Part 1
Part 2
Part 4

In the first two parts we checked out the rifle for relative “health”. It’s a fairly sound rifle but there’s definitely room for improvement. I tend to look at these rifles as “assembled kits” that need taken down, cleaned up and reassembled before ever shooting them. This one’s 11 years old so we shot it anyway to see how things were. The one I played with back in 2020 was an interesting case in why I believe they need taken apart and cleaned up prior to shooting. The second shot was in the neighborhood of 1485 FPS. I’ve no idea how fast the first shot was because I’d merely cocked the rifle, inserted a pellet and shot it into the pellet trap. The sound of that first shot taught me a few things.

1. There’s a lot of oil in front of the seal on some of these “bargain” rifles.
2. It’s important to warn one’s wife PRIOR to firing a test shot indoors.
3. The dogs aren’t amused by sudden loud noises either.
4. It’s probably best to clean up a new rifle BEFORE shooting it.

Anyway, here we go!

The tophat weighs a healthy 33 grams of ill fitting steel.
The piston weighs 193 grams with seal installed
The two together give 226 grams of heavy pellet pushing weight. We’re aiming to use lighter pellets so that tophat will have to go eventually.

The piston shows some odd scuff marks I’ve never seen before. On both sides of the piston body and at the front of the piston right behind the seal.

The scuff shown on the next picture, at the bottom, rear of the piston, is fairly typical as that’s where the cocking arm causes the piston to push against the inside of the compression tube as the rifle is cocked.


Next we look at the seal. On the left is the seal from the rifle. It shows 11 years of use, abuse and neglect. And it’s got an obvious flat spot on the edge. Next to it is a brand spanking new Crosman OEM seal I picked up recently.

Since this is to be a personal rifle and is not being fixed up for someone else but hopefully will give many years of good service, we’ve got options. The three seals on the right are ARH (Jim Maccari) seals. The red one is from a Gamo kit I bought from him many years ago. The blue and green are either AirArms TX200/ProSport seals or Diana 34 seals.

“Just because” we’ll be using the Gamo seal in this build. It’s a tight fit and needs some sizing, but is the same quality of seal as Maccari is known for in all his products.