A little disappointed with a used .25 Condor I got..
I just bought this used Condor .25 from its original owner. The Condor is less than a year old and was almsot fully tuned by Tony this past April. The gun shoots what the seller said it would shoot, but I can only get about 4 shots in the 900’s with 42gr Sam Yang’s. It quickly drops down to the 800’s with a 2900psi fill and PW 8-9 which was recommened by Tony according to the seller.
It starts out usually at 930-940fps with a 2900 fill (42gr pellets). 2nd shot is usually 915-920, 3d shot 908-910 and 4th shot 899-900fps. Not very good consistency.. The shots don’t get consistent until it’s down to ~875fps. From there on down I can get a lot more shots in the 800’s with not much drop in velocity. This tells me the valve likes a lower pressure.
These are the TalonTunes mods this gun had according to Tony’s e-mail to the seller back in April.
Full tune
Hammer+Spring (90 gram I ‘m told)
Vented Bushing
Vented Frame
O-ring mod
I tried a lower pressure fill and got better consistency but the velocities were not in the 900’s. I then tried 3K psi fill and the consistency was about the same even though I got 7-8 more FPS.
I was hoping for a few more shots in the 80’s FPE or in the 900’s, but I ‘m only getting 3-4 shots with 10-15fps drop after each shot until it’s well into the high 800’s. I have this gun on consignment and have the choice of paying for it or returning it to its owner. It also has a grinding, spring-like noise and I can see the brass hammer moving, when I move the breach knob from left to right into the lock position while the gun is not cocked. My other 2 Condors don’t do this. Maybe this hammer is flush up against the breach slide and the others are not? What could be causing that?
Would you keep this gun or pursue it more to see how it can be made to shoot more consistently in the 900’s? I thought Tony’s guns shoot very consistently but I ‘m not seeing it with this gun until it drops to the low 70’s FPE. That is not the power or consistency I was looking forward to, from a “Tony tuned” .25 with a 90gram hammer and valve work, etc. My Airgog .22 is 70+fpe (and my Lemak .25 90fpe with an 80gram hammer and the older style valve). Maybe I need to play with the PW more.. maybe PW setting 10 is what the gun needs.. don’t know. I guess I ‘ll fool with it for one more day and make a decision. I did not expect AAA power, but I did have higher expectations a far as consistency goes.
***edit***
I changed the title so it’s not misleading to anyone.
All Replies
Blue Jay – this is what is happening with that. When the gun is NOT cocked, and I turn the breech knob to the left or right, I can see the hammer moving (it rotates) a little, and is making a noise, and also sounds like the spring is moving too. It cocks (with some effort) OK, and after it’s cocked, I can flip the knob left to right with no sound whatsoever.
It’s only when the spring is decompressed or at rest, that it makes the noise with the hammer rotating slightly as the breach knob rotates the breech slide/cylinder. I have never taken the breech out but there ‘s first time for everything.. Hek I got 3 Condors, I might as well experiment with one and take it completely apart. I can take things apart pretty easily usually, the problem is knowing what I ‘m looking for and putting the parts back properly 😛
Harry, glad she’s straightend her act and shooting good for you.
harry didn’t you say there is a grinding noise when you cock it? If that is so then you Need to tare that thing down and clean the hell out of it before you do any more shooting, there is no saying what could be in there and just destroying things… perhaps sand?
Thanks guys!
Synopsys: Yep I found 3 little holes under the forend grip! Now I know for sure it was tuned by Tony, heheh.
As Jerry said, your first shot string started going down from shot one. Reckon you got some more in her yet….
Flip the rifle over and look under the foregrip, you’ll see some holes into the barrel shroud, those vent the air from the shroud volume through the vented barrel collars out the bottom of the frame into the atmosphere.
It’s tricked out way to further dissipate the air charge from the shot and reduce the sound involved. 😉
Looks pretty good to me. You might try reducing the PW setting some or trying a little more air pressure as you appear to be shooting down the “back of the curve.”
Ok it was a false alarm. I should have tinkered with it & troubleshot some more before I posted probably.
I switched yokes and filled to 3K psi. The gauge paused at just under 2500psi which usually indicates the pressure in the tank. It seemed low to me because I had only taken about a dozen shots with it from 3K psi. Now I ‘m thinking maybe the other guage is not accurate. I know it was off by 100psi so I compensated before, but maybe it got worse over time.
Anyway nothing was done by me to the gun except I filled it accurately to 3K psi now, so here are the new strings w/42gr pellets unsorted and not weighted:
1st 10-shot string:
952.3
948.4
944.1
941.5
936.5
927.8
928.0
920.9
906.5
925.4 –> not a typo
2nd 10-shot string:
908.0
918.6
886.2 (?!)
908.7
891.7
883.3
876.7
875.9
877.2
872.6
Much better as you can see.. and to make a long story short my other gauge is off by about 200psi, not 100 like it used to be so I need to replace it. Also there is the excellent consistency I was talking about when it gets into the 870’s – shot 21 was 868.8 btw, but I ‘m pretty happy with the rest too. 20 shots produced exactly an 80fps drop or an average of 4fps drop per shot. Not bad 😆
I don’t think I ‘m going to crank the PW up or touch it for now. It’s between 8-9 now the way the original owner sent it with Tony’s recommendation… unless someone strongly believes I ‘ll get better consistency & power together. I ‘m running low on air with all the testing I ‘ve been doing! hehehe.. Maybe when I get my 2nd scuba tank I ‘ll tinker with it more. So it looks like I ‘ll be paying the small fortune this gun’s owner is asking for afterall 😮
Thanks all for the time you took to give advice, even if it were light critisism everyone still recommended something so it was all good.
I will certainly all the troubleshooting techniques in mind next time around after I check & calibrate my equipment first 😉 I am proud to own a Condor that Tony has tuned. Though I ‘m not sure what some mods do, hehehe. What is a “vented frame” and how does it help? I should know since I spend hours daily on this forum.. 🙄 but I ‘m trying to figure out Blue Jay’s lyrics and riddles half the time 😛
It probably could use a tune up…
A used Ferrari runs like shit, change the oil, plugs, wires, adjust the valves (Ferrari’s have lots of valves) set the point gap and the thing will run like it was brand new!
Not knowing much about tuned Condors leaves me at a loss but it sounds like the tophat is letting too much air out with each shot and thus the loss of power…
It probably could use a tune up…!
So I guess it was a bad/broken spring, but I would say that is not the case here.
Don’t you see how similar the troubles are and how the solution is staring you smack dab in the face?????
trouble with gun…..send to maker…. gone over……problem solved
seems logical to me
Walter
I had just gotten that gun from its original owner and yes it was shooting 400fps. I did nothing but sent the gun to Lee after the seller agreed to pay to have Lee take a look at it. Lee agreed to do it for nothing and only for the seller to cover shipping costs. He replaced the hammer spring plus cleaned and polished the valve & stem some more he said and that was it.
So I guess it was a bad/broken spring, but I would say that is not the case here.
Harry, so what did you have to do to the Lemak .25 to get it shooting so well?
not that long ago it was only doing 400fps?????
So what I’m driving at is that your troubles may be related and if you know what it took to sort out Lemak .25 perhaps do the same on the TT.25
sound logical?
Walter….
Harry,
I understand what you are saying. But I will say something Tony will not say about himself.
He often will go far out of his way to help somebody and there are several on this forum who know that. Sending him a PM or giving him a call really is the first best step.
But all that aside. I am sure we can figure out what is going on with it. I think the first best step is to give it a good cleaning and take a look at what is going on with the internals.
You guys got me all wrong except for Don (Shrpshtr). I was not critisizing Tony’s work although I had a feeling it might have been misinterpreted that way. I just expected to get a “Tony” gun and I realized there may be something wrong with this gun and wanted to know what people think might be wrong with it, and how I should go about troubleshooting it and fixing it.
I was going to call Tony but I really don’t want to spend more $ on a gun I am going to pay a lot for in the first place that was supposed to be well tuned just a few months ago. I wanted to hear people’s opinions first about how to get better consistency in the 900’s..
thanks for the advice all.
Maw:
It has the hi-flo valve.
Voltar:
As far as comparing it to the Lemak .25, I ‘d have to say that right now the Lemak is ahead of this .25 the way it is, in more ways than 1, but the Lemak has a custom breach, custom top hat, and the barrel end worked so they all match up together well. Has a custom valve stem and some valve work. It is more powerful (high 900’s w/42gr), easier to cock, consistent, etc. but it’s an 80gram Lemak striker (not 90 like the “Tony .25”) with aftermarket spring and Delrin sliders on each end. Don’t know about o-ring mod on the Lemak gun, have to ask Lee, so I ‘m not sure I can compare apples to apples..
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sence you have three of them so it’s time to learn how to clean them…..
lay every thing out on a clean towel, start with the upper left corner away from your work area of the towel and place the fist thing you remove there and work in a row to right in layers, then every step is lined out for you to go back in, take pics along the way for reference, one good spot to make sure you do that in is the spring pack located under the plate that is held in by the grip. make sure the trigger is facing you(up) when you pull that off so all the springs stay in place for the pic.
almost forgot…. be careful with the screw in the preload wheel, she’s a delicate little thing