Tuning Broken Piston Spring

Great! Have you polished the ends of the new spring to take away the sharp edges and allow it to move freely when released? I would not be surprised if this extended spring life. Maybe a more experienced tuner could comment ...

PC

Any time you tame recoil or have energy more evenly distributed it will extend the life of that spring. Every little bit helps. More important tho is that it will feel and shoot smoother. I love those old crosman guns. I grew up on them and Gamo hornets etc .... I tuned a Gamo hornet so smooth that it would blow your mind. You don't need To spend 500 bucks or more to have a good gun. Just polish up those spring ends and maybe buy a delrin spring guide if your getting fancy. I also polish the piston tube and crosshatch it but even just cleaning it and maybe hitting it with 600 grit sandpaper will improve things. I often didn't have money to do a job "right" when I was a kid but had great success in improving my rifles with a little sandpaper and cleaning. Good luck to you.

Yep...gotta allow that spring to rotate freely, smooth and polish those ends. I even recomend doing that on a new springer!! After a few hundred shots you will find damage, gouge marks on trigger block and inside the piston if spring ends are left rough. All those tiny metal particles wont help the insides. Clean and smooth/ polish everthy thing you can and use a good lubricant! It will only improve your shot cycle.

Did you use any dampening compound on your new spring? Didnt see you mention it...for many, many years I have used Dow 111 valve lube, it is a heavy silicone grease as a spring dampening compound. Just put it all aroundvthe maibsoring before installing, you dont need much just a light coating akl over the spring, it is sticky thus the dampening and vibration reduction. FYI....I use a small bench mounted belt sander to smooth out my spring ends and remove all sharp edges, then I have a 4" dia cratex wheel on a bench grinder to polish the spring ends. Also works great for polishing other parts. I also have cratex wheels mounted on my Dremel tool to speed up polishing jobs, however the big cratex wheel is so much faster. As you are just getting started, feel free to pm me if you have any questions. Been doing soringers for over 30 years.

Dow has the 111 that has moly. Saw it on Amazon.

Close tolerance fits for metal to metal contact is not for silicone grease as it is not a metal lubricant. However, as a dampebing compound, you are not lubing anything and there is no close tolerance fit between spring and piston. I have used the dow 111 for over 30 years with O issues!! Moly around the outside of your piston and the inside of the compression tube. Some ofvthe silicone grease will mix in with the moly over time but not an issue. My old TX200 MK 1 had well over 80 K shots with no noticible signs of wear on the inside. I used nothing but Dow111 on the springs, my spring life averaged about 15K shots before being replaced. That rifle won many state and local matches and the world spring gun championship in 1995. I tuned over 200 TX 200 and SR models during my tuning years and never an issue with the dow111. also used in in all the RWS and Beeman rifles with never an issue. Bought a new TX200 MK3 and after a coyple dozen test shots, took it apart, smoothed and polished the spring, cleaned and relubed all the internals and recrowned the barrel then recut the lead into the barrel. Accuracy was greatly improved, velocity is 900 fps with a std deviation of 5 or less with 8.4 AA pellets. And yes the spring is coated with dow111.... NO buzz or vibration. Very smooth shot cycle. While some folks do not recomend using the silicone grease, as they have other compounds they like, I have never had any complaints from any customer.

Keep the silicone out of it. It will migrate everywhere, and ruin the lubricity of your moly lube when it does. 

If you're going to use "dampening compound" just get the right stuff from ARH and be done with it. It is thick enough to not sling around when it's applied properly, and it's also a decent metal lubricant in itself. 

Silicone lube has no place in a spring gun whatsoever. 

Keep the silicone out of it. It will migrate everywhere, and ruin the lubricity of your moly lube when it does. 

If you're going to use "dampening compound" just get the right stuff from ARH and be done with it. It is thick enough to not sling around when it's applied properly, and it's also a decent metal lubricant in itself. 

Silicone lube has no place in a spring gun whatsoever.

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Perhaps you should tell that to my R1 that has had silicone grease in it for almost 20 years. Still shoots within 10 fps from the original tune 20 years back, over 15k shots thru it. Or talk to Tom from the airgun tv show, his TX200 was tuned about 20 years back with silicone grease and claims it shoots today as well as it ever did !! I understand there are other products out their that some folks prefer for various reasons, but do not lead people to believe it is bad for their rifle when I can prove otherwise thru over 35 years experience in spring gun tunning using nothing but silicone grease for a dampening compound. I have tuned well over 250 AA springers and have O complaints. I used the tar stuff for a short while but had to many complaints about the tar, went back to silicone and complaints stopped. 

Keep the silicone out of it. It will migrate everywhere, and ruin the lubricity of your moly lube when it does. 

If you're going to use "dampening compound" just get the right stuff from ARH and be done with it. It is thick enough to not sling around when it's applied properly, and it's also a decent metal lubricant in itself. 

Silicone lube has no place in a spring gun whatsoever.

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Perhaps you should tell that to my R1 that has had silicone grease in it for almost 20 years. Still shoots within 10 fps from the original tune 20 years back, over 15k shots thru it. Or talk to Tom from the airgun tv show, his TX200 was tuned about 20 years back with silicone grease and claims it shoots today as well as it ever did !! I understand there are other products out their that some folks prefer for various reasons, but do not lead people to believe it is bad for their rifle when I can prove otherwise thru over 35 years experience in spring gun tunning using nothing but silicone grease for a dampening compound. I have tuned well over 250 AA springers and have O complaints. I used the tar stuff for a short while but had to many complaints about the tar, went back to silicone and complaints stopped. 

Keep the silicone out of it. It will migrate everywhere, and ruin the lubricity of your moly lube when it does. 

If you're going to use "dampening compound" just get the right stuff from ARH and be done with it. It is thick enough to not sling around when it's applied properly, and it's also a decent metal lubricant in itself. 

Silicone lube has no place in a spring gun whatsoever.

Click to expand...

Perhaps you should tell that to my R1 that has had silicone grease in it for almost 20 years. Still shoots within 10 fps from the original tune 20 years back, over 15k shots thru it. Or talk to Tom from the airgun tv show, his TX200 was tuned about 20 years back with silicone grease and claims it shoots today as well as it ever did !! I understand there are other products out their that some folks prefer for various reasons, but do not lead people to believe it is bad for their rifle when I can prove otherwise thru over 35 years experience in spring gun tunning using nothing but silicone grease for a dampening compound. I have tuned well over 250 AA springers and have O complaints. I used the tar stuff for a short while but had to many complaints about the tar, went back to silicone and complaints stopped.

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With that kind of numbers and years under your belt, I find it astonishing that a not a single customer of yours has piped up here. The airgun community is a fairly small one.

What kind of complaints did you get from your loyal customers? Educate us. 

Most of my customers have long retired same as myself. After retiring I choose to help others by talking them thru there issues because my arthritus does not allow me to work on them any more. I use and recomend items that have proved sucessfull over the years, I dont sell the newest and latest snake oil to hit the market and I dont scare folks by telling them how certain products will harm there rifle just because it insnt what you use. I dont advertise, never have in 30 plus years, all my business was thru word of mouth. Happy to say a number of guns I worked on were used in numerous state and local championships including my own 95 world spring gun championship. I let my work speak for itself. 

I prefer Moly but I have used a really thick divers grease on the spring on a Gamo hornet 177. It worked and didn't go everywhere. I wasn't really impressed with how much it was dampening the the twang and replaced it after a couple tins of pellets so take whatever I say with a grain of salt. I tend to go with others have found to be tried and true but I don't really buy the idea that silicone grease is a terrible idea...at least just for the spring. Maybe I'll tune my dad's titan and run some tests. Seems like a thick enough viscosity would be fine. At any rate this is an interesting topic. I've actually been wondering if there was a silicone grease that would work as good as moly be for awhile. Perhaps I'll do a post in a few mm onths with the results

Great job Moog! 

That is how you learn to work on and improve the performance of your spring guns is by doing. I would agree with what others have said about polishing the ends of the spring coils. I polish quite a few parts when I'm going through a springer myself. However, I would not recommend using silicon in your springer. I would use a high quality moly lube on the piston and any where else metal parts are wearing against other metal parts. If you use a "dampening" grease/compound.... or whatever, I agree with Thumper's advice and use product from ARH (Air Rifle Headquarters). He sells very good quality moly and dampening grease (if you want for your spring). You can order directly from his web page. I personally use moly from ARH on my spring as well.....I just coat it well with a small paint type brush. No grease for me......but thats my preference. But again......no silicone in the springer.