Tuning Need help from the taipan tuners!

[madeintheuk]

My new (to me) veteran standard .25 is an absolute masterpiece, and I really enjoy the boring accuracy it achieves day after day. That being said, I’ve had a buddies vet that I had borrowed before receiving mine (the reason I got one), and his has the same velocity with the same pellet, but substantially less effort to cock. It also has less ping from the hammer. Now to premise, he got his from Ernest Rowe, and it is definitely not stock. I’ve heard of peek or delrin topped hammer weights that may help reduce ping, but does it add weight also to help with hammer spring tensions? 


Also, are there any aftermarket parts available? Or anyone willing to make something?



thanks in advance!

 

[Vetmx]

My advice is just don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken. As PCP guys, most of us develop this disorder that makes us feel that we have to modify a gun. As you can see from the giant list of aftermarket hot rod goodies available for the Taipan, it doesn’t need any help. I had mine for around 4 years and didn’t even make a scope adjustment. I just couldn’t take it anymore and had to try slugs with it. Then a reg adjustment and heavy spring. Then an extra plenum. The plenum was a failure with the standard Vet but it was a good slugger. It wasn’t a powerful slugger but it was just as boring as it was on pellets. So after a year some things dawned on me and I felt it was best to put the gun back on pellets with the friendlier reg setting and just good enough hammer spring. I’m not sure about the .25 Vets but my .22 came with a factory spring that didn’t have enough spring rate to reach the plateau speed of the factory reg setting. But, and this is key, it did have enough tension to allow me to tune around the knee of the reg setting. That translates into a gun that is so easy to cock because it doesn’t have too much spring in it. When I put the heavy spring in to allow myself more leeway with higher reg settings, cocking was noticeably stiffer. You didn’t mention what caliber your loaner gun was but it might just have a lighter spring. Since it was Ernest’s gun, he may have just opened the TP up a little for better flow, very risky because if you F it up, your not buying another one, then he ran a little lower reg and hammer setting. Lower reg, lower hammer spring equals less ping and easier to cock. My advice, leave it alone. If it’s too boring and you want to constantly be chasing something, well, you know what brand specializes in that. Buy one of those.

 

[madeintheuk]

You’re right. It’s boringly accurate. BUT! going from a buddies that I know is capable of exactly the same speed and accuracy with less cocking effort and noise makes me wonder. They are both .25, and are both setup for hades at 900 give or take. He does have the power plenum on his, and the hammer adjuster seems to be backed out much more (probably why it’s easier to cock). If it was a matter of just adding a heavier hammer weight to reduce cocking, I could live with the ping. 


I have had a lot of FX rifles, and while I like them, I like simple better. The only one I have left is an impact on .30, and that’s for a specific purpose. The reason I got the vet was for it’s tank like build, it’s lack of poi shifts when sitting for long periods, the ability to load a mag and decock without double loading, and the pure simplicity of the design. I did however buy it for a specific purpose. This was to shoot out windows at night picking off critters trying to get into my chicken coop. I wanted something powerful, but quiet so I didn’t wake the house when doing so. My buddies rifle is just that (believe me I tried to buy it, but he wouldn’t let me ), and I want to get mine to that point. Unless I’m just being unrealistic. 

 

[Vetmx]

Go to a hypnotist and have him erase the memory of shooting that other gun. Or, add a plenum, tear your gun apart and guess how much to lower the reg, maybe several times, and back off the hammer spring. After a ton of pellets over the chronograph, then extend your shroud so the gun doesn’t look goofy. Since you don’t have a need for the gun to become a power monster, unless you just like big projects for minimal gains, just enjoy a gun that will always be the same gun you put away. Even if it was 6 months ago and your house got leveled by a tornado.

 

[elh0102]

If you spend the money for the same modifications as your buddy's rifle, what will it then do that it can't now? I can't see the value in it. I have a Veteran that is totally stock. It's the quietest non-electronic rifle I own, and I can't say the cocking effort is an issue. But it's a hobby, which by its nature is a money pit, so if it's worth it to you, go for it. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but you.

 

[Cannonball]

Is your Taipan hard to cock, or is that your friends Taipan is just extremely easy to cock? The reason I am asking is your current tune isn’t close to maxing out what that .25 standard is capable of which is 55 FPE. So assuming you have the factory regulator and it hasn’t been adjusted , you shouldn’t be close to the max hammer spring tension and it shouldn’t be difficult to cock. You mentioned the rifle was new to you, did someone previously own it? If so do you know for a fact if any changes were made? There is a possibility that someone could have installed a heavier hammer spring and that would definitely increase the amount of force needed to cock it. As for aftermarket parts, the only ones I am aware of are a plenum, heavier hammer spring and regulator. Anything else would be custom made and you would likely need to send the gun to the tuner building the parts to ensure proper fitment. A rifle’s tune will also effect noise levels so I would verify this first before doing anything else.

 

[madeintheuk]

Is your Taipan hard to cock, or is that your friends Taipan is just extremely easy to cock? The reason I am asking is your current tune isn’t close to maxing out what that .25 standard is capable of which is 55 FPE. So assuming you have the factory regulator and it hasn’t been adjusted , you shouldn’t be close to the max hammer spring tension and it shouldn’t be difficult to cock. You mentioned the rifle was new to you, did someone previously own it? If so do you know for a fact if any changes were made? There is a possibility that someone could have installed a heavier hammer spring and that would definitely increase the amount of force needed to cock it. As for aftermarket parts, the only ones I am aware of are a plenum, heavier hammer spring and regulator. Anything else would be custom made and you would likely need to send the gun to the tuner building the parts to ensure proper fitment. A rifle’s tune will also effect noise levels so I would verify this first before doing anything else.

The rifle is not new. I bought it used here on the forums. It had the Donny hammer adjuster pre installed as well as the endcap for moderator use. I can’t tell you any more than that. My only confusion being, if it was the heavier hammer spring, why would it be any easier to dock with the factory spring? In order to achieve the velocity I am now, the spring tension would need to be the same wouldn’t it? Unless the previous owner played with reg setting which I also don’t know. 
If there were aftermarket parts available, this would be an easy fix, but it seems there is no aftermarket for these based on the everyone thinking they’re perfect out of the box. Guess I’m living with it for now. 
thanks for the help!

 

[elh0102]

The rifle is not new. I bought it used here on the forums. It had the Donny hammer adjuster pre installed as well as the endcap for moderator use. I can’t tell you any more than that. My only confusion being, if it was the heavier hammer spring, why would it be any easier to dock with the factory spring? In order to achieve the velocity I am now, the spring tension would need to be the same wouldn’t it? Unless the previous owner played with reg setting which I also don’t know. 
If there were aftermarket parts available, this would be an easy fix, but it seems there is no aftermarket for these based on the everyone thinking they’re perfect out of the box. Guess I’m living with it for now. 
thanks for the help!

If the other rifle has a different spring and/or hammer, then no, the heavier spring would not necessarily result in a heavier cocking effort. There is probably considerable overlap between the tension of the two springs. The heavier end of yours is probably a higher tension that the lighter end of the other spring adjustment range. The hammer weight and reg setting are also critical to determining spring setting. It sounds like the other rifle may be using a relatively high reg set point and low spring setting. This would not necessarily be the most air efficient combination, but I think it could result in your observations. It also causes me to wonder why he is using the heavier spring. Maybe he wants the potential for a much more powerful level of tuning, perhaps for heavier slugs. 

 

[Franklink]

I recently shot mtnGhost's "blingvet" and it has a firing behavior similar to your friends Vet (quieter and calmer than an OEM Veteran). He posted here on AGN (rather extensively actually) about all the work he did to that gun. If you're truly serious about going down that rabbit hole, I'd recommend searching his post history. I remember that he was changing out the spring valve and hammer springs and machining hammer weights and was even winding his own springs. I also remember that he ran into trouble with heavier hammer springs and regulator pressures destroying his OEM valves and poppets and eventually had to machine his own design beefed up valves and make his own heavy duty poppets. 

As previously commented, the Veteran is typically viewed as the gun that is good enough as supplied that it doesn't need all the tinkering. An OEM Vet will shoot A LOT of tins of pellets without any issues, (I'm just under 20,000 trouble-free pellets through my first Vet and close to 8,000 on the second one) . BUT jacking with (drastically) the hammer spring/valve spring/hammer weight/regulator balance is likely to result in needing new parts. And new parts are hard to come by, unless you've got some machining abilities. 

 

[Cannonball]

Is your Taipan hard to cock, or is that your friends Taipan is just extremely easy to cock? The reason I am asking is your current tune isn’t close to maxing out what that .25 standard is capable of which is 55 FPE. So assuming you have the factory regulator and it hasn’t been adjusted , you shouldn’t be close to the max hammer spring tension and it shouldn’t be difficult to cock. You mentioned the rifle was new to you, did someone previously own it? If so do you know for a fact if any changes were made? There is a possibility that someone could have installed a heavier hammer spring and that would definitely increase the amount of force needed to cock it. As for aftermarket parts, the only ones I am aware of are a plenum, heavier hammer spring and regulator. Anything else would be custom made and you would likely need to send the gun to the tuner building the parts to ensure proper fitment. A rifle’s tune will also effect noise levels so I would verify this first before doing anything else.

The rifle is not new. I bought it used here on the forums. It had the Donny hammer adjuster pre installed as well as the endcap for moderator use. I can’t tell you any more than that. My only confusion being, if it was the heavier hammer spring, why would it be any easier to dock with the factory spring? In order to achieve the velocity I am now, the spring tension would need to be the same wouldn’t it? Unless the previous owner played with reg setting which I also don’t know. 
If there were aftermarket parts available, this would be an easy fix, but it seems there is no aftermarket for these based on the everyone thinking they’re perfect out of the box. Guess I’m living with it for now. 
thanks for the help!

I have experimented with different springs, regulator settings, and plenums with two of the three Veterans I currently own. My first statement pertaining to the regulator setting was leading up to the hammer spring and if it had been swapped out for a different one. A heavy hammer spring set at high pressure takes some force to cock. A factory spring tensioned to the max isn’t very easy to cock either. Changing the regulator pressure will affect the amount of spring tension needed to achieve a certain velocity. There is also the possibility that your friends Ernest tuned rifle has some custom valve work which would also reduce the amount of hammer spring tension needed to open the valve. 

 

[Vetmx]

When I turned my reg back down from 140 to 120b, I left the truck spring in the gun. I was able to back the adjustment down to the knee. My cocking lever was almost all the way to the rear before I felt tension while cocking it. But it was still stiffer cocking than the stock spring that came with the gun. Old stocker is back in there now. My guess is still your buddies gun has an extra plenum, lower reg setting and therefore lower hammer spring tension.