AEA Shot my .510 Challenger bullpup

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Cobbled together a rig in the morning to measure the run out. 0.003" at action, 0.043" in the middle, 0.007" at muzzle. Tool's run out seems to be those ~0.003". At the muzzle's end there's one more bend, a smaller one. Will need to find it.

Trying to engage with the place where I got the gun, wondering if I can get a replacement barrel, since it is a brand new gun, but the interaction with the owner (?) is like "hello dear customer", gone for week, "I'm sorry, we were too busy".

This barrel wobbles like sh*t when I turn it in this rig.

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AEA doesn't know how.to make barrels yet....They have a way too go....The rig you made to check straight is nice........At ER Shaw barrels there rig was similar just really heavy duty....they would hit the high spots.with a 10lb dead blow hammer...Then into the cnc lathe and turn barrel to bore center.... In a perfect world you would drill the barrel straight to start with.... Its really.not hard to.drill a.straight barrel in 30 cals and above on machinery from WW1..This is old tech making barrels.......I'd buy a green mountain .510 barrel.blank for $170.00 and start over....AEA doesn't seem good on customer support... My2cents
 
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Unfortunately I don't have a lathe to finish the blank barrel. Have plans for a lathe, mill & 3D printer in the future. But we just moved to a new to us house and I have a zillion small home improvement things to finish before getting an approval for my new expensive toys from then happy wife. You know the drill...

The shop is local, US based, not affiliated with AEA. It literally takes less time for Terry @ FoxAirPower to answer support questions on youtube from a guy who didn't buy anything from him (yet) than to get a meaningful reply from that place. That was my second and the last purchase, I'll switch over to a more responsible seller.

Made a video:
 
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I've got a replacement barrel under warranty. It is better, but at 0.025" run out still far from acceptable. I'm going to bend it in drill press, since this one looks more bent than warped, i.e. it has memory. Looking at the data I see 3 straight lines, which gives hope I can straighten it to a single digit.

AEA was very quick, by the way. Once the seller got to them with the problem proof I did, they sent it in no matter of time. I've been told it was the only spare barrel in US, AEA had to buy it back from one of the dealers.

Very happy with my rig, it takes under 10 minutes to have a beer and measure a barrel :)

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I smacked the barrel against a white oak log for a couple of hours, measuring the run out in between, and got it down from 0.025" to 0.003" at worst point. This is pretty impressive, for such a primitive technology. The barrel was indeed bent in two spots, as I predicted in the chart above.

So far, AEA barrel is very soft. I was easily bending it to the counter side, like from 0.010" to -0.065". Very delicate process. I probably need to build a better selection of wood with various hardness, ha-ha ;)

It also seems the barrel straightening could easily become a regular maintenance item on that rifle.

Now, onto the badly bent factory barrel!
 
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Found two problems that lead to erratic failures of the catch.

First one is the trigger rod was pushing the trigger too far forward, it was touching the stock only so lightly that it worked most of the times, but may fail to lock when ambient temps and humidity raise and wood expands.

The other one was a tight tolerance in the back of the stock where the catch is located. With many repair works I had to do with this rifle the wood eventually collapsed a tiny bit, the catch started touching the stock. Fixed with dremel + speed cutter bit.

This air gun is a kit. Buy if you are handy and have a good variety of tools.

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Finally shot the gun after fixing the barrel! 13 F degrees weather, 15 MPH wind with gusts up to 30 MPH. The pump didn't shut off at preset 4100 PSI, I caught it at 4300 PSI. Shooting Pro Slugs 300 gr flat base small hollow point with silicone coating. Target was at 55 and 100 yards.
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55 yards:

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100 yards:

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I'm not the greatest shooter and the trigger is still pretty stiff, so I pulled it off sideways one in like three rounds, but otherwise was reliably getting 1 inch groups (horizontally) at 50 and 2 inches at 100, which says my barrel is straight now.

The energy at 610 FPE is a bit lower than I expected. Perhaps for advertised 700+ FPE I had to go all way up to 5000 PSI. Or use a heavier slug.
 
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vtl said:
Tried to fix the stock barrel. It is definitely warped by heat stress (oil drops or something), not just bent. Was able to bring it under 10 thousands, but that's about it. A bent replacement barrel I was able to do under 3 thousands.

View attachment 402621
Click to expand...
How would one go about fixing a bent barrel? Also happen to be a neighbor 👋
 
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This is really good stuff. I,m a 79 year old tool & die maker. No I,m no gun smith, what so ever, but I love shooting
these things. I,have two AEA, standard rifles. I have a .25 cal standard & a .357 standard. They seem to shoot ok.
But I will say the .25 does not shoot never as well as my .25 cal Avenger. That gun shoots better than me. You guys
have me pumped up in doing some of this. I do have a small home shop that I might look on to checking my barrels
on my AEAs. Great thread!

🪰Fly
 
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