Maybe I was too optimistic for my Taipan .177 Standard accuracy?

[TimeRabbit]

Hopefully good news! I just got my FX and Air Arms pellets in and I was able to shoot a couple of magazines of the 10.3's. The FX were so-so at whatever speed my rifle was set, but the Air Arms appeared to be grouping better at 40 yards than anything else I have tried so far in the JSB's. As soon as I can, I'll set up my chrony and give all of the pellets a try, wind allowing. I have some hope at this point!

Any Taipan 177 users feel free to chime in on what speeds work for you in 8.4 and 10.3. Thanks!

Also, I put the scope I was using back on my Taipan .25 and sighted it in at 40 yards. It's dime size groups all day long. Sweet, but it feels like a cannon after shooting the .177!

Happy to hear you got something working, Please shot a few groups out of the single shot insert instead of the mag. My .22 vet mags are great but the .177s mags are not so good and accuracy ssufferers. I would be very interested to hear about your experience with this.

 

[Sicumj]

I would test your new rifle AND one of your other Taipans at the same time. Then compare groups between the two. You could be doing something as you shoot contributing to the inaccuracy. Test a known accurate rifle with your problem rifle at the same time.

 

[KyPop]

I had to wait until the wind died down today but I still got in a few magazines. My last few groups were very acceptable to me. I ended up at about 920 fps with 1 MOA groups at 40 yards (with an occasional flyer ruining my 5 shot group) using Air Arms 10.3. My first shot was still faster than average by quite a bit which is confusing to me since your first shot is usually slower than the rest of the string. Anyway, I'm much happier now than I was a few days ago!

 

[Cannonball]

I had to wait until the wind died down today but I still got in a few magazines. My last few groups were very acceptable to me. I ended up at about 920 fps with 1 MOA groups at 40 yards (with an occasional flyer ruining my 5 shot group) using Air Arms 10.3. My first shot was still faster than average by quite a bit which is confusing to me since your first shot is usually slower than the rest of the string. Anyway, I'm much happier now than I was a few days ago!

Reduce your speed to right around 900 and give that a try. I find my .177 Vet shoots more flyers past the 910 range. I‘ve dialed mine back some and it seems more consistent now.

 

[KyPop]

Reduce your speed to right around 900 and give that a try. I find my .177 Vet shoots more flyers past the 910 range. I‘ve dialed mine back some and it seems more consistent now.

Mine spread out as I dialed it back. Go figure.

 

[KyPop]

Too windy for accuracy testing today but I shot a 20 pellet shot string to check the regulator. This looks weird to me but I'm not an expert. I noticed that the first 2 shots were way higher than the rest of the string and shots 10 and 11, the first 2 shots after I changed magazines, were way higher than the rest of the string also. Any comments, suggestions, etc.?

 

[Peashooter]

When i got my Maverick ( did not have crono then ) the gun was set to 90 bar on the rear reg, and it did shoot the redesigns well, but as i found out when i got the crono horrible slow at under 600 FPS

So i cranked up the regulator to 100 BAR and wanted to shoot redesigns in the gun, but that was not happning at any higher speed, sctually it was the same with pretty much anything else i put in it of pellets, aside for the beasts that was like a laser and at high speeds.

In the end i replaced the 600 mm barrel with a 700 mm one, and now the gun have no problems shooting redesigns at speed, and it is also a lot better with other pellets, but i am mainly shooting slugs now, here the +100 mm new barrel do okay with the 10 grain JSB KO slugs, in the 600 mm barrel they give scattergun groupings.

I was extremely frustrated with my Maverick,,,,,, now i am OK with it, though compared to my Vulcan 3 i must still say i am a little let down by the FX gun, only the not readily accessible regulator and hammer spring adjustment on the Vulcan keep it from blasting past the Maverick.
And the vulcan 3 have pretty much shot anything i put in it well, though i must also be strait up and say i have far from worked on it ( tweak ) as i have on the maverick, i am sure there are also gains to be made on the Vulcan, it is just offputting working on, not least the big air loss you get if you want to reach the regulator on it.

 

[Cannonball]

Sometimes regulators on new guns need a little time to settle in. I would just shoot it for now and I think you will see those numbers level out. I would shoot the tins of pellets that weren’t grouping well and do some can plinking unless you have another use for them. After a few hundred rounds it should be more consistent on the chronograph.

 

[KyPop]

What's a good extreme spread and standard deviation for a long shot string?

 

[John "spysir" Blount]

20 fps extreme spread would be the maximum I would even consider for regulator performance. 10fps or less is good and easily achieved with the lowly Ninja regs so ??????????
A couple of Fast shot after sitting, reg creep combined with too much hammer spring or weight for your setting. Hitting the valve harder than need does create extra movement which doesnt help with tiny groups though you are no where near tiny groups.

Your reg does sound to have issues.

John

 

[KyPop]

In my above string, I have 4 shots that are 20+ fps over the average, with those shots included. If I take out those four crazy shots, the average drops making those shots appear even more outrageous. Then a standard deviation of 11.5 seems pretty wild, too. I've shot over a thousand pellets through this rifle. Probably closer to 1500. I don't know what the "break-in" point is but it seems to me that the reg may have gotten more erratic the longer I have used it instead of the other way around. How would I know if the reg needs replacing under warranty?

 

[JimD]

The velocity on my P35-25 was low on the first shot until I raised the hammer spring to better match the regulator setting. If you are adjusting velocity by using the hammer spring, you may be inadvertently affecting the regulator. I set my hammer spring at about the point that gives me maximum velocity for the regulator setting. I will try going up another turn or so in 1/4 turn steps to see what happens to accuracy. On my Avenger accuracy got significantly better with a little more hammer spring.

So if your hammer spring setting is reducing your velocity you might want to try turning it until velocity stops going up and see what happens to ES and std deviation. In your case that will probably mean your pellets are going too fast necessitating turning down the regulator. My understanding is that isn't easy but is possible on a Taipan.

I haven not seen any issues from too much hammer spring but that may also happen sometime. My P35 177 came with the hammer spring about 3 turns too high for it's regulator setting but turning it down only made cocking it easier, accuracy stayed about the same.

 

[KyPop]

The velocity on my P35-25 was low on the first shot until I raised the hammer spring to better match the regulator setting. If you are adjusting velocity by using the hammer spring, you may be inadvertently affecting the regulator. I set my hammer spring at about the point that gives me maximum velocity for the regulator setting. I will try going up another turn or so in 1/4 turn steps to see what happens to accuracy. On my Avenger accuracy got significantly better with a little more hammer spring.

So if your hammer spring setting is reducing your velocity you might want to try turning it until velocity stops going up and see what happens to ES and std deviation. In your case that will probably mean your pellets are going too fast necessitating turning down the regulator. My understanding is that isn't easy but is possible on a Taipan.

I haven not seen any issues from too much hammer spring but that may also happen sometime. My P35 177 came with the hammer spring about 3 turns too high for it's regulator setting but turning it down only made cocking it easier, accuracy stayed about the same.

I did the 5% less than max speed deal and they spread out. I can only get barely acceptable groups with flyers at about 920fps.

 

[KyPop]

Here's where I am today. I shot many times throughout the day to try and get the reg broken-in more. After the wind died down, I shot the following string (see pic) which consisted of 10 shots for each of 2 targets at 40 yards. The first group was 8 shots in 1/2" with the other 2 shots taking it out to 3/4". The second group was 7 shots in 1/2" with the other 3 shots taking it out to 7/8". Once again, after any wait at all between shots, the speed increases dramatically. See shots 1 and 2 then shot 11 which had a slight pause between switching magazines. An ES of 39 and std dev of 11+ seems out of the norm to me.


.

 

[tommyb]

KyPop

I had a Taipan Long .25 from TT ( I realize yours is a .177), and after many chrono and accuracy tests, I returned it to Tony and replaced with a Huma because I was consistently getting unacceptable ES values. I.e., in the 40-60 and greater range. Accuracy was not good out to 50 yards. Believe I had a bad Taipan regulator which is rare, as I have heard by several others that their Taipan regulators are very good. Not suggesting you replace the reg just yet.

Even with the Huma, I experienced many shot stings in the 15-30 FPS range, but accuracy was better. 50 yard groups outside with light wind, were in the 1/2 to 3/4” range. Also, my first pellet in many of the shot strings was normally lower than the average. Sometimes I would get one shot with a high FPS. After I threw out one or two of those, my ES value was in the 10-15 FPS range. Very seldom did I get ES values less than 15 with my Taipan .25. However, my accuracy for Benchrest target shooting was pretty good even with 20-30 ES values.

You could always reach out to Scott ( Motörhead Tuning Services ) and call or email him for his thoughts. He has a couple Taipans I believe. He knows and works on Taipans, so you might want to contact him.

Having said all that, your accuracy at 40 yards outside is approximately 1/2” with about 4 shots out of 20 at 3/4”, which is not bad considering ‘any’ bit of wind could move pellets at that distance.

Tom

 

[elh0102]

Do you know where you are regarding the balance of your tune? At any given reg set point, you will generally find your most consistent tune at around 95-97% of maximum. So, if your maximum velocity based on the HST is, say 940 fps, then a good balance is likely to be around 890-910 fps. But, that may be too fast for best accuracy, so you might lower the reg set point a little. That said, I agree that your reg appears to be misbehaving, in which case a rebuild or replacement might be appropriate. You are past the point of any initial need for break in. The Taipan regs are, in general very good, but there are always exceptions.

 

[KyPop]

Do you know where you are regarding the balance of your tune? At any given reg set point, you will generally find your most consistent tune at around 95-97% of maximum. So, if your maximum velocity based on the HST is, say 940 fps, then a good balance is likely to be around 890-910 fps. But, that may be too fast for best accuracy, so you might lower the reg set point a little. That said, I agree that your reg appears to be misbehaving, in which case a rebuild or replacement might be appropriate. You are past the point of any initial need for break in. The Taipan regs are, in general very good, but there are always exceptions.

I tried the 5% less than max speed and couldn't get a good group in that range. I can only get acceptable groups with flyers at about 920fps. I wanted this rifle to be a small pest rifle shooting shooting 8.4s in the mid 800fps range. I can't get anything close to that it seems without some major changes from factory settings.

 

[JimD]

Personally I would turn the reg down a little bit (1/4 turn). I think the gun becoming less accurate if you try to take off velocity with the hammer spring setting is a sign the gun is not particularly "happy" where it is. I don't try to adjust velocity down with the hammer spring but you are going a bit fast IMHO and the gun doesn't like it when you try to fix that with the hammer spring setting so that says to go to the regulator.

I'm only guessing based upon my P35 experience, but I would replace the O-ring(s) on the big nut on the end of the air tube if you have to go into the tube to adjust the regulator like I do. The threads on that nut are also VERY fine on mine which is a bit of a hassle but otherwise it isn't a big deal. You also have to degass, of course. I bet there is a youtube on changing the Taipan regulator.

 

[JimD]

If you really want 8.4s at ~850 you probably need to turn the regulator down at least half a turn. That may still be too high. But your shot count will go up significantly. Cocking effort will also go down when you decrease the hammer spring setting to match.

 

[elh0102]

I tried the 5% less than max speed and couldn't get a good group in that range. I can only get acceptable groups with flyers at about 920fps. I wanted this rifle to be a small pest rifle shooting shooting 8.4s in the mid 800fps range. I can't get anything close to that it seems without some major changes from factory settings.

In that case, I'd try a lower reg setting. Ernest Rowe has a good video on it. He or Scott/Motorhead can probably give you a close estimate on how much to turn the adjustment, but I would agree with a half turn as a starting point.