Benjamin Maurader - New Gun - Bolt retraction issue.

[MrT2022]

Hi, I just bought my first airgun. A Benjamin Maurader .177 after taking it out of the box I can't seem to pull the bolt back far enough to slide the magazine in. Any idea's?

I have not purchased a compressor yet. So it is sitting a zero psi.

Thanks, Tom

 

[Nomadic Pirate 66]

Marauders are well known to have an awful bolt action,...you really need to yank it back ( nothing like a firearm bolt action )

 

[DJinAZ98]

Can you feel the pin sticking out of the breach when retracted ? On my marauder, if the bolt is not fully pulled back, the mags won't go in. Also, more often than not, I don't have the mag closed properly and it will not go in. It could also be the barrel to far into the breach snagging the mag. The two allen screws on top of the breach are to secure the barrel. There is some adjustment with regard to the exact amount of barrel is in the breach opening.

 

[DJinAZ98]

Without the benefit of leverage, as most higher end rifles have, It is you against the spring when cocking the Marauder. This is more difficult just by design, but properly adjusted and lubed, ( dry graphite I recommend), it is quite reasonable.

 

[Sergey1972]

Don't dry fire without air. Not good for the valve.

 

[starlingassn]

youre compressing the hammer spring when cocking the marauder.

if its your first PCP you probably were expecting the bolt to just easily slide back like on a powder burner.

dont yank it as youre compressing a spring,
pull back smoothly all the way till it clicks.

a good tip for first timers,
put your thumb on the back of the airtube as you pull the bolt back,
and put your fingers as close to the main body of the bolt as possible.

if you didnt get the bolt back far enough for the mag to go in then you didnt have it back all the way,
youll have to pull harder to compress the spring.

 

[WNYBill]

Mine will load a second pellet if you don't pull the bolt back till it clicks. Really screws up the groups!

 

[WorriedMan]

Feels like grinding rocks when using the bolt action on my Generation One Umarex Gauntlet, so thankful this old technology is being replaced by side-lever cocking. WM

 

[TiredRooster]

Always peculiar to me that people struggle with pulling the Marauder bolt far enough back to cock it. I have a few thousand pellets through my Marauder with zero issue and bolt has worked smoothly since day one.

 

[Dr. Kralenstein]

The bolt action/double pellet loading is the reason I got rid of my Mrod and Fort. Those double feeds ended up with a hole in my vinyl fencing

 

[dizzums]

they can be stiff, especially at high hammerspring tension .. if it feels like a hard lockup its likely a catch screw on the bolt backed out and loose, requires some disassembly to adress .. and on double feeding i actually have worse luck with a lever .. i tend to leave a bolt open in certain situations, try picking it up and walking with it with a lever, it will try to close with the weight of it then it partially feeds another pellet, cant remove the mag .. only option is to fire um out lol ..

 

[Fate]

What the assassin said.

But that was unacceptable to me. I found the answers on GTA. It’s the cure for a difficult to operate bolt as well as other, even more important things,

In short, I polished and buttoned the hammer, polished the hammer chamber, cleaned all with acetone, and burnished fine moly powder into the hammer and chamber… NO OTHER LUBRICANT.

The result is an incredibly smooth bolt action that is little affected by spring load. The shot-to-shot consistency I didn’t expect but should have, as , duh.

IMHO, this should be the way they should have been sold. It took me a lot of time and money in tools and equipment… all while knowing nothing about PCPs as this was my first. But in the end I’d only made a poorly functioning gun acceptable.

My next PCP was the product of learning the old fashioned hard way. It’s a Daystate Huntsman Revere. It joins only a handful of others carefully chosen over a long life. one MP, one break barrel, one SP, and now (after joining GTA) two PCPs. I’m done… ?