Well with my new B26 also came a Maccari tune kit including heavy spring tar, moly paste, clear tar, Maccari spring, custom top hat, and lastly a Tesla piston seal. Once I had the chrony numbers for the out of the box B26 I wanted to install the kit to see what it would do. I've taken a few spingers apart in the past, so this didn't seem like a big deal. One of the coolest parts of taking apart the B26, and I would suspect the R9, is that you can totally remove the trigger group withoutgetting into the guts of the gun. The trigger housing is all peened together, so unless you really want to get in there, it's a little difficult....luckily there isn't a whole lot inside there that you really need access to. After I removed the faux "Rekord" trigger I grabbed a couple screw drivers, some moly paste and sat down in front of the television and went to work. Now it's suggested that you don't want to use moly paste on triggers by a few sources because you want to have some friction in there to hold the whole deal in place to keep the gun safe, while I agree with that in some respects, there is one place in this trigger that moly paste really smooths things out without creating an unsafe condition. 2 of 3 sears in the trigger are spring loaded and you'll never "feel" any work that you've done there. On those 2 sears I would not put any moly or even polish them up because it wont make a bit of difference IMHO. Where it will make some difference is the contact area between the trigger blade and the first lever, and the contact point between the first and second lever. Again, IMHO, molying these two points is definately productive to the feel of the trigger. There are two adjustment screws on this trigger unit, one controls trigger blade spring pressure, and the other controls primary sear engagement. With a little moly in the right places you can lighten the spring pressure to a pretty good spot and the trigger will still completely reset if you decide not to take a shot. If you get it too light, then the trigger will not reset and will remain in a "hair trigger" situation...NOT what you want. Best bet is to make it as light as you want it while still being safe, then make it just a hair heavier for an extra safety margin. The second screw, the sear engagement screw, on my B26 came with two lockwashers. With two lockwashers you can pretty much rest assured that two lawyers couldn't shoot each other and sue each other, you can't screw it in far enough to make any noticeable difference. Now be aware, if anyone wants to follow my path here they do it at their own risk. I removed one of the lockwashers, considered removing both, then went with one lockwasher tightened all of the way down. I felt that gave me enough of a safety margin in sear engagement, yet gave me a pretty good trigger. As many people here know, Chinese clones do not have the greatest quality control, so your B20/B26 may not be safe with a missing lockwasher. I put an itsy bitsy drop of blue loctite on both adjustment screws once I got them where I wanted since I don't ever plan on adjusting them again, they are just right for me. I've shot an HW77 quite a bit and it has a genuine Rekord trigger, and I can hostly say that with a little work this one is awfully good. Out of the box I felt the trigger on the B26 was mushy and creepy, not anymore! It's not the same trigger as on my old IZH46M match pistol, but it is a really good sporter trigger...not a half bad match trigger for that matter. On with the tune!
After tuning my trigger in the comfort of my livingroom it was time to head out to the garage and get to work on the rest of the gun. With the trigger out of the gun I put the action in my spring compressor, removed the stock hold down bolt/nut, and removed the two little popout pins that hold the endcap in place, you then rotate the end cap out of its little tab with a small screw driver and a light tap or two, and start taking tension off of the spring. This gun has a decent amount of spring preload, I would NOT recommend dissassembly without a compressor unless you have already lost all of your teeth, it will kick! With the spring, endcap and rear spring guide removed I loosened the barrel pivot bolt/nut and removed the barrel cocking linkage, after that the cocking shoe can be slid out and finally the piston. I cleaned everything up, deburred my burrs, and got ready to put it back together. Now I had talked to Gene a few days ago and he mentioned that he liked the stock piston seal, I thought about it for a minute then thought,"Ah, what does he know? Phhhtt!". Well Gene is very knowledgable, and I should have listenned to him. The Tesla seal was VERY tight going into the air chamber. So I chucked the whole thing, piston and all in my drill press, spun it up and with a very fine file, followed by fine sandpaper, up to and including 1000 grit I took a little rubber off of the seal. I got it to where I "thought" in would be tight, but would work in and be ok. I wont go into the lubes I used or where I put them, there are plenty of lube tuning guides on the web. Got the gun all back together, cocked ("Wow that's tight!"), loaded a pellet and took a few shots into my trap. Man, what a difference the right lubes make! The gun shot pretty good, but it was dark outside so the chrony would have to wait till morning.
Today I woke up, got the chrony set up in the backyard and proceeded to fire a few pellets through it. First was some Crow Magnums, those proved to be a good pellet in this gun pre-tune, so I decided to shoot a string of those first. Well, I'm sorry to say, but the Crow Mags were shooting an average of 750fps, pretty pathetic for a gun that was shooting them in the low 800's prior to tune. Then was the Kodiaks, I fired one Kodiak and it was real slow, like high 600's, the gun was shooting those in the mid/high 700's prior to tune. So I finally tried the CPHP's and they barely broke 800 fps. All in all I had pretty much lost 100fps during the tune and I knew why. That danged seal was just too tight.
Tonight I took the whole thing apart again, chucked the piston w/seal in my drill press and really worked on it. Just a little at a time, fit test, a little more, fit test, a little more, and snug, but smooth. Cleaned it all up, relubed, reassembled, and a couple test shots into the trap in my garage. It sounds better, it feels better, but again...it's dark so it will have to wait for the morning to chrony:(
Moral of this story? Listen to Gene, if I had listened I would have saved myself alot of trouble.
I think now the gun will be real good. It's very smooth now and the recoil is very linear, much like my gas rammed BSA. The trigger is "delightful" and I don't use big words like that much. Compareable to the genuine Rekord? I think it's close, close enough where I'd have to have both guns side by side and adjusted the same way to feel the difference. I think most of the mushy creepy feel that people, including myself, mention about this Rekord clone is because of that extra washer the factory installs under the sear engagement screw. Tomorrow, the chrony, some test targets, that will show whether or not my tune was successful, but right now "I'm feelin' lucky!".
Chrony/shooting results to follow tomorrow!