What am I doing wrong here?
Ok, I’ve got a r3m standard 25 caliber from the first shipment. Its had pretty low shot count (35 shots per fill at 880 fps) I’ve been to,d a few diffrent methods of hst adjustment from very reputable people. I’ve tried adjusting hst to the highest point. I’ve tried going a little bit past the highest setting. I’ve backed off the highest setting a little bit. I’ve tried adjusting the hst to a specific depth and using the regulator to adjust the fps, I’ve tried them all and I’ve never gotten more than about 40 shots per fill at 850fps. I installed a new regulator, I hand fit a teflon seal to the transfer port, I’ve got no leaks of any kind right now and I’m getting 41 shots t 882 fps with jsb. The only thing left is the breach (machined to big maybe, I don’t know) and the barrle(lose or tight or something?). The others on here are getting over 50 and several of them are still shooting in the 925fps range. Anyone got any ideas about this? I’m about to give up..
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Update on efforts?????
Thanks again for everyone’s time. Quick update. I’ve taken it all back apart and looked everything over. I don’t know if any of this stuff makes much diffrence but I found two things.
1) the vent hole for the regulator was plugged with grease. I didn’t even know it was there and hadn’t considered that the spring washers inside the regulator are supposed to be vented to atmosphere . I also had the first section of the reg very tight and there was grease in the threads. I guess this could prevent it from venting properly. I took the interals out of it and plugged the end with the adjuster. Snce the orings aren’t there to seal the high pressure from the chamber, you should be able to blow though the plunger hole and have it leak out throughs the threads. I’m just guessing here but since there isn’t a hole drilled in the reg body, then its venting through the reg body threads, right? Well, I cleaned all the grease from the threads and put it back together without tightening it down much. It seams to be venting a little bit like that. So I reassembled everything.
2) the valve was kind of tight where the end of the valve gos into the middle section of the reg body. I don’t know if its enough to slow the valve down when closing or not but I polished the end just enough to stop any binding .
I haven’t had Time to put everything back together yet so I don’t know if any of this actually matters or not.
If you dont have a reg pressure setting tool you can do it the long way.. you want to set your hammer spring to max power, with the hammer spring maxed out you should then set the reg so it shoots a little more than your required speed such as 940fps. This will be your max setting.
Be VERY careful with high HST settings combined with a low reg presure!!!!
The hammer will damage the bronze/brass nut!
Regards, Robert.
Thanks to everyone for responding. I did some shooting yesterday and tuning but don’t have a full shot string due to rain and lack of light towards the end of the day. M best tune go me 884-876 most of them were 880 +\- 2for 36 shots. That’s from 220-120 bar. The reason I continue to to site the 50 shot mark is because that is what eds site states “The number of shots per one filling not less than 50/70/90” with fill pressure at 210-110 bar. I’m not tuning for shot count, I’m tuning for 880 fps because its what everyone here has agreed is the bet mix of power and accuracy. I won’t have much time over the next few days, but will try the recommendations.
The barrle has about 5k shots thought it and the new reg has over 500. Thank everyone again for your time and knowsgle
Hey,
It sounds like it may be loosing efficiency because its wound “too low”?
One would think that less power means less air usage but it can also have the opposite effect.
Do you have a reg setting tool or did you guess the adjustment? You also didnt mention what pressure you are filling it too or what the ones you are comparing it too are doing re fill pressures.. eg 240bar to 120 bar will yield a lot more shots than 220bar to 120 bar..
If the reg pressure is set too low and the HST set too high the pressure in the plenum is exhausted too quickly which opens the reg while the poppet valve is still open causing a lot of air to be waisted out the muzzle after the pellet is already long gone. This will also cause hammer bounce releasing several more waisted small bursts of air to be released.
I recommend you set your reg back to 130 bar and back of your HST to lower the velocity. The reg is in place just to supply a regulated volume of air to the valve and the valve should only release about 70-80% of it if the valve springs and HST is set correctly.. Dont replace your barrel or breech block as neither of those will cause this problem.
The valve, transfer ports and breach block hole could all be as big as 1/4″ and you still wont see any difference in velocity if your reg is set up right.
Some thing I have come across more than once is small spacer “shim washers” under the front side of the valve poppet return spring, I think Ed and co tunes them this way when a spring is outside of tolerances. I have seen as many as Three 1mm washers under this spring which causes the valve to shut quicker and helps with the HST putting it back into a better range of velocity adjustment, other rifle I have seen no washers fitted.
If your Matador doesnt have a washer on the springs front seat you could try fitting one at a time and see how that effects your strings and efficiency once the reg is correctly set back to 130 bar (Where it was designed to run at its best).
Just remember a higher reg pressure with a short sharp blow from the hammer will always be more efficient than a low pressure reg with a HST wound up so much that the dwell time on the valve lengthens causing wasted air.
If you want a lower reg pressure you will also have to re-tune the balance between your hammer spring and valve return spring.
45-50 shots should be achievable from your .25 std.
If you dont have a reg pressure setting tool you can do it the long way.. you want to set your hammer spring to max power, with the hammer spring maxed out you should then set the reg so it shoots a little more than your required speed such as 940fps. This will be your max setting.
you should run short shot strings and monitor very closely at what pressure your velocity drops off as the pressure in your cyl drops below the reg setting, only fill your gun to 130bar so your are not wasting too much lead or air.
You want to adjust your reg very slowly in just 5 min turns counter clockwise to increase power and clockwise to reduce it. 128 to 130 bar seems to be about the range most regs work best. This will mean your velocity will drop off at 120bar cylinder pressure.
Once you have the reg set so the velocity maxed at 940fps with the HST maxed out, back the hammer spring tensioner back off to the desired 880-930fps, do some group testing to see what speed groups better, if there is little to no difference leave it running at 930fps for flatter shooting.
Now fill the gun to max pressure and run a full Chrony string and record it monitoring the Cyl pressure as you go. As soon as the velocity drops off stop shooting and take note of your Cyl pressure. If you have set it up right it should be approx 120 fps and also take note of the max number of shots you can take on the reg.
It is important to tune your reg for your desired velocity with your hammer spring set at about 1/2 of its adjustment to the desired pellet and velocity not tune for shot count.. When all these things are balanced the shot count really doesn’t matter. It is velocity consistency and accuracy you tune a rifle for not shot count.
Just a couple of off thoughts here….
Clean the barrel thoroughly.
Permit the R3 to “break in” by firing 500 to 1000 shots at a minimum. Some of Ed’s guns are very tight and need time to get all the moving parts seated properly!
Change all the O-rings to 90 Duro. Old Goat used to sell an upgrade O-ring replacement kit for Edguns.
Compare the air gauge psi to your fill station gauge psi.
Generally speaking, this type of problem has a simple answer. It make take a bit of time to identify it, so be patient and don’t do anything drastic. Give us a chance to help you.
I’ve only compaired my gun with the others that shipped with mine. However, the r3m is supposed to be the most efficecnt so that shouldn’t be an issue anyhow. I’ll try a graph this weekend
Hi Wanta,
Could you post a shotstring?
And is it possible you have a shotstring from an R3 you’ve compared it with?
Please put the figures in a graph.
Regards, Robert.
The original reg iTunes came shooting jsb at 925fps (about 20fps less the the other guns in the same shipment). I was getting about 35 shots per fill at that time. When I dropped the regu adjustment and got it into the 880 range. Shot count didn’t improve much. I turned the second regulator down a bit before installing it and its was shooting at 890fps. After a week it started jumping around a bit and then leaked completely down n a few days. That’s when I pulled it back apart and replaced all the orings. There has got to be a mechanical explanation for why one gun would get 30% fewer shots per fill.
Have you turned up the reg from the factory setting?
Yes, I’m comparing standards to standards, all shooting the jsb 25 grain pellet. 50 shots per fill seams to be the low end based on reading the other posts. What I was saying about the hst adjustment was that I’ve tried setting the adjustment where the fps peaks. I’ve tried adjusting it a little bit past the peak fps, and I’ve tried adjusting it a little bit below the peak fps. Right now peak I have the hst backed out about 1/16 turn from where the peak fps was at. Everything looks good in the regulator and the valve stem protrusion is 3.3mm just a tad a longer than it should be.
Is the shot count you are comparing your rifle to have the same:
Barrel length?
Airtube capacity?
Pellet weight?
As yours?
If you have a standard and the other guy is shooting a long you’ll never get the same number of shots no matter what you do. If you are shooting 35 grain 25’s and the other guy is shooting 22 grain 25’s then he will get more velocity and more shots.
Note sure about some of the tests you mentioned:
The procedure for finding the fps based on the reg setting is to shoot ten shots and note the velocities.
Then turn the hst screw in a half turn and shoot ten more shots and note the velocity.
You do this until the velocity does not rise (or rise very little compared to what they were rising before) when you turn in the hst.
This will give you the least variation between shots for that reg setting.
If you want more or less velocity, adjust the reg and then repeat the whole hst test over again after turning out the hst screw a few times.
If you adjust the reg and the velocity does not change then it usually means the reg is bad, you need to replace the o-rings (which is usually the culprit) or get another one with fresh washers.
How many times did you adjust the reg and do the hst test?
Forget about setting the hst at some random distance in from the aluminum part, it’s not the best way to set the rifle up since you’re essentially bound by the reg adjustment.
I tried everything, even cutting the hst spring in order to not adjust the reg on my 177 standard and I wish I had just adjusted the reg and did the hst testing.
Maybe the gauge is off? How high do you fill it to? Does the gauge on your tank/pump match whats on the gun? Maybe the valve spring is suspect…? Just throwing out some ideas.
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Well, I’m kind of hesitant to claim victory cause I haven’t had enough light to pull a full Chrony but I have been out in the woods with it several times and have always had 150 bar or so left when I get back. Before I polished the valve tips and knocked all the metal dust out of the reg vent, I always had to cut my trips short cause I would run out of air. Its shooting at 880 fps with jsb 25 grain pellets. It could shoot at 885 but I backed off the hst a tiny bit to keep me at 880. I’m a little surprised it only at 880 cause moved the reg adjusted most of the way back to the factory adjustment. Filled to 220, it was dropping to 185 after one mag (9shots). It is now only dropping to about 195-200. I have only been below 150bar once and I didn’t see any drop or increase in fps until the sharp drop when its at 120 bar. I’m guessing I’m about 50 shots per fill if not a few more.
I’m at a cross roads where Im trying to decide what I really need vs what I want. I’m thinking about saving for a 22 cal hummingbird. This gun is a little over powered for 75% of the “work” I’m doing with it and need something I’m comfortable shooting at closer range and with limited room when it comes to houses and stuff near by. If I end up with a hummer, I will probably try a 224 Barrel in this gun, shooting an off the shelf North American arms 30gr bullet and maybe something 40-50grain. If I do that, I’ll have a a great close range semi-auto and a great long range gun. I’m also trying to get a grizzly lathe and mill and the just isn’t enough money for everything. I’m going to have some fun with this gun as it is for the summer and go from there.