Love the heck out of those two guns, still have them both. BUT, after just a couple take-downs, fasteners start to get pretty loosey/goosey. The metal in them just isn't of the caliber that can handle much of that, in short, soft.

Now, take the Ghost, everything tightens up nice and snug still. None of the allen key heads are even starting to open up/round off. BRK used some pretty high quality steel bolts as all the fasteners that I've touched (and I think that's pretty much all of them at this point). Another cool thing I noticed in the last hour or two, as I took the rear subassembly off and on at least 6 times....that grub screw that attaches to the rear of the valve has created an exactly perfect, concentric circle in the flat that it affixes to on the valve. Ie, there's just not much slop in the parts, they fit together so nicely, that time and time again that grub screw lands in the same spot. And this is definitely a place where tolerance stacking could be expected, because we're not just talking about two pieces mating together, but multiple pieces affixed together to create that sub-assembly. In fact, I even pulled the valve and once it went back in, same little circle created by the grub screw on the valve flat, not even the smallest thou of difference where that grub screw circle lands. And it has done that over and over and over and over again. Pretty sweet. The Ghost is machined well folks.

 

[Franklink]

Deep Dive into WHY this Ghost isn't Making the Expected Power

Short recap: @Arzrover has had a test Ghost since the spring. He's casually seen up around 970fps with the .22 Monster RDs, without really pushing on it hard. The Ghost HP is advertised as "up to 65fpe" in the .22 (which would be something like 1070 with MRDs ). Both Arzrover's and the official BRK spec sheet are getting that fpe output with the same 23 inch .22 polygonal barrel that I swapped onto the .177 Carbine. And I was only seeing 930, somethin was amiss.

First we thought the heavier hammer spring that comes in the Ghost HP would be the solution...it produced more power there than the smaller wire spring that is OEM in the .177 Carbine, but still not what it should be. So arzrover (Bob) suggested I pull the valve and we could compare. That happened today.

To pull the valve, the valve retaining collar needs to be unthreaded. There are two holes in that ring that allow it to be rotated. Somehow this is the best photo that I've got...red arrows pointing at those two holes.

Bob told me he was able to get his with two appropriately sized drill bits (the smooth shanks, not the cutting tips), and a crescent spanning them. The problem with that technique on mine was that the two holes were also aligned with the trigger return bar and there just wasn't enough room in there to make it happen.

Now, Daystate/BRK has a nifty little tool to make valve removal easier, but there's not one of those at my house.

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So, improvise!!!
My first attempt was a piece of scrap oak. It's a slice of a stair tread from redoing the stairs in the big house remodel. Went to the scrap bins in the woodworking shed and thought that sweet little bullnose would be just perfect. It's more than 1/2 inch thick so thought it'd do the trick, but nope, split.

Next, shim material from an experiment with bedding a Red Wolf action in the stock better......

PAYDIRT!!! That worked a treat to get that valve retaining ring loosened up. My little tool wasn't/isn't pretty, but it worked!

So, here's what we had....

That ring has been rotated here....

And then just pull the halves apart....

Valve innards...

Sent a few of those photos to Bob and he said it all looks in order but let's measure the exhaust port, "should be 0.267" he says.....

Yep, 0.267"

"How does the air passageway through the chassis look?"
"Bout the same size," I respond (too hard to actually measure in there but here are some photos....

This is just the end of the transfer port proximal to the valve (above photo is end of transfer port proximal to barrel).

So, valve is identical to the valve in the HP configuration. Porting is all the same, in both the valve and the chassis. That's a relief....but what the heck is the problem with why this .177 Carbine conversion to .22 won't produce the FPE?!?!?!

He texts back at this point, "that really only leaves the hammer mass."
I responded, "Your hammer seems .more solid than mine. Mine has cut outs. " (He'd sent me a photo of his hammer a few weeks ago).

Next I get this from him...

I couldn't get my rear sub-assembly apart quick enough!!!!!

Winner winner chicken dinner indeed!!!! Mystery solved. The hammer that comes in the HP models (and probably? the Standard) weighs 137 grains more than the hammer that comes in the .177 Carbine. And it's obvious in those photos. The Carbine's hammer is skeletonized, AND it has flats running down both sides. The BRK/Daystate engineers had to do some serious slicing and dicing on the hammer to get it down to appropriate for .177/20 fpe, a testament to the power their valve can put out, if nothing else.

Mystery Solved
The Carbine hammer weighs only about 75% of the hammer in the HP models, AND they still had to use a thinner wire spring to TAME THE BEAST THAT IS THE GHOST into a sub 20 fpe .177.

 

[Franklink]

Now What?

Wasn't five minutes that I shot out a request to AOA to see if they've got a spare hammer from a Ghost HP floating around the shop. The response, they'll look and see and let me know.

But in the meantime......I wanted to see if I could jerry rig something into creating a heavier hammer so I could throw some over the chrono and see what we've got. We knew we needed about 137 grains.....I found this in a random bin of stuff and thought with some reshaping I could maybe make a sort of spring guide/weight, with the flange keeping it inside the hammer.

Plenty....

Little did I know at this point how much reshaping this thing would require.
I'm deep enough into this airgun craziness that I need a lathe, and I've been researching here and there trying to figure out what to go with, but for now all I've got is a Bubba lathe (belt sander and a hand drill). Where there's a will, there's a way.

This was my first attempt. A little light but I knew I'd have to cut it short to get the gun to cock. I also knew I'd be adding some preload with the flange.

I also tapered the end, similar to the angle of taper found on the OEM spring guide.

Put it together and NOPE, way too long, wouldn't even come close to cocking. So, more cave man machining.

Put it together again, and NOPE, still won't cock. So more "machining." Thinned up the flange a bunch this time.

Still wouldn't cock...Sigh.

Put it together again and it would just barely cock, but only with the hammer spring tension on minimum. Wouldn't cock with any more preload than that. Knew I wanted more adjustability so went crazy this time, cutting it back quite a bit.

Put it back together and now we're talking, I could get it to cock from "MIN" all the way up to "14." Wouldn't cock past that though.


Now some chrony time!!! (with .22 JSB Monster RDs)
0.051 spring still, 57.2grain hammer weight, reg of 128bar (where it was last)
MIN-930.0, 935.3, 930.2, 932.9, 931.3
"7" - 935.5, 937.4, 930.4, 937.5, 931.7
"14" - 924.3, 932.9, 932.6, 927.6, 930.7

Okay, okay, I think we need more reg pressure. Increasing the hammer spring tension wasn't really getting us anywhere.
So, same as before, but with regulator bumped up to 135 BAR
MIN- 956.5, 957.6, 955.5, 954.8, 961.7
"7" - 955.7, 957.2, 962.1, 959.5, 953.9
"14" - 955.6, 959.6, 959.1

Hmmm... Lets go up to 140 bar (everything else the same)
MIN-968.7, 966.4, 969.0, 962.9, 964.7
"7"-964.0, 967.1, 960.8
"14" - 957.2, 960.5, 958.2

Yep Yep, hammer weight was the problem. That 140 bar reg with minimum hammer spring preload is 965-970 fps which gets us up around 53foot pounds. Mmmmm Hmmmm! That's the stuff!!!

So, I really had mixed feelings about sharing the chrono data from my jerry rigged hammer weight, because it's not OEM and really not very helpful to anybody trying to reproduce it in the future. I did it only as a "proof of concept" sort of test to verify the hammer weight discovery as the reason the Carbine couldn't put out the fpe it should have. I think we can lay that mystery to rest as being solved, ie. the skeletonized hammer weight that came in the .177 Ghost Carbine was the culprit.

As-is, my jerry rigged hammer neuters the adjustable stroke feature of the Ghost. It also makes the hammer spring preload adjustment effectively useless, as seen by the chrono results above. Nothing useful can be taken from this experiment except that it's all about that hammer weight.

If you're in the market for a .177 Carbine Ghost, but also buying a .22 barrel kit, and you're wanting more than about 48fpe, make DANG sure your retailer includes a hammer weight and hammer spring from the Ghost HP configuration.

I'm sure hoping to get a care package from AOA with a Ghost HP hammer weight. If they have a spare one, I'll do some chrono testing that will be useful to future owners (since it'd be with OEM parts, hammer spring and hammer). If they don't have a spare one, I think I'll see what accuracy looks like at 965-970 fps!!! Just those couple shots over the chrono were consistent enough to work with.

Finally, The Ghost is very sensitive to all of the adjustments. I shoot into a 5 gallon bucket pellet trap full of rubber mulch. I do that mostly even when I'm shooting outside, but for sure when I'm doing chrono testing in the garage. It is really surprising to feel how much less air comes blasting back at me from the pellet trap when the gun isn't happy. And that "balance" or imbalance of all the adjustments can REALLY be felt when shooting. The Ghost can be a bit of an ornery cuss, in the firing cycle behavior, if the adjustments aren't correct. It can also be a mellow sweet shooter if everything is balanced. For example, the 128 and 135 bar testing above was louder and sending a bigger blast of air back at me from the trap than the 140 bar setting, even though the 140 bar was making more energy-almost like ALL of the air was propelling the pellet at 140 bar settings but not at less reg pressure. I saw this same thing with the .177 barrel at 20fpe. It could be mellow and gentle to shoot, and producing roughly the same energy, just with two different methods (adjustments) to get there. I dunno if that's mistiming of the valve to pellet departure from barrel or what (air wastage), but it's quite obvious. It's a big enough difference that it's worth doing the tinkering to arrive at a calm and happy medium of desired power output versus shot cycle. With an OEM hammer from the HP config, I'll be able to fine-tune for a desirable shot cycle than I can with my crude added hammer weight.

Sweet, sweet sweet gun this Ghost. It's been a huge investment of time but man o man am I enjoying it!

 

[Franklink]

Last one for tonight, while it's still fresh on the mind....

I didn't go higher, but I suspect I'd see even higher fps with higher reg pressures. I don't think I want much more than the 965-970fps with the MRDs so I stopped there.

I was somewhat anticipating a leaky valve once I put it back together, figured I'd get a particle of fuzz or something somewhere, or even an oring slightly pinched or not quite in its groove. I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it went back together, and with nary even a leak. I'll know for sure in the morning but it's been holding the same pressure for a couple hours at this point. If it has a leak, it's a small one. I half expected to have to sort out a valve leak, as that's a common issue I've dealt with when tearing down a pcp to that point.

 

[mr. earl]

The .177 HP has the heavy hammer I had mine out because I could not break the retaining screw for HT adjustment loose without putting heat on it. I have looked at the pictures several times and never noticed the difference in the hammers. I also lost FPS by extending the HT screw. The light hammer is something SorenDrost will need to address if he wants to get the most from the long .177 barrel. Thank you for this post, it has been very help full.

 

[zx10wall]

Cole, you've put in a lot of time on this. We sure do appreciate you taking us through the adventure. I know its not over but wanted to say thank you.

 

[Franklink]

Thank you! It's good to hear that folks are enjoying it.

I'm really anxious/excited to see more people get them in their hands and hear from them about what they think of the platform. I've always got this fear in the back of my mind that folks think I'm just a ***** and drumming up sales, versus reporting factual information. I think once more Ghosts are out and about, people will see that I'm not full of beans about how awesome it is.

(I'm not a Daystate/BRK/AOA employee. I don't get paid for gun reviews. I'm not a "sponsored" shooter. I do reviews for guns that I'm excited for, and I turn down reviews that I'm not interested in doing. Simple as that.)

(Lol, $hill was edited out by AGN software)