both of his R9s now, and so far all is working well for him. I'm glad that he's "taken the plunge" because now I have another fellow testing my scheme for reliability.
I tested my R9 with my homemade o-ring sealed piston cap for a year with using two barrels (.177 & .20) at power levels of 14-17fpe (I couldn't get it LOWER than 14fpe with a factory spring) and things held up well for several hunter class FT shoots, last years squirrel season and a lot of practice/plinking. Still, the test was only around 5000 shots and I'm hoping to get seal reliability up to the point that it only needs to be replaced when the spring is swapped out. I'm guessing that around 20,000 shots would last a couple years for our shooting. Since a spring and piston seal swap takes less than an hour it seems that it would be a practical solution to the factory seal.
Last evening we were practicing our hunter class FT shooting at his place and his gun is holding a very consistent 920-925fps with CP lights and he shot a CPL through a 1/2" killzone at 30 yards with the first shot and no warm-up shots. On our hunter class FT practice course we do two shoots (close & far). The "close" shoot is 2 shots at a 1/2" killzone in 5 yard increments from 10 yards to 30 yards and the "long" shoot is 2 shots at a 1" killzone in 5 yard increments from 35 yards to 55 yards. By the way, with his o-ring sealed R9 he has shot 80% on both "courses" and the "long" course has a Troyer difficulty of 45. While not "unlimited FT class" percentages I think it's pretty good for a guy sittin' on a bucket, usin a cross-stick for a rest and only usin' Kentucky windage (not "clickin' the scope" at all) and 12x max scope settin'.
Anywhoo, we're hoping that I can come up with a "reliable for the long term" o-ring sealing scheme for our R9.
Oh, by the way, he also put one of my o-ring sealed piston caps in his "hunter R9" that uses CP heavies and he's delighted with the results. Previously he used a heavy Maccari Steel Gate spring with a factory seal and the best velocity he could get with the 10.5 grain CPHs was 795-800fps after "settle in". Well, I made up a spring kit for him from a Maccari "Aircraft Wire" Tarantula spring and when using an o-ring sealed piston cap he's getting an accurate 825fps with less harshness than he was getting with the Steelgate at 800! The CP heavies ARE pretty hard on a spring and he has been getting about 2 years service from the Steelgates, so it remains to be seen how long an AW Tarantula will hold up. One of the nice things about the R9 is that a spring swap is a simple 15 minute job so spring life isn't much of an issue with us.
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