Dry firing....is it bad for a PCP?

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I dont think it will mess up the valve stem unless you are using an extremely heavy hammer setup that requires that the valve stem has some pressure behind it to safely "pop" it open. If there was no air behid the stem, the hammer would simply fly to hard forward and damage something....im thinking of the 40+ fpe guns. I have been dry firing my guns for the last several years till empty.....with no damage..... but my guns are usually set between 12 and 30 ft lb. BSA PCP's is what I shoot.
 
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Shooting a regulated PCP below its working range should not prevent the regulator's piston from resetting to its original position once the air tube has been refilled (if this is what you meant); refilling the air tube should re-seat the piston and thus enable the reg to start regulating air again once the regulated air chamber has reached its maximum set pressure. If the piston fails to close, or if failure to re-seat itself occurs, then the regulator needs to be serviced or rebuilt. 
 
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My pcp big bore is from extreme big bore. It’s a .457. I was hitting the target at 67 yards. Even so the gun was low on air each bullet hit where I wanted it to. Then my .457 sound strange. Lost all the air at the one point . The part buttoned out.My gun got damaged. 325.00 I was charged enough to send Dennis Quackenbush gun to me twice. Dry firing it is even when air is low. Dry firing means different to each builder or company. It’s not explained very well. Extreme big bore uses a lot of air, strong hammer. When it slams forward, it’s hits very hard, extremely hard. Big bore knew about this problem. But it’s about the money. I learned something by owning his gun. That is! I’ll never operate right. If it’s not my lubing it will be the air source even though I use the latest in drying my air. There is nothing I can do to satisfy the builder to honer the warranty, I got over 2,000.00 in this gun. It’s just a larger bore. It’s not rocket science. He knew that correction in making better, there was a flaw it the gun.but charge us all more money. By from Dennis , he even is very fair
 
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Answer: it depends on the gun. Generally, a few dry fires here and there with sufficient air in the tank won’t harm the rifle. It depends on the rifle, dry firing without sufficient air or with no air can mess with the valve, causing leaks. This happened to me on my Boss. Often, manufacturers will specify. I have a CZ that I can dry fire with no air and have never had an issue. Edgun, for example, I think says not to dry fire the Leshiy (meaning no pellet) under 150 bar. So you need to examine this in the context of the specific gun. Some guns can have valve and seal problems, resulting in leaks, if you engage in excessive firing either with no pellet or insufficient air. I know this from personal experience and working with AoA to fix it. 
 
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Several companies tell you to dry fire their pcp for certain situations. BSA S10 for example is regulated and has no fill port so you dry fire it to remove the bottle to fill. By dry fire I mean you completely empty the regulator in order to remove the bottle and its the same for the newer BSA R10 mk2 if you need to remove the bottle for any reason. Both are regulated and both have to be shot until the regulator is completely empty before the bottle can be removed. Air Arms is another pcp that requires dry firing in order to do maintenance on the valve or any other part that has pressure from the cylinder. I did build a tool for my AIR ARMS S510 that allows me to open the valve slowly to dump the air so I dont have to dry fire. I only made the tool because I had installed a regulator and needed to open it up several times to tune it. Its much faster to use the tool than to shoot it 65 or 70 times lol.
 
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ztirffritz said:
Also remember that air moving at 600+ fps is just as dangerous as a pellet for a few inches out of the barrel at least. It isn't harmless. It can cause an embolism if you were to shoot the air at someone point blank. OSHA has really strict standards about air nozzles at 100psi because they can kill people. Imagine what 3000psi could do.
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ztirffritz said:
Also remember that air moving at 600+ fps is just as dangerous as a pellet for a few inches out of the barrel at least. It isn't harmless. It can cause an embolism if you were to shoot the air at someone point blank. OSHA has really strict standards about air nozzles at 100psi because they can kill people. Imagine what 3000psi could do.
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Dry firing a PCP won't hurt. I know an airline at 100psi will do damage as you've said. Especially directed at an orifice on the body. That's because the amount of air is much greater and causes much higher force.
There is not enough quantity of air to cause an embolism from out of a PCP even though it's between 85-120 bar.
Remember that only the air tube is 300bar not the reg pressure. Even those without regs. But if you have any evidence of this happening to anyone from a dry fire I'd be happy to admit that I am wrong.
 
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Keith2324 said:
I asked this same question a long time ago. I was wondering if it would be ok to do this as I wanted to get some "trigger" time in the garage. I wanted to do this to get used to the different stages of the trigger and also be able to adjust the trigger without shooting pellets. The consensus was this was a terrible idea and could case lots of damage. I'm really confused now.

Keith.
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just fire pellets into a bucket of sand with a folded towel on top of the sand . OR just fill the bucket with folded old jeans . fire into the bucket.
 
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If there is insufficient air in the reservoir to cushion the poppet valve, the valve can be damaged in some models. So the answer is, it depends on the model and air pressure. The safest thing is to only dry fire when there is plenty of air pressure. If your manual says to dry fire to empty the reservoir before disassembly then that design is okay .

For those who say they've never heard of any damage here is my story. I have an FX independence, which I believe is built on the FX Royale 400 action. I dry fired a bunch of times in a row it before disassembly and bent my valve pin. Don't dry fire your PCP gun with low or no pressure unless your manual specifically says it's okay.

Feinwerk
 
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All conventional PCPs should be designed so that firing at 0 bar breaks nothing.
- valve pins should be designed with a wider part at their end, to prevent over-travel. This means a two-part valve stem assembly, screwed together.
- the rear section of the valve itself should include a raised hammer stop of some sort, to prevent the valve stem channel from getting hit directly by the hammer and riveted (= reduced ID over time. The valve pin should also be made of Cr-V steel or Ti or similar, to prevent riveting and increasing OD over time).

Some PCPs are designed well to handle those issues, but some are not.

There is a separate and secondary issue of poor valve sealing when at 0 bar, but this is often due to a bent pin, so a good design would also fix that eventuality.
 
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