R3M cycling update on new cam lever after some testing.

I had a few folks asking for my cam lever I had made last month but I wanted to do some significant testing before considering letting them out. I wanted to be able to articulate what they done and did not do so that there would be no questions. I would truly rather report that they were a failure and throw them away than to get them to folks with false expectations. With vacations and holidays I am just now to get enough testing to say what it does and does not do when installed so here goes.

I have ran about 250 pellets through my .25 with the modified lever being used and i want to sum up what I have found and if you want to try a lever swap I have a very few available. Let me start off reminding everyone that with a little effort the original can be modified with the same results so I am not !! trying to necessarily sell these to people. So with that said here is what I find to be the benefits and it is your call.

What it takes to swap:
The lever is very easy to swap. Loosen the breech block screws on some guns and others you only need to remove the bolt carrier block screws to slide it off while the gun is cocked. Roll the bolt block over to see the underside and there is one screw to remove and re-install to swap out the cam lever so it is simple to R&R. The cam does have a little bit of extra material in the specific area when the tuning takes place and this allows it to be tuned/fitted with a file or fine stone or a grinder. I fit mine within .015″ clearance when the bolt is forward, before the cam contacts the tooth that it will work against in the next cycle, it needed a bit of clearance to snap into place repeatably.

What does it take to fit/tune it.
Due the the wire EDM manufacturing process the cams have a mostly satin finish on them and most people would be inclined to polish but I don’t believe there is much reason other than in the slot area where the bolt pin and roller slide. The rest of the cam starts lifting up away from the floor it lays on, and following the curvature of the magazine as it rolls and the flat faces contact nothing in the gun when in use. I polished my first one and after lubing, installing it and cycling it through the first 100 cycles the grease was not even being moved or disturbed via.cam movement. I think it is a great and simple design as it is not only low friction it is NO friction between moving parts, all of the felt resistance is just leverage and load. If you want it to be a polished part I suggest a 320 stone or wet and dry paper then move to 600, and 1000 to finish and expect to spend 30 to 45 minutes and tires fingers.

What can you expect from the cam change: ” Qualifying statement ” This is me and my experience with my gun only but others have expressed that they have the same situation. So here goes, When the bolt is pulled through it’s stroke as delivered it is a good bit touchy to make the original cam roll the mag and induce just the right amount of momentum for it to naturally land in the detents and be aligned properly with the bolt probe. ” My personal experience is that I could hit it just right and sling the mag into the detented position less than 25% of the time and it was most difficult when the gun was bagged on the bench and I am sitting behind it. However !!! This is not a big deal over all cause the bolt probe finishes the job as you move it forward but !! you can feel it pick up the load of the mag needing aligned and twisting it into position and this make the motion feel notchy and less fluid than what it can be when everything is pre-aligned. Either way, it is worth saying I love the fact that this system can be manually indexed with ease and I find myself doing this when on the bench as a preference. I shoot manually rotate and load the mag through the exposed ports as I go and never take it out of the gun, the dexterity to do so is more natural than dropping a pellet into the R3 single load tray. ” My Opinion as I have both now.

Once the cam is installed and the profile optimized to get maximum stroke and rotation of the magazine it does seem to align properly for me with a full stroke of the bolt. I find the bolt pull on the .25 to be heavy so retracting it with enough vigor to depend on getting some momentum going on the magazine is just not repeatable for me. This modified cam allows me to pull the bolt with one steady pull, ” minus the vigor ” and have it be pre-aligned and that is for all practical purposes ” What you Get ” in my opinion plus the smoother forward motion. In short I am 2 for 10 on alignment with the original lever and I am consistently 9+ for 10 with the new installed and tuned cam lever and I am able to pull the bolt the way that feels natural for me and get this result.

If you are interested in modifying your lever by all means do so as it will do the same thing. Or if you want one of these tunable replacement cam levers I have ” 8 ” in total left from the original set of 10 I had made. Let me know. This will allow guys to tune the advance mechanism and not modify your original parts if this fits your desires.

Emails are best !! My Email is Linked in my profile. There was a few people who contacted me just before Christmas and I somehow lost track of the list of guys wanting a cam level so please advise once again if you are interested. Sorry about that, it just got crazy as we were leaving town for our trip at the same time.