by B.B. Pelletier
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
There is a special sales coupon on the home page for all who intend to vote. Those who are eligible, please take advantage of living in a free country and let your vote be heard.
Today, I’m going to clean, lubricate and adjust the Rekord trigger of Wayne’s HW55 Tyrolean. After that’s done, the path will be clear to finish the tuneup.
Cleaning first
The trigger in Wayne’s rifle has never been touched since it was shipped from the factory. I know that from the characteristic overuse of grease on all the parts. A Rekord needs very little lubrication and only on one critical spot. Since it’s nearly impossible to get all the metal parts completely dry (and we don’t want that, either), the miniscule bit of lube that remains on their surfaces is all that’s required.
Getting off the old grease isn’t an easy task. Not only has it hardened in place, it’s caused the metal underneath to corrode. This is very common on Weihrauch triggers. I scraped off the corrosion with a knife blade and applied Ballistol to neutralize the metal underneath.
This is where a parts cleaner would come in handy. Lacking one, I used Q-tips and paper towels, besides the knife blade, to remove the old grease.
Then lubrication…
Once all the grease was off, I lubed the one contact point where the sear holds the piston latch lever.
…And adjustment
Then it was time to adjust the trigger. I found the sear contact set far too deep, something I’ve never seen in a factory Weihrauch trigger. Normally, I advise against adjusting the sear contact screw, but this time I had to in order to get the trigger to break as it should. I also lightened the tension on the trigger return spring. I will wait to test it in the rifle, but it feels like it’s breaking at a pound or a little less.
To test the sear engagement, cock the trigger by pressing down on the back of the piston latch. Then slowly squeeze the trigger until it releases. This is a two-stage target trigger, so there must be two distinct stages felt. The first stage must stop positively, then the second stage has to break cleanly with zero creep. A properly adjusted Rekord will do this as well as any trigger made.
This job took about an hour because I knew exactly what to do. If it was your first time, you’d want to spend about twice that long just to make sure you got it right.
Finally test the trigger
This part is now set aside for assembly into the tuned rifle. When it is in the gun, I will cock the rifle and attempt to bump the trigger off engagement several times, with the gun held in several attitudes. There’s no safety on the 55 model, so the trigger has to do it all. We need to make sure it’s safe under all conditions.
BB could you use carb cleaner in a can like CRC? It dissolves gunk and grease and leaves no film behind. From SavageSam
BB, I looked over the parts diagram for both the Rekord and B20/B26 triggers, and for the life of me I can’t see any significant in the geometry or operation between the two. What am I missing? I remember you saying (when you reviewed the B26) that it did not really have a clone of the Rekord…
DROZD 2 (Blackbird)
On he cover of the instruction sheet (grainy, albeit detailed, b & w photocopied pamphlet) is printed 'Drozd 2,' and so that must be what the bb machine gun is called. I wrote here last week about my initial impressions, which have since been tempered by additional experience (viz., since then I have shot over 1,000 bbs and have attempted to shoot another several hundred.
The problem I encountered with both air guns, after the initial joy of the first 200-300 flawless shots, was that the electric mechanism that shunts the bbs to the breech was failing over and over. Thus, the gun fired CO2 and the mechanism attempted to send the bbs from the holder (the handle) to the next destination (the bottom of a tube which sucks them up and brings them to the breech), but the bbs never arrived at the tube and so they collected in area "H."
I attempted using daisy bbs, copper coated bbs, lead balls, all to no avail. All of these had been firing earlier, and now only rarely was I getting either gun to shoot bbs – how frustrating, yet a good motivator t write this entry for the readers to be aware and perhaps to get the company to work out a fix so that area "H" can be eliminated.
Inside the air rifle's handle is orange powder that looks like rust, and this coats the bbs that reside in the handle while waiting to be moved, sucked up, and fired. It occured to me that this orange powder was not helpful, and so I cleaned it out as best I could, but the guns still did not work.
Finally, I tried Avanti Precision (meaning 4X the price of regular bbs) bbs, and they worked. Flawlessly. For over 1,000 shots so far. I have not attempted to try the other bbs again because it took me over 8 hours to get these things to work right, get scoped (with scopes that have broken windage adjustments and thus must be adjusted with shims of paper due to my not having an extra adjustable mount around), and to get some 6 and 10-shot groups.
If there is interest, then within the next couple of days I can report on 10 yard groups, both in single shot mode and full auto mode. I can also report on penetration tests and chrony results, although for this air gun these results may be superfluous.
P.S. By the way, area "H" is a special door at the bottom of the gun, with its own little button to open the door and release all the bbs that did not get to their destination. That is its only purpose, and so I must surmise that it was created because the manufacturer was in a Hurry to get the gun out even though it had this known glitch, and so the only quick solution was to make a little door and call it area "H" (for Hurry, let's sell some more).
– Dr. G.
SavageSam,
Yes, carb cleaner is possible with the Rekord because ut is all-steel construction. But the corrosion still must be scraped.
B.B.
Vince,
While they are close, there are differences. The metal tab that stops the trigger from going forward is one. The Rekord doesn’t have that.
B.B.
BB, any chance of you addressing adjustment of the triggers found on the RWS/Diana line? I’m referring to models 46, 52 and the 350 which I guess all use the same trigger. I say this because externally, I see two screws and before I go experimenting with what screw adjusts what stage, it would be nice to know what screw to turn in what direction.
Fred,
The instructions for the TO5 are on the pyramyd website. Search for your gun model, then open the page, then look down at the lower right under the picture of the gun and click on “Manual-click to see”. There are also good tuning tips about the T05 here:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/184474/thread/1225038895/last-1225203945/tuning+the+T05+trigger
Good luck.
kevin
Fred,
This is the trigger adjustment section of the manual online at Pyramyd Air:
/manual/RWS48
B.B.
B.B.
Thanks for the trigger adjusting part, I’ve been trying to adjust the triggers on the used Air Arms S310, BSA Lonestar and the FX Timberwolf, I just traded my AR6 for.
I got the S310 just about as good as the Air Arms S410, that came like you describe the two stages, out of the box. But I haven’t tried the other two yet, because of the worry of going too far.
The FX Timberwolf and the S310 don’t have a saftey at all, so I would like to know more about the “bump” test. I would guess it should be able to take a fall, without discharging, but that is not the test we want to do, is it?
What do you bump, where, and with what, and how hard? Can you tell us more about the bump process?
Dr. G,
Thanks for the report, and I for one want to here the next one..
Wayne,
Ashland Air Rifle Range
Wayne,
PCPs are easy to test.
Make sure the rifle is unloaded, then cock it and try to fire it by bumping the butt. You can slam is on the recoil pad and whack the side of the stock with the heel of your hand. Anything to try to make it fire.
It is very important that the muzzle be pointed in a safe direction throughout this test.
B.B.
B.B.
Thanks, that is not to scary, I can do that.
Wayne
BB,
I just made 3 choke tubes for my Shadow express. They are made of 1-1.5inch aluminum cut from soft air barrels. I can screw them into the barrel because I made a plastic adapter at the muzzle. 1 choke tube is full (.209cal), another is extra wide (21cal by 28cal), and the last is rifled( not for pellets but rather the quick dispertion of shells. I’ve only fired the full choke setting and it shot about 4inches at 8yards.
Shadow express dude
Shadow express dude,
That’s the first time I’ve heard of anyone making a choke for these shotguns. The full choke tube sounds really radical. You might extend the range to 15-20 yards with it.
B.B.
BB and kevin,
thanks for your input and advice. I was interested in reducing the pull required for the trigger and wondered if “screw #1” was the key. It appears screw #2 adjusts the first stage only and has nothing to do with trigger pull?
I’ll do some more research but Kevin, thanks for turning me onto that other website.
Shadow Express Dude,
Dont forget a turkey choke:).
Fred,
You’re welcome. Always happy to help out another diana gun owner. You obviously have very good taste.
The dianawerk website frequently has very good information for diana gun owners.
kevin
Wayne,
Although I am not interested in your offerings, thank you for posting. I am looking for a TX 200; 10-20 tins of H & N .25 hp; or a Single pump pneumatic that shoots groups of 2/16" at 10 yards.
B.B.,
You are free to add photos and your own words and ascribe dual authorship, as you indicated you were interested in doing a few months back when I wrote in extensive detail (with shot strings) about Condor "power creep" when the power is set low.
Unfortunately, I think that there are as few readers interested in the bb machine gun as there are in accuracy and chrony results of Condors running on CO2.
– Dr. G.