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Wildcat Regulator

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Samuel

Member
Oct 21, 2015
102
4
VIC, Australia
Hey everyone,

Forgive me if I'm repeating something that's been discussed before. I've done a cursory search and haven't found exactly what I'm looking for.
I have a Mk1 Wildcat. I purchased it brand new late last year. It shoots like a laser, and I absolutely love it. 

But, the first few shots on any given day all drop significantly low. At 30m, I'll see a POI some 3 inches lower than my POA with my first shot, and then they climb up to where I'd expect them to be after 5 or 6 shots.

Am I right to assume that this is due to the regulator?

It's not a huge problem when I'm at the range, but in a hunting situation, it's less than ideal. I've resorted to stopping a few minutes before I get to my hunting permissions to fire 5 or 6 dry shots.

I will be upgrading to a Huma regulator in the next month or so anyway, but I'm really curious to know if anybody else has had the same experience?

Thanks!

 
What you can do when you got the huma reg, is to tune the gun at the "knee", to minimize the velocity drop on the first shots. You can search the forums to get knowledge about how to do it. I personally do target shooting only, so for me it is not an issue to dryfire one or two shots before loading the magasine for the first pellets of the day. So I use higher reg pressure than nesesarry as it makes the gun more efficient with air use. 


 
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It's same thing for all fx guns. Not just the wildcat. Even my $2000 impact will shoot 30-40fps slower first 1-2 shot when leave it overnight. This is due the reg creeping. The higher pressure, the hammer striking the valve have a harder time to open it. Thats why you see the lower speed. After you fire a few shots, the reg pressure get back to normal. Leave it overnight again and reg will creep again. So just repeat dry fire. Idk if huma reg will solve this. Some people report that huma reg stop the creep. Other say it doesn't work and will still have the creep.
 
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I bought my wildcat 2nd hand and it has a huma reg in it. Pretty much bang on for the first shot every time. Other fx guns I have had would have a low shot or two but not as bad as yours. One other thing I will say is the wildcat 22 like yours that they bring to the australian market has a 600mm barrel compared to 500mm for the US and others. My wildcat is set to 120bar which will give you heaps more shots than 130 or 140 and mine still pushes the 18.13 jsb pellets to 34 FPE with the longer barrel and is deadly accurate. Just something to think about when setting up your new regulator. If you have any question PM me.

James
 
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So I'm going to proceed under the assumption that it isn't the reg. I'm making this assumption because, in diagnostics, if you keep replacing the same part assuming it must be the problem, generally that means your assumption is wrong. It isn't always, you could have two creeping regs in a row from two different manufacturers, but I don't want to assume that. 



So my advice, first and foremost, would be to buy or borrow a chrono and test the first couple shots for low velocity. I believe you can also purchase a gauge relatively inexpensively and install it in your gun's reg-test-port so you can actually see what the pressure is. These are both means-to-ends not solutions, but more information is always better when doing diagnostics.

I have two hypotheses for what it could be other than reg creep. This isn't to say that it necessarily mustn't be reg creep, nor that these are the only possibilities, but they are two other things to check for and illustrate why looking for more information rather than just trying a third reg might be a better plan. 

Temperature change - Do you happen to shoot in a very different temperature than your gun is stored? I did the math a little while back, and discovered that my FX wasn't seeing reg creep, what was happening is I was moving between temperature extremes. There is no bleed out of the plenum, once air is in there it stays in there until the hammer releases it. So if you were to, for example, go and shoot outside in the cold and then come inside to your warm home and let your gun sit, once the air in the plenum warms up its pressure will increase and that pressure increase has nowhere to go. Thus you see what APPEARS to be reg creep, but actually is not and is a totally natural phenomenon. Similar can occur if you store your gun in a nicely air-conditioned house, and then take it outside and leave it in the hot outdoors prior to burning your first shot. That cool plenum air will heat up and increase in pressure. To be clear though, this will only affect your first shot, so it seems unlikely you have this problem. Note that this phenomenon only works in one direction, taking your gun from a cooler area to a warmer area. If you do the reverse, take your gun from warmer to cooler, the plenum pressure will drop and the reg will simply open and release more air to maintain the plenum at its set pressure. 



Sticky gasket - it is possible you have a slightly stuck gasket somewhere in the firing system of the gun. This can be caused by it being too soft, improperly lubricated, or (if you use such stuff) cleaning fluids leaking back down your air port and getting on your valving. This may take one, or multiple, shots to blow off and produce low velocities until it does. 





One thing I do want to say is that your issue does not sound like a creeping regulator to me. Why? Because your plenum is quite small, they usually are practically as small as they can be, and is meant to empty significantly with each shot. The reason for this is simple: any volume you don't need is essentially waste space robbing your pressure-side of your air tube. So if your first shot is low power, MAYBE your first two, I'd consider a creeping regulator plausible. But five or six shots? I highly doubt it. Your plenum would have to be over-filled to near valve-lock to achieve that many shots out of plenum pressure alone. Remember once that plenum drops below the reg's set pressure the gun should operate normally. For that to take so many shots seems unlikely to be caused by an over-pressurized plenum to me. 



I hope that helps! 
 
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Don't forget that a hammer needs to be bone dry to function properly (or lubed with an absolutely dry lubricant). If it's oily or greasy the first couple of shots will be used to redistribute the oil/grease and loosen it up again and after that it will function quite normal again until you store it.

And like STO said above there are more factors than just blaming a regulator. I generally shoot at a cold range and store it warm so I too see "creep" but when I fire a shot the reg pressure is normal again and it stays there for days.

Both my airguns have detachable reservoirs which makes it easy to shoot some silicon oil through the regulator once in a while, this will prevent a sticking piston in the regulator if this might be an issue. With the wildcat this will be harder to do since the regulator must be taken out of the tube to re-lubricate.
 
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Hey everyone,

Forgive me if I'm repeating something that's been discussed before. I've done a cursory search and haven't found exactly what I'm looking for.
I have a Mk1 Wildcat. I purchased it brand new late last year. It shoots like a laser, and I absolutely love it. 

But, the first few shots on any given day all drop significantly low. At 30m, I'll see a POI some 3 inches lower than my POA with my first shot, and then they climb up to where I'd expect them to be after 5 or 6 shots.

Am I right to assume that this is due to the regulator?

It's not a huge problem when I'm at the range, but in a hunting situation, it's less than ideal. I've resorted to stopping a few minutes before I get to my hunting permissions to fire 5 or 6 dry shots.

I will be upgrading to a Huma regulator in the next month or so anyway, but I'm really curious to know if anybody else has had the same experience?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Samuel:

Please take a look at: https://www.airgunnation.com/topic/setting-the-regulator-hammer-spring-tension-correctly/ 

If you properly tune the hammer (in relation to the reg pressure), velocity stabilizes. 

Also, please read this great article: https://hardairmagazine.com/ham-columns/tuning-regulated-pcp-airguns/

Hope that helps.


 
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Very nice points there @STO and @broekzwans

A stickey valve or Hammer spring can cause the first few shots to be slow. Fx also recommends to keep the hammer setup dry. Clean the hammer and related area/parts so that it's totally dry. Clean the valve and applying light lube to it. Hopefully this should fix the issue. And yes use a gauge to check the regulator pressure just incase the reg is creeping.

Also, when cleaning the barrel keep the gun upside down so that nothing seeps in to the transfer port. When done cleaning keep the gun upside down and take a few dry shots to blow out any thing that might have crept in to the transfer port and then run a few dry patches through the barrel. This will prevent the solvent or wahtever stuff you used as cleaning agent from getting in to the valve and effecting its performance.
 
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Very nice points there @STO and @broekzwans

A stickey valve or Hammer spring can cause the first few shots to be slow. Fx also recommends to keep the hammer setup dry. Clean the hammer and related area/parts so that it's totally dry. Clean the valve and applying light lube to it. Hopefully this should fix the issue. And yes use a gauge to check the regulator pressure just incase the reg is creeping.

Also, when cleaning the barrel keep the gun upside down so that nothing seeps in to the transfer port. When done cleaning keep the gun upside down and take a few dry shots to blow out any thing that might have crept in to the transfer port and then run a few dry patches through the barrel. This will prevent the solvent or wahtever stuff you used as cleaning agent from getting in to the valve and effecting its performance.
Click to expand...

There is no need to lube the valve. Almost all components in an airgun should be able to run dry without any lubrication, might need some time to wear in here and there to make it smooth (depending on the cost mostly). The regulator is the only part that really needs lubrication although I also apply lube on the contact surface between the trigger roll and the sear link in my FX Crown just to make that movement a little smoother.

All places that are lubed can attract dirt and increase wear or inconsistencies.

The other two tips are useful, measure regulator pressure (on a wildcat there is a brass screw on the side which can be replaced by a pressure gauge) to see if it is constant in between shots. And to avoid oils leaking into places it shouldn't be whilst cleaning just keep it upside down and a little tilted forward (the barrel pointing downwards so oils will run into the barrel).
 
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