PCP Shopping List?

[Dee]

The difference between the S400 stock comb is nothing compared to the pistol grip on the M-Rod compared to the Pharr. Honestly my Air Arms rifles both the S400 and TX200 both hold alot like my Pharr RT-S and have the fat palm swell with the proper trigger distance. If you think the M-Rod feels more like your Pharr stock than the S400 you must have a really 'unique' hold so to say As for getting it put into a Pharr that would be the cats meow, not sure how well it might fit with a PCP actin and airtube but I imagine it could be done. The M-Rod is quieter than the S400 but not by a whole lot really both are going to make more noise with pellet impacts that will be noticeable. I look forward to your review of the rifle when you get it in. If you search the yellow forum there are a lot of threads with tweaks and tunes, power adjustments etc for the M-Rod.

You are going to appreciate getting the 4500 psi tank in no time compared to a Scuba setup and with it you now have justification to get more airguns ;)


Dee

[kevinkunkle]

http://www.marauderairrifle.com/

A Marauder forum

Kevin

[Jason]

Yep.. I've been reading that forum. Not a lot of traffic, but some older stuff that's great for tuning a marauder.

[frog5215]

Doomed! DOOMED!!

[Jason]

Maybe so.. I built a pellet trap yesterday to prepare for the new rifle off a much simplified version of Joe Matusic's design. The total cost for materials was one six-foot 1x8 ($6), a handle ($3), and four medium binder clips (around $.25) and took 30 minutes max. Of course, the 8lbs of duct seal that went in the trap cost $17, so there went the "cheap" part. I tested it today with the speedy springer and it works great and is almost totally silent. It's way too fun being able to do testing, complete with chrony testing, in the garage. Being an engineer by trade, I can already see that this is going to take up more of my time than I expected.

[Jason]

Btw.. for those of you with Marauders (might apply to other PCPs also), check this out from the A Team guys...

A Team PCP Tuning Procedures (click here) - While upgrading our Discoveries into the Match Prototypes we wrote a document explaining the manufacture of all of the updated parts (with illustrations) along with how to tune the adjustments (Hammer Tension, Hammer Stroke and Transfer Port adjustments). Crosman implemented these upgrades into the Challenger 2009 and the Marauder. This document is the tuning portion of that document which the Marauder was built around. This information compliments the owners manual.

[Jason]

I got the marauder today. Overall, I'm fairly impressed with it after messing with it for a couple hours. The design seems to be very good, and the fit and finish is great for the price. My first impression wasn't great, as I could clearly see that the barrel was turned to the left on the pressure tube. Loosening the screws on the barrel band and a couple minutes' work and I had the barrel shroud directly over the pressure tube and free floating in the barrel band.

As expected, I'm not in the love with the stock but it's a lot better than I thought it was going to be. I wish they had made left and right-handed stocks instead of trying to make an ambidextrous one like this. It will do for now, though. I expect that sometime this winter I'll either be putting the gun in a different stock or reworking this one like I did the stock on my CZ 452 Varmint. I want a real palm swell. The comb is nice and parallel to the bore, but with the way the receiver is made even my medium Beeman rings are holding the Weaver T24 just a bit too high. It's close, though. I still have some clearance between the scope bell and the barrel shroud, so some low rings should fix that just fine. The foreend right in front of the triggerguard is just a little too square for my split finger hold, but I like it better than the really deep 10m target gun stocks that I have tried in that it feels closer to my Pharr RTS stocks.

The trigger was pretty good, but not wonderful, when just out of the box. I played with the adjustments that Crosman tells about in the manual and made the trigger a lot better. It still wasn't anywhere in the same league with my Anschutz triggers, though. I had already done enough research to know that the trigger itself would need a good cleaning and lubing. While I did that I went ahead and straightened the bend in the torsion link spring to get that pressure off the trigger so I could more easily control the pull weight with the trigger link spring. I wish Crosman wouldn't have added that torsion link spring to the design later, even if it was a lawyer-proofing thing. I'll probably call them up and order another one (or a few) of those little delrin spacers like was in the original design. Speaking of the design, it's a piece of cake to work on and seems to work really well with no real wear spots that are going to cause trouble later. I wish all of my guns had triggers that easy to take apart and put back together. After the cleaning/lubing/tweaking, I was able to adjust the trigger much more effectively and now it's really good. I can tell that it still needs just a tiny bit of squaring up and fine polishing on the top rear edge of the part that Crosman calls the trigger link, where the sear slips off of it to fire the gun. That corner is barely rounded off so the release isn't as perfectly crisp as it should be. A few minutes with the extra fine polishing stone will clean it up and I expect the trigger will be right there with my Anschutz triggers, since it's already almost there. I doubt I'll have time to do it anytime in the next several days, though, as we're heading out to go camping in the morning.

The rifle shipped to me with 1000psi in it, and after wasting the first couple shots giggling about how quiet it is I put a scope on and hoped to get a rough zero. That would let me get a little experience pulling the trigger on it and have me a bit closer to shooting well with it once I get some sort of tank or pump setup. It took three pellets to sight in. The first pellet let me get a rough zero. The second let me fine tune it. The third confirmed the zero by punching out the center of the bull. This is really going to be fun...

By the way, here is a link to the exploded view and parts diagram for the Marauder.

http://www.crosman.com/pdf/manuals/1763 ... &%20PL.PDF

Here's one to the owner's manual.

http://www.crosman.com/pdf/manuals/BP17 ... -%20OM.pdf

Here's the direct link to the tuning guide that I posted above.

http://ateam.100free.com/ateamh/A_Team_ ... edures.pdf

[Jason]

Also, I think I'll probably end up with both a pump and a tank. The tank can be my primary source of power and the pump can be backup when I can't get to the scuba shop or want to travel really light.

[Jason]

By the way, if anyone has a good pump that they're no longer using and want to sell, let me know. As I said, I don't expect it to be my primary means of powering my gun but I definitely want to have one on-hand for backup if I don't have enough pressure in whatever tank I end up using. Thanks!

[Jason]

Got a pump headed my way. I posted up a WTB ad on the yellow forum classifieds and found a guy with an FX 3-stage pump with the foster adapter added that I could have for $125 shipped. It should be here by the time I get back from vacation a week from Wednesday. Then I'll actually get to shoot my gun!

[Jason]

Loving the Marauder now that I've been shooting it a bit. My only real remaining complaint is the stock, and the only part about it that's really not good is the pistol grip. If needs to be more vertical and have a much bigger palm swell on the right side. I think Crosman should have offered left or right hand stocks instead of trying to make one stock do both. That always ends up with a product not doing either very well. I took it out to try to sight in for next weekend's silhouette match today. While I was there, I set out my smallbore chickens on the 40m rails and shot them with the pellet gun. That was crazy fun. It was amazing how much the wind blew the pellet around at that distance, even at 800+ fps with the Crosman Premier Heavy 10.5gr dome pellets.