I have heard some bad things about the 22. Marauder. Does anyone have any experience with newer Marauders in 22. cal? This has been a question of mine for a while.
I have one of the last "1st Gen" Marauders in .22, no issues. Havent really heard any complaints in a couple of years (yes there are exceptions but Crosman did change something) I'm thinking it's just folks cant get over what they read (or experienced) in the very first run of .22's. And while I am no tuner, many of the "bad" barrels (not all as some were awful) from the first run could be fixed up with polish & deburr.
I have the gen2 synrod in .22. Its an ok rifle, very quiet, fairly accurate, 40 shots on a fill no problem. But for the most part, from what I have read over the last year or so the .25 is the way to go. If tweaking and adjusting and tuning, maybe a few mods are your thing the Marauder is for you. If I had to do it over again I would get the .25.
I had a gen1 25, it was very good. I think most of the complaints were for older gen1 22's. Some were good and others were not. They fixed that before the gen1 22's were done, I believe. The 25's have always been good.
I have a .22 Armada that was shipped to me from Crosman about 8 weeks ago. I was curious about how it would shoot, but so far have no complaints. At 50 yards groupes average 1 inch with the occasional ⅝ inch group suggesting that we could do better. I haven't found the “best” pellet, but it doesn't seem to be pellet fussy.
The gun still has it’s factory tune. The shot string is at least 40 on a 3000 PSI fill, and the power is around 22 FPE.
My assumption is that under all that Armada bling is a .22 Marauder. If that is so, then this rifle performs better the the horror stories we have seen on the web.
Gen 1 25 cal. with Bstaley oring mod, minimal tuning and a 2.5-10X Hawke scope. Pushes JSB Kings 840 fps, very consistent. Almost always pellet on pellet at my first zero 27 yards. I do have some flyers and some my fault.