It looks like my new .22 Benjamin Marauder has a leak, which sucks considering this was my entry into the world of PCP. Plus I cannot seem to stop the bleeding.
It looks like any time I pump the gun over 2000 psi, the pressure slowly (or not so slowly depending on how these things are suppose to work) dwindles down to 1800-1900 psi. This is a very consistent pattern. I have pumped the crap out of the Hill hand pump the last 18 hours just to verify the problem.
Instead of sending the gun straight away to Crosman for repairs, I decided to take things into my own hands to see if I could actually get thing leak beat. First, I tried to tighten the nipple fill area, and while it could be tighten a little, that did not help things. Next I separated the action from the stock, and then got really brave and barrel band. I decided to degas the gun and remove the gauge (really just removed the gauge assemble). Everything looked in order; o-ring was there, so not sure what else needed to be inspected.
I then started pumping from 0. 25 pumps followed by a brief period of rest. It took 250 pumps to go from 0 psi to 2300-2400 psi. Good grief was that a lot of work!
- 001-025
- 026-050 (50 bar; 700 psi)
- 051-075 (just under 1K psi)
- 076-100 (just under 100 bar)
- 101-125
- 126-150 (~140 bar; just under 2K psi)
- 151-175
- 176-200
- 201-225 (185 bar; 2400 psi)
- 226-250 (180 bar; 2300 psi)
Notice that at the very end the psi started going down; leak city, which is more than enough to make me no I am not crazy – the gun does lose pressure rapidly. I left everything alone to take my middle boy to soccer, and then the family to lunch. So after about 3 hours of rest, the Marauder gauge now shows just a tad under 2K.
I am not sure where to go from here. I was hopeful that the degassing (it was very loud) would blow out debris that may be causing a problem, but it looks like that did not fix my issue. I do not think the fill nipple is causing the problem, so maybe that means I need to mess around a little more with the gauge and gauge adaptor.
I am too damn sore (seriously) to do any more pumping today; that Hill pump will put some hair on your chest! I hate degassing again just to play around with the gauge, but short of that I am not sure what else I can do other than sending this to Crosman and letting them sort out the problem.
