How hard is your head?

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Vetmx

Vetmx

Member
Dec 4, 2017
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Pa, United States
I consider myself pretty open minded. I’ve learned that a happy PCP life is much easier when you listen to the gun and don’t try to force it to be something it’s not. Of all my guns, I finally realized I was being hard headed with my Dreamtac Compact. From dual ports when they first came out to machining a piece so I could extend my shroud to install extra plenum space. To even chopping a liner and housing down to have a little longer barrel without having a too long barrel, I just kept being hard headed. Every DL Compact topic that would pop up, guys were wanting big gun power. I would talk them down to where I had mine, which was right on the ragged edge. Qball would always come along and tell the hard truth as to where the gun should be tuned. I knew it and I even had choked off settings with my TP wheel and hammer wheel to shoot light pellets but I refused to back the reg down. Finally I decided I might sell the gun. I have a 16gr .22 and I don’t need two. As I was looking over my barrels and bottles trying to figure out how I was going to sell the gun, I saw a tin of Walmart 14.3’s. It dawned on me that before I sell it I will back everything off and start from scratch with a 14.3 tune. My reg had been set at 140b within an hour of owning the gun and I never changed it. Was hoping the gun wouldn’t be traumatized when I did. I decided 800fps was where I wanted to shoot these pellets. After going through the process and getting to shoot a bunch of cheap pellets over the chronograph for a change, I wound up at 105b and around 810fps. The gun gets so many shots with the 300cc bottle that I went back to my 220cc bottle and still get over five magazines. Now the gun is even nicer with the smaller bottle. I am back to the original barrel length but still use my loaded shroud so I don’t have to screw a can on it. Now I have a gun that I can shoot cheap pellets with and not with a jacked up choked off tune. The bottom line is I really like this gun now because I quit being stubborn. Do we truly enjoy our guns if we are constantly tweaking on them trying to force them to do something? You might enjoy the process but are you really enjoying the gun? Thanks @qball, it finally sunk in. By the way. The gun tuned for 14.3’s outperforms the gun “turned down” for 14.3‘s by a long shot.

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Glad you found your happy place with your little DreamTac Compact, it's one of my all time favorite FX guns and someone has to pry it from my cold dead fingers!!! :ROFLMAO: I've just about tried everything you tried with PP, bottle, barrels........but always ended up basically in factory format with the 170cc tube, it just feels so awesome!

The 177 and 22 version both comes with the 7 gram light hammer so it actually lost power when you crank the reg to 140 bars unless you switched to medium hammer, doable but tuning be a bit more finicky. 110-120 bars or the needle at the last zero of the 100 mark is about the max the 7 gram hammer weight can open the valve and where I set mine at. Once reg is set then just leave the TP on medium and user hammer spring/preload to find your speed. Obviously if your gun is shooting great then don't change a thing! Very little fine tuning is need with that gun as long as you don't try to go over about 800fps by much.

Also the crazy part is the 22 superior liners shoot the 14.3 pellets like lasers, I've taken birds at 80 yards with it on first shot. The CPHP honestly shoots just about as good as JSB pellets minus the BC is much lower or drift more in the wind, mind blowing stuff.
 
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I want to say - well, duh! But of course I can admit to the same thing. Trying to get more out of an airgun than it was designed for. Sometimes it works as some components have been over designed for the base spec so they react well to increase power tuning. But most times you reach a limitation of port size, air flow, hammer being able to move a valve under too much pressure. And once you surpass those limitations the gun tends to shoot more poorly than when you started.

Problem comes in that we're all a bunch of tinkerers here. Most of us are not machinists who can physically change the original product in such a way we can actually change the limits. So like it or not we are bound by certain parameters. Bigger isn't always better.
 
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qball said:
Glad you found your happy place with your little DreamTac Compact, it's one of my all time favorite FX guns and someone has to pry it from my cold dead fingers!!! :ROFLMAO: I've just about tried everything you tried with PP, bottle, barrels........but always ended up basically in factory format with the 170cc tube, it just feels so awesome!

The 177 and 22 version both comes with the 7 gram light hammer so it actually lost power when you crank the reg to 140 bars unless you switched to medium hammer, doable but tuning be a bit more finicky. 110-120 bars or the needle at the last zero of the 100 mark is about the max the 7 gram hammer weight can open the valve and where I set mine at. Once reg is set then just leave the TP on medium and user hammer spring/preload to find your speed. Obviously if your gun is shooting great then don't change a thing! Very little fine tuning is need with that gun as long as you don't try to go over about 800fps by much.

Also the crazy part is the 22 superior liners shoot the 14.3 pellets like lasers, I've taken birds at 80 yards with it on first shot. The CPHP honestly shoots just about as good as JSB pellets minus the BC is much lower or drift more in the wind, mind blowing stuff.
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Just for the hell of it, before I pushed the reset button I fired a couple 14.3’s across the chronograph with my wheel set to my plateau speed at 140b. The 14.3’s were cooking across the chronograph close to 920fps. Never weighed my hammer but my gun never had any issues cracking the valve at 140b. I knew then that I was going to have to turn the reg way down, not just a little. I worried the gun might get a little blubbery with a low reg setting but it seems fine. I get the Crosman flier here and there but my 50 yard groups are great. The hold over was a little shocking but they all land nicely.
 
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Yeah, funny that how there seems to be a good portion of the classifieds filled with over the top, modified guns and custom parts...for sale.
Spend a lot of money and time on a rifle (or pistol), to put 50 pellets through it, then put it up for sale..? Buy a hand full of custom parts, only to put it back to original, then the custom parts go up for sale.

Yeah, I did one rifle. Bought some parts, put it all together, then thought...why the hell did I do this ? Luckily...only ONE time...I learned from that mistake, not to do THAT again !
I still do modifications of one sort or another, but think long and hard about it before taking the proverbial knife to the projected gun.
Unfortunately (selling wise), many of my modifications include modifying the grip to fit...MY...hands. This would, it seems to me, make the gun unsellable to most others, unless they have larger hands.

Mike
 
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Nice story. I think this is satisfying because it brings you back to the simple joy of shooting itself, putting shots on target over and over, not the adventure of tinkering that appeals to the experimenter and pioneer side of a mechanically inclined person.

Perhaps learning to be satisfied with what you have, rather than always wishing for more. It's a good place to be.
 
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Good post and I’ve read similar before. Whereas the shooter/modifier/tuner ends up back at the beginning. Going back to the guns’ original tune. It’s all good, some have the talent to modify away. Others, the cash to buy lots of aftermarket goodies. I get to learn from all of you. So what’s not to like. I’m just a shooter who will do the basic maintenance on my PCPs. No tinkering or mods. Don’t have the time or patience. I have a small PCP stable, each with specific roles. Each of mine fits a range of uses. I keep it firmly in my mine as to “Why” I got into this hobby. FUN! I have a job and plenty of household chores…
 
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L.Leon said:
Good post and I’ve read similar before. Whereas the shooter/modifier/tuner ends up back at the beginning. Going back to the guns’ original tune. It’s all good, some have the talent to modify away. Others, the cash to buy lots of aftermarket goodies. I get to learn from all of you. So what’s not to like. I’m just a shooter who will do the basic maintenance on my PCPs. No tinkering or mods. Don’t have the time or patience. I have a small PCP stable, each with specific roles. Each of mine fits a range of uses. I keep it firmly in my mine as to “Why” I got into this hobby. FUN! I have a job and plenty of household chores…
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Ran into this exact thought last night, I had my uragan .30 apart as I wanted to bump the reg just a little bit, why? I have no idea, well I wanted to get a little flatter trajectory so that I could use the second dot on my scope vs the 3rd half line,

I then put it back together and said what the hell am I doing, thing shoots great out of the box and will do what I want it to do and I don't have the patience for this if it suddenly stops doing what I want.
 
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I started out on the gotta have all the power this thing will deliver road.
I kept reading threads here about guys who went to slugs then same back home to pellets.
Bought a gun to just shoot pellets at reasonable speeds and be as accurate as it could be.
I still have my M3 and it does most of what it was intended to do. Highly adjustable, Infinitely variable performance and fun to mess with.
My last two acquisitions are set it and forget it guns
yeah I still tweak on the M3 but I think in a way it was meant as a lifetime project provider, but the simple ones are what I reach for most days.
 
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Jasonmc said:
Once upon a time.... very hard headed. I've done more machine work to a QB 78 to make it become something it was never designed to be...ever! (That being said it was a fun project though) now I'm just a little stubborn. So yeah...I get it... definitely understand
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Those types of guns can really shape a guy in a good way. I feel kind of bad for the bolt on crowd because it’s just way harder to understand a gun and how every little thing, even a couple thousandths of an inch can affect performance.
 
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Vetmx said:
Just for the hell of it, before I pushed the reset button I fired a couple 14.3’s across the chronograph with my wheel set to my plateau speed at 140b. The 14.3’s were cooking across the chronograph close to 920fps. Never weighed my hammer but my gun never had any issues cracking the valve at 140b. I knew then that I was going to have to turn the reg way down, not just a little. I worried the gun might get a little blubbery with a low reg setting but it seems fine. I get the Crosman flier here and there but my 50 yard groups are great. The hold over was a little shocking but they all land nicely.
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Interesting, you must have the medium weight. Either way if it shoots great then great! Low power shooting is great fun and challenge, if you get fliers then try turn it down 5-10 fps. Also heavier pellets at slower speed shoot even better but obviously they aren’t cheap like CPHP. Hades at 760-780fps is deadly for squirrels out to 50 yards.
 
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