Tl;Dr - It wasnt grass that threw my shots off, I had a great day shooting this morning (see pics), some people really need to be more upfront about what they are selling, some people really shouldn't bring a tool to their hand let alone that tool to an airgun after its in their hand......
So I posted Friday that I was having some crazy fliers and I didn't have my chrono with me.... see thread below
Yesterday I had my taipan compact out and was shooting prone, shooting from my 55 yard mark prone means that I have to shoot over a high spot ("hill") and the grass has had about 5 to 6 weeks to grow and weve had a lot of rain this past week. About 13 feet out of the muzzle the round would skim...
www.airgunnation.com
Anyways ...
Yesterday I brought the rifle to the table and it was doing the same thing, this time I had a chrono and this time I was paying a lot more attention to the sound of the rifle when I saw the FPS difference (stay true to your senses!) , I would get a nice solid string at 935, then one super high, one super low, we are talking 50-60 fps up or down. During these dips or spikes I heard an audible PING that I wasn't getting during the other shots. I said ok, time to stop shooting, lets take this bad boy apart.
Now I have not had this rifle apart since I acquired it. It did not have the original MTNGhost HST adjuster brass set screw when I got it but a black donnyfl one that did absolutely nothing as the rifle was sent to me with the HST adjuster was just all over the place and not locked in place, I removed the Donnyfl as it would not thread in enough which I found weird, and replaced it with a factory grub screw, problem solved! so I thought....
Back to yesterday, I take the rifle inside and disassemble it, MY GOD, the lint, hair, mucky oily mess I found within the trigger assembly and the hammer spring/ hammer bore... terrible ... I really think a lot of airgunners are very harsh on their stuff and do only care about how the rifle looks to everyone elses eye before how the internals are fairing .... I clean all this up and while Im cleaning I catch the swap on something sharp and it pulls it off the q tip.... (see pic of remaining tarnished brass HST adjuster set screw in my hand). I get in there and dislodge it with a pick, it had been lodged into the side of the bore causing the hammer spring to be pushed slightly to one side causing wear on the other side of the bore (MTNghost hammer is in perfect shape). I am fuming at this point because this is just neglegence and who knows from who, previous owner? owner before him? Who cares lets just remedy it.
I get the dremel out and my extended bits and get to polishing and massaging ( I removed only a couple high spots, surprised there wasn't more damage) , it looked far worse originally and I am really impressed with how my work came out, so I polished the inside of the hammer spring bore, the spring itself, the hammer, the HST adjuster and kept cleaning.
This has me wanting to just buy new from now on, its not the first instance but probably going to be the last. I got another rifle a month ago that was sold in working condition and when it arrived the trigger was so out of adjustment the safety and trigger were bound up, easy enough, sure.... remedied? yes.... however why wasn't the rifle gone over with a fine tooth comb before shipped? I have a friend who received multiple rifles with issues in one batch, cracked stocks, boogered up hardware from misuse of tools, terrible tunes... however they were not sold this way.
I posted this rifle for sale yesterday because I said I am just going to doubt it from now on knowing what I found even though I tested it, shot it, and it actually was performing better than when it had FIRST shown up.... however I am confident in my work and feel that the rifle is in an improved state compared to when I originally got it a month ago and I now know more about it as well, so I pulled it down.
I shot 65 shots tethered, chrono attached, 6 groups, meaning they were all getting about a magazine or more (10+ shots per group), and this was done shooting on a crooked table, 55 yards, using a single shot tray no mags and shooting quickly more focused on any malfunctions.
Anyways happy weekend guys and hope you all got a little something out of this thread.
Glamour shot