New Personal Best (D430L)

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I've been shooting for sixty years. I've never been a bench rest guy in the strict sense of the name. I enjoy shooting off a bench but I always use my rifles to hunt, always have. I've owned two or three truly accurate rifles and plenty of "good enough" rifles in my life. The truly accurate ones have always been small bore center fire rifles but this little Diana 430L I bought last fall just rocks. It can shoot better than I can shoot. It will do better than this.

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Shot at 25 yards. Those boxes are 0.394" square. That is just 0.55" diagonally across the corners.

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Edit: "Because Math are HARD!"


 
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I had one from AOA. Handsome rifle, great stock, just not my cup of tea. The enormous cocking effort for a sub-12 ft/lb rifle was a turnoff. Sold it and the ZR mount it came with, gave the Diana 3x9 to a neighbor kid.
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You know if I had a quarter for every time I heard someone whine about how hard it was to cock this 12 foot pound rifle I could buy another one... And this OLD MAN would. If you are going to whine about cocking effort on a 12 (actually mine is 14) foot pound rifle, you are living too easy.

Given the price / performance ratio I'd take it (38# cocking effort) over an HW97k (35# cocking effort) or a TX200 (29# cocking effort) ... And I'd be dealing with a manufacturer that understands ten percent of the.market is left handed. Did I mention that T06 trigger?

Now I know the HW and AA crowd might take umbrage there so here is your chance to show off your groups. I'm calling complaints about cocking effort sour grapes.

Post some groups. It won't hurt my feelings to see a $600 dollar rifle shoot better than one that cost one third as much. I always enjoy seeing those itty bitty groups the TX200s shoot.

😉
 
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I had one from AOA. Handsome rifle, great stock, just not my cup of tea. The enormous cocking effort for a sub-12 ft/lb rifle was a turnoff. Sold it and the ZR mount it came with, gave the Diana 3x9 to a neighbor kid.
Click to expand...

You know if I had a quarter for every time I heard someone whine about how hard it was to cock this 12 foot pound rifle I could buy another one... And this OLD MAN would. If you are going to whine about cocking effort on a 12 (actually mine is 14) foot pound rifle, you are living too easy.

Given the price / performance ratio I'd take it (38# cocking effort) over an HW97k (35# cocking effort) or a TX200 (29# cocking effort) ... And I'd be dealing with a manufacturer that understands ten percent of the.market is left handed. Did I mention that T06 trigger?

Now I know the HW and AA crowd might take umbrage there so here is your chance to show off your groups. I'm calling complaints about cocking effort sour grapes.

Post some groups. It won't hurt my feelings to see a $600 dollar rifle shoot better than one that cost one third as much. I always enjoy seeing those itty bitty groups the TX200s shoot.

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Click to expand...

I've heard about the cocking effort issues as well. What is the cocking effort on your gun?

Those groups are fantastic, btw!!
 
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It is about three pounds heavier than an HW97K. An HW97k is about six pounds heavier than a TX200 MKIII

There is more to the cocking. Effort story than most realize. Hector did three posts on his site. Bottom line? The D430 is not the same rifle as the D430L. ... Longer barrel, longer cocking lever ...
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Duh. I'm a fool. Just went back and saw you stated it above.....thanks!
 
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I love my D430L, too. And it also came out of the box shooting like a champ. I have one and an HW97K and a D52 and the cocking between them all, to me, is indistinguishable. There's a technique, if you want to call it that, to make it easiest....pull in one solid motion. It doesn't wear me out, though I'm not putting down those that say it's more than they want. What I don't understand is having the same or more cocking effort for what...4 more fpe? That, to me, is an empty argument (no offense meant) as I don't see how 4-6 more fpe are "worth the effort" while a dead-nutz 12 fpe isn't. 40 fpe and I'm agreeing.



Does anyone know if the stock on the D430 and D430L are the same? Everyone feel like having a good laugh this morning?? So I'm tuning triggers on the D52 and the D430L. I did the 1st stage tapped/screw mod on both and as some may know you can tune these to fire through the safety (bypass it) if you're not careful. So dumbass me does that...tunes both triggers on the bench..pressed for time as always...when I could. After I bench tuned and reassembled into the stocks I realized I tuned through the safety. So I remove the trigger guard on the 52 and proceeded to fine tune it properly. That went all well and good. Then I start on the 430L. Same thing...trigger guard off to access the set screw I installed...so I go to cock the little beast and any of you thinking ahead and familiar with the 52 knows that the stock has a bolt underneath to hold the action to it while the 430L has the 2 side screws by the lever/end of the stock cut out. So, ah..yeah, I pulled the damn action right through the stock! Ripped the side screws out, dented under when the whole action rolled over the top, blah blah. Yeah...so guys, um...don't do that 😫😫😆

I glued it all back together and puttied up sections, including the rear trigger guard screw (just a wood screw...was already spinning freely and I'd only disassembled the gun 3-4 times) hole. It's all back together and holding and shooting. I haven't shot paper with it yet as I just did it recently, but I'm not expecting anything awry. The stock doesn't look damaged from the outside too much unless you look closely. Then you can see some clamping marks where I set it to glue...steaming them did not get them out.

I'd imagine it'd be cheaper to pick up a whole used rifle than to order a replacement stock, but I was just wondering if they were even available. Shoot straight and smartly! Hope you all got a good smile from this one 🙄😁








 
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Just for the record there are several ways to help with the cocking effort of the 430L. With mine I replaced the spring with one of smaller diameter wire and shortened to 28 coils and then spaced it to get it back to 12ftp. The other is to lengthen the cocking stroke but that takes a new piston and some wood work.

The first stage trigger set screw works great even when you use it to by pass the safety which is just what I have done on my 430L and my 54. These are target rifles and are only cocked and loaded when target shooting. My 48 .22 is my hunting rifle and it was converted from a TO6 to a TO1. 

Why because I can adjust it to be a single stage trigger with a light trigger pull with the safety still working. If Diana had only made the trigger blade for the TO1 steel instead of plastic I don't think you would have seen it replaced with the other triggers since the customers would have raised a ruckus.

The TO6 trigger and piston went into my TO1 54 because I was told you needed your best trigger in your best rifle, but that is yet to be determined and is opinionated.

Here's a 10m target I shot indoors off a rest with my 430L with 5 shots in each bullseye, I didn't adjust the scope for pellet impact since it was zeroed out doors and I was shooting for tight groups not a high score. Scope was a Vortek Diamond Back 4-12X42 with a 50yd minimum side focus. I adjusted the power setting to get the target focused.

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Just for the record there are several ways to help with the cocking effort of the 430L. With mine I replaced the spring with one of smaller diameter wire and shortened to 28 coils and then spaced it to get it back to 12ftp. The other is to lengthen the cocking stroke but that takes a new piston and some wood work.

The first stage trigger set screw works great even when you use it to by pass the safety which is just what I have done on my 430L and my 54. These are target rifles and are only cocked and loaded when target shooting. My 48 .22 is my hunting rifle and it was converted from a TO6 to a TO1. 

Why because I can adjust it to be a single stage trigger with a light trigger pull with the safety still working. If Diana had only made the trigger blade for the TO1 steel instead of plastic I don't think you would have seen it replaced with the other triggers since the customers would have raised a ruckus.

The TO6 trigger and piston went into my TO1 54 because I was told you needed your best trigger in your best rifle, but that is yet to be determined and is opinionated.

Here's a 10m target I shot indoors off a rest with my 430L with 5 shots in each bullseye, I didn't adjust the scope for pellet impact since it was zeroed out doors and I was shooting for tight groups not a high score. Scope was a Vortek Diamond Back 4-12X42 with a 50yd minimum side focus. I adjusted the power setting to get the target focused.

Click to expand...


Wow... Your average GAMO isn't going to do that, eh?
 
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