I was wondering that myself. If my regulator is set too high, I just want to lower it to an approximate setting then set my hammer spring to 95% max speed and look for a decent group. Am I way off base?
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Maybe I was too optimistic for my Taipan .177 Standard accuracy?
- Thread starter KyPop
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If his gun is setup close to mine, where the reg is set at around 120-130 bar from factory, and a JSB heavy can be slinged over 1000fps, it can be hard to find that balanced tune, for that pellet, if the gun shoot better on lower settings. I am not saying every gun need lower reg pressure to shoot better, but at least mine did improve.
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I have three Veterans, and have spent time with two additional Vets, owned by friends.
I've shot the platform EXTENSIVELY, in .177, .20 and .22, going back about 4 years.
A .22 Vet can be shot down to 19fpe and still give very consistent spread in OEM configuration, simply turning down the hammer spring tension and leaving the reg as it comes from Taipan (with an ES of about 15fps). Same with a .20.
But, with a .177, I ran into problems with sub 20fpe tunes and OCD desires for tight spreads.
The same OEM port is used in all of them that I've touched. And it's a HUGE dual transfer port. (Ernest Rowe was a big Veteran guy before being hired by FX. And the Impacts putting out massive power have the same design of a bridged, dual transfer port. I'm not sure if they did prior to Ernest's involvement at FX, but I've suspected that it was Ernest's contribution to the Impact, from what he found in the Taipan).
For a .177 Veteran, the OEM transfer port makes it really hard to get consistent shot strings. The best I could do was a spread of about 35fps, with the OEM regulator as low as it would go without reconfiguring the belleville washers (again, seemed to be about 115-120 bar).
A benevolent friend machined me up some transfer ports, @ 75% of .177. With the smaller transfer port, my ES went down to 15 feet per second. That restricted port allows the gun to be more consistent.
Here are more details and photos, if interested: https://www.airgunnation.com/threads/veteran-standard-177-poly.1244892/post-1284414
I'm not saying your one and only solution here is a smaller transfer port. And I'm not even saying that a 35fps spread is a bad thing. Play with one of the ballistics apps and plug in your low of 910 and high of 949 and you'll be surprised to see that it doesn't have much of a vertical difference, even out to 50 yards. (I just plugged it into Strelok and I'm getting 6.8 clicks with 910 and 5.8 clicks with 949 @ 50 yards and a 30 yard zero, using 10.34grain pellets. That's 1/10 of a mil difference in theoretical impact points. Most humans can't hold, even with a bench, within a point smaller than 1/10th of a mil @ 50 yards.)
If you're planning on keeping your .177 shots within even 60 yards, which is realistic, than the extreme spreads less than 40fps aren't your problem. Whether or not you can hit what you want to is the issue. And from all that you've shared, I'm still questioning pellet batches or wind influences.
Edit: Short version of everything I typed above = a spread of 39fps is not why your 40 yard groups are larger than you want.
I've shot the platform EXTENSIVELY, in .177, .20 and .22, going back about 4 years.
A .22 Vet can be shot down to 19fpe and still give very consistent spread in OEM configuration, simply turning down the hammer spring tension and leaving the reg as it comes from Taipan (with an ES of about 15fps). Same with a .20.
But, with a .177, I ran into problems with sub 20fpe tunes and OCD desires for tight spreads.
The same OEM port is used in all of them that I've touched. And it's a HUGE dual transfer port. (Ernest Rowe was a big Veteran guy before being hired by FX. And the Impacts putting out massive power have the same design of a bridged, dual transfer port. I'm not sure if they did prior to Ernest's involvement at FX, but I've suspected that it was Ernest's contribution to the Impact, from what he found in the Taipan).
For a .177 Veteran, the OEM transfer port makes it really hard to get consistent shot strings. The best I could do was a spread of about 35fps, with the OEM regulator as low as it would go without reconfiguring the belleville washers (again, seemed to be about 115-120 bar).
A benevolent friend machined me up some transfer ports, @ 75% of .177. With the smaller transfer port, my ES went down to 15 feet per second. That restricted port allows the gun to be more consistent.
Here are more details and photos, if interested: https://www.airgunnation.com/threads/veteran-standard-177-poly.1244892/post-1284414
I'm not saying your one and only solution here is a smaller transfer port. And I'm not even saying that a 35fps spread is a bad thing. Play with one of the ballistics apps and plug in your low of 910 and high of 949 and you'll be surprised to see that it doesn't have much of a vertical difference, even out to 50 yards. (I just plugged it into Strelok and I'm getting 6.8 clicks with 910 and 5.8 clicks with 949 @ 50 yards and a 30 yard zero, using 10.34grain pellets. That's 1/10 of a mil difference in theoretical impact points. Most humans can't hold, even with a bench, within a point smaller than 1/10th of a mil @ 50 yards.)
If you're planning on keeping your .177 shots within even 60 yards, which is realistic, than the extreme spreads less than 40fps aren't your problem. Whether or not you can hit what you want to is the issue. And from all that you've shared, I'm still questioning pellet batches or wind influences.
Edit: Short version of everything I typed above = a spread of 39fps is not why your 40 yard groups are larger than you want.
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Exactly. If it's shooting 1,000 fps at max HST, then the best balance for consistency is likely to be over 950 fps, which is way hot for most rifles for best accuracy. So, the other variable, the reg set point, would need to come down.
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Damn just when I was thinking about getting a .177 Taipan for ratting .... good stuff in this thread!
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I’m with Mickshooter in that bull pups are difficult to shoot.
I sent my .25 marauder to a guy to have a supposedly super accurate after market barrel put on as well as a bull pup stock.
He sent me the rifle and I couldn’t get a decent group at 30 yards, and I was carefully shooting from a bench using bags.
After a few hundred shots I was sure the gun must have been damaged in shipping.
Long story short I sent it back to the guy who promptly shot a tiny group with it.
He explained that bull pups are much more difficult to shoot than a regular rifle.
So I put the action and new barrel back into the factory stock and boy oh boy did it shoot!
It just seems like if Tony got good groups with it, but you didn’t, it could be shooting technique.
I would be tempted to simply start over with the gun nested solidly in bags, front and rear on a solid bench and at 20 yards.
It’s more difficult to do with a bull pup because they are shaped different and will sit in the bags differently.
Concentrate on doing it exactly the same each shot.
Even the way you have your hand on the bag and your finger on the trigger must be the same each shot or something is going to move the gun just enough to wreck it all!
Concentrate on the “aim small miss small” concept and think the pellet through the bull.
Do everything you already know like follow through and breathing with a new concentration and slowly!
I tend to get discouraged with a miss and it can break my concentration and then I’m not doing everything I need to do for accuracy.
Instead I find myself moving in frustration to the next bull with broken concentration… thinking it must be the rifle!
I catch myself doing this with my RedWolf lol!! And it’s always me, not the rifle.
Please don’t be offended because I’m not meaning that you can’t shoot, just sharing what I experienced myself.
Best of luck, I’m betting you’ll get it sorted out.
I sent my .25 marauder to a guy to have a supposedly super accurate after market barrel put on as well as a bull pup stock.
He sent me the rifle and I couldn’t get a decent group at 30 yards, and I was carefully shooting from a bench using bags.
After a few hundred shots I was sure the gun must have been damaged in shipping.
Long story short I sent it back to the guy who promptly shot a tiny group with it.
He explained that bull pups are much more difficult to shoot than a regular rifle.
So I put the action and new barrel back into the factory stock and boy oh boy did it shoot!
It just seems like if Tony got good groups with it, but you didn’t, it could be shooting technique.
I would be tempted to simply start over with the gun nested solidly in bags, front and rear on a solid bench and at 20 yards.
It’s more difficult to do with a bull pup because they are shaped different and will sit in the bags differently.
Concentrate on doing it exactly the same each shot.
Even the way you have your hand on the bag and your finger on the trigger must be the same each shot or something is going to move the gun just enough to wreck it all!
Concentrate on the “aim small miss small” concept and think the pellet through the bull.
Do everything you already know like follow through and breathing with a new concentration and slowly!
I tend to get discouraged with a miss and it can break my concentration and then I’m not doing everything I need to do for accuracy.
Instead I find myself moving in frustration to the next bull with broken concentration… thinking it must be the rifle!
I catch myself doing this with my RedWolf lol!! And it’s always me, not the rifle.
Please don’t be offended because I’m not meaning that you can’t shoot, just sharing what I experienced myself.
Best of luck, I’m betting you’ll get it sorted out.
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I have 2 other Taipans, a .22 and a .25, that I can hit a dime with at 40 yards all day long every day. That's precisely why this new .177 is so frustrating. If I didn't have the experience that I have with the other two rifles, I would probably be happy with what I'm getting from this one since I wouldn't know any better.
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I took my regulator out and thought I would lower it a little and I noticed that the brass adjuster ring was literally free-floating. I could just spin it counterclockwise almost. That doesn't seem right? So, I don't have a reg tester. I have no starting reference point. What should I do? By a reg tester or order a HUMA regulator?
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The huma's are dicey with the Taipans because of the different sized airtubes ( short, standard, long ). It has to do with the spacer that comes with the huma for the plenum. I have a .22 long and a .177 standard - both with huma's in them. I got creative with my .22 a couple of years ago and (literally) hack sawed and filed it to the proper length and . . . got lucky and it works. There is a thread in here about that saga someplace - you might be able to find it via the search. I got lucky with the .177 a year or two down the road and that one just worked right from the get go. Both of my Taipan's are ~super~ consistent in FPS with the huma's in them.
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I wonder if you could put a drop of blue locktite on the threads of the regulator to get the adjustment wheel to not move so easily (once the locktite dries). I think I'd do that, let it dry for at least a few hours then put it together and shoot it. I would set the regulator at minimum. You should still be able to move the reg with the locktite on it but the more you move it, the more freely it will move.
My minimum suggestion is based upon your desire to shoot 8.44s at less than 900 fps. It seems like the Taipan regulator may not be adjustable to a pressure that would do that - or it might be. A test at minimum would tell you that and also tell you something about whether the gun shoots better at a lower reg setting and fpe.
I played with transfer port size when tuning my Prod (admittedly a totally different gun). I saw ES and STD DEV go up with increasing transfer port size.
My minimum suggestion is based upon your desire to shoot 8.44s at less than 900 fps. It seems like the Taipan regulator may not be adjustable to a pressure that would do that - or it might be. A test at minimum would tell you that and also tell you something about whether the gun shoots better at a lower reg setting and fpe.
I played with transfer port size when tuning my Prod (admittedly a totally different gun). I saw ES and STD DEV go up with increasing transfer port size.
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Very interesting Jim.
This might also explain possibly why my Taipan .25 Long (HUMA regulator) had some fairly regular high ES values in the 20-35 FPS range ( I mentioned this in an earlier post on this thread) with recording about 30 different shot strings over time with my FX Radar Chrony. I never could figure out why so high, but just like KyPop, I always would get one or two shots in the string that were high that would adversely increase the ES spread to that range.
In my case shooting at 50 yards outdoors, I managed between .5-1" CTC group averages in probably well over 2 dozen range outings, shooting about 50 or more pellets for each outing with my Taipan Long .25.
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You have to hold the adjustment stem with machine screw at the top to keep the whole assembly from turning. You want the center stationary while you turn the collar.
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Ditch it and get the FX Crown that shoots hole in hole right out of the box and the action and mag are in front of you and how a normal rifle format beat the bull pup shorty every time
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I did that. The brass ring was so loose that there was no tension whatsoever on the washers. It was as though it had been loosened past the point of any effectiveness. I turned it clockwise 4 or 5 holes and I could feel some tension start to build. There brass ring was essentially floating with no tension in either direction. I watched Ernest Rowe's video about 5 times before I even attempted this. His regulator showed tension in both directions. Mine was free floating with no tension in either direction. I know that can't be good! Since I don't have a reg tester, I thought I would put 3 or 4 holes worth of pressure on the washers and reassemble it. It couldn't have been working before which I think would explain some of the strange ES readings and bizarre first shots being 25 fps higher than the rest of the string.
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About the huma reg. The spacer which came with my reg was maybe one or two mm longer than stock, when fitted. The difference it makes, is that the endcap on the gun, has to be screwed less inn, the same ammount. And that the black ring which is at the end of the tube will be dangling loose. That ring is there only for looks. I left it out on my gun as I did not want it to dangle. The only visible difference it makes, is that you will see some of the shiny end of the endcap, when tube is assembled. All the threads are still engages in the tube, so from a safety standpoint it should not make any difference. If you did not know the black ring was missing, you would never notice it. Here is a picture of how it looks:
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I'd suggest that you open the regulator and check the washer stack.
Should look like this.
And more tension on the washers = higher output pressure. So, you don't want more tension than it had......unless they stacked the washers incorrectly....
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I can't imagine how it was assembled in that manner. Unless Ernest or someone can offer advice on the initial assembly, it will be trial and error. And, given what you discovered, I think I would tear it down and make sure everything is there.
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I watched the video, that is my only knowledge base. But it looked to me like removing the washer stack would be the easiest way to adjust the setting. It would also allow looking over the washers for any contamination or damage. With the parts out, you could just spin the adjustment screw to minimum and possibly put a drop of locktite on it. It seems like it might have been at the minimum but disassembly would tell you. The washers can also apparently "catch" on the center stem which would seem to affect operation.
It is in the picture but may not be obvious. There is a washer facing out on each end of the stack and everything inbetween should be matched pairs of washers.
It is in the picture but may not be obvious. There is a washer facing out on each end of the stack and everything inbetween should be matched pairs of washers.
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