Tophat Setting
I was doing some checking on my Condors Tophat to see the factory setting which is .097.I am currently shooting the Benjamin 14.3 grain pellets,does anyone know what the optimal tophat setting and powerwheel setting for this pellet would be?
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I confirmed it was the o-ring not sealing good to the top hat as AF suspected. There were occasional low fps and puffs of air from the breech along with it. It is fixed after moving the hat back out a bit.
sounds like you had your power wheel down to much , if it is not in sync with the bottle pressure you will get erratic performance with shot fps variation.
my top hat has never been all the way out to touch the breech , well maybe the first couple` hundred pellets, from then on it has been turned way down, i have run it as low as .040 to .055 with a .071 thick oring with 2000 psi,
this was running 14 grain pellets at 500 fps to 600 fps peak then back down to 500 fps for 175 shots, using 3.98 cfm per shot. at power wheel 2
The plastic or hard spacer has been tried, if your top hat is hitting it , it will cause eratic performance, just like the top hat hitting the brass behind it on the valve.any way the guy that did this went back to the oring, and had better results , i dont remember who it was, it’s here on the tag somewhere .
the temp change will vary the fps with the oring , not a big deal just a quick tune and your back in the running, i only have to do this one time a year from the cold to the hot here in north texas.
I guess this is what is happening, i havent ran my condor without the oring to see if the tune will change between the cold and the hot, how about it guys that dont run an oring does your fps change between winter and summer, i bet it does. so it might not be the oring all together , the nature of the compressed air in that tank demands a change with temp i would say, dont you guys.
I was turning my top hat in to reduce power and had a problem with shot velocity going all over the place. Every few shots would be a flyer . I had it adjusted to less than .070. I called AF and asked for help and they told me to back the top hat back out a bit. They said the seal between the top hat and the breech block was probably not adequate since it wasn’t tight against the block when cocked. They told me that at the factory they just turn the tophat out until the cocking lever doesn’t move freely (front to back) when the gun is cocked. I screwed it out a bit and that problem was solved. I additionally replaced the o-rings with 90 dura polyurethane white ones. It does seal up good now and there definitely is a solid click when the o-rings go over the top hat. After all that, the gun was still shooting too fast and the “power wheel” basically does next to nothing to turn it down.
I think the spacer trick under the top hat using a plastic shim is going to solve both issues (reduce power AND keep the tophat tight against the breech block with good o-ring seals) and not be temp sensitive. I bet there are o-rings that have low temp coefficients also but the plastic washer sounds more foolproof.
This should allow me to fill the gun up to higher pressures and get more usable shots under 950fps. BTW.. this is on a .25 cal condor shooting JSB Kings.
sweet, i have followed your progress, that’s why i said if it works don’t fix it 😀
didnt say anything about you needing to do it, just something to think about.
I don’t need any quicker rebound. Would just put more pressure on the frame. Remember I run a 9.4 lb spring in the .25 and a 13 lb in .257 and .308.
When I built my first .308 the acetal spacer on the cocking knob would only last about 20 shots.
On the .257 I recut the stock slot to .400″. Now I’m able to run a .100″ thick spacer on the cocking knob.
I did one 5 shot string that only had a 10 fps spread using 250 psi making over 180 fpe.
Well in my case im using the oring to limit travel of the top hat, for lower power set up and a trottle you might say , its not a question if it works for consistency or not, i have been doing it for 3 years and posted many times with differant set ups. low and high power up to 85 foot pounds that is with a 22 condor.
and for high power , it is set up to touch the top hat at the very end of the travel of the top hat to help rebound the top hat and close it faster to save air .it doesent slam into it.
i would think that even in the high power guns like yours, that it couud be used to close the valve quicker, may take a thicker oring to handle the heavier impact, but does your top hat bottom out with your high power guns.
you wouldnt be limiting the travel with your set up, just be at the end of the travel to touch, or rebound the valve back closed, may not work with the high power stuff, butt it seems that it might work the same as with what i do with it, may take some adjustment or differant settings, but hey, dont fix it if it works 😀
you see what i mean about just barely touching at the end of the travel,
My gun would shred a o ring. I don’t see why just putting a solid shim wouldn’t work better. I can’t see how a o ring cam be consistant with temp changes and it wearing out from being slammed.
Yep Yep, could not have said it better Mr Knife maker,
I guess i started out my journey with the air force a little differant than most everyone else, i had nothing but 14 grain pellets to start off, I read and read on the forum , and everything like for the most part, llike now, was power, power , power, which is great, but i had to have been running those rws 14 grain pellets at like 1000fps or more, and was seeing groups like 1 1/2 ” at 25 yards, there was nothing on how to turn the condor down to shoot the light pellets ,
so i was like (damn!!! ) and those guys said the air force condor was accurate. well i didnt have a crony yet, so i didnt know the fps, so i just kept shooting the gun , probably 200 times or more and when the psi in the tank was down to like 1200 or less and the gun just stacked the pellets into one hole at 25 yards, literally.
found out later that the magic fps i was seeing was high 700’s to 800 fps with the rws pellets that they really shine,
any way i started turning down the top hat to try and get the velocity down without having the air in the tank down so lo and at right at .025 was the trick with like 1900 psi and power wheel 0 to 2 ,
I shot like this for several groups but i could hear something and the groups would be stacking and then get a flyer,
well i though the top hat is hitting the brass behind it , with the top hat so lo, so sitting there at the bench in the garage, where i had been refitting the ac on my truck , i had an assortment of orings, i though wonder how that would work , putting the oring behind the top hat for a buffer ,
well i did it with the same .o25 gap between the oring and the top hat , that i had been shooting to keep the velocity down , and holy crap hell , the dam thing must of busted out 1200fps or something because there was a hell of a crack from the muzel balst going super sonic echoing down the street bouncing off the houses like a damn 22 rim fire.
seems adding the top hat gap including the oring is a bad idea, 😳 it was like .120 or something like that, so lowering the top gap to like .045 with the oring in that gap worked perfect i could raise the tank pressure get a ton of shots , and keep the velocity down to 800 fps for the rws pellets.
any way , i use the top hat for a fine tuneing throttle you might say, with the oring.
and yes the temp change does mess with the tune while using the oring ,i assume,
because i really have not run the gun without the oring, if im running 925 fps wth 14 grain pellets in the summer time, my velocity will come way down when it gets cold, like in the high 700’s to 825.
a quick run with the chrony and turn up the top hat a bit , and maybe a slight adjust of the power wheel and i am right where i was before.
i have had great luck with the consistency using the oring and have run it since i bought the gun, i had maybe a few hundred pellets thru it before i started using the oring in sep 2009 i believe ,and have been running it ever since and its the same oring . i might ought to change it out, but it still seems fine.
I use the oring for max power stuff also, i had it out , ringing 32 grain enjins out for max power, and the gun was way louder, i could tell i was using a ton of air, i put the oring back in , and adjusted the top hat out, and could get the same velocity, just with the oring in, it was using way less air.
anyways i have had great results using it, i would probably have a reg by now if i hadn’t had it.I also think the oring could be used with the reg, or with the super high powered set up also, or worth a try
The reason being Doug, is that you are using the spacer as a top hat adjustment. This requires a Hard” shim, in order to be able to adjust a non adjustable top hat.
We are not using a Shim to make the top hat adjustamble, but rather to use the “0” ring to act as an “Anti- Bounce” Device. For this to work, it has to be of a softer material. It can work very well if set up for it. Saving a LOT of air! 😀
To that end, a hard shim to act as an adjustment, and an “0” ring together could very well make for a very tunable combination. 😉
Mike
I don’t understand why you guys put o rings behind the tophat instead of a plastic washer. All my valves are one piece stem and I set the gap with a acetal spacer. To me a o ring is not going to be consistant. Hot and cold is going to effect it not to mention after being beat a few hundreds times they have to get soft.
Stem is .250″. Go to the hardware store and get some plastic washers. If they are to thick you can sand them on a piece of sand paper on a flat surface.
oh , right boggman,
take the little grub screws out one at a time, and put the red container blue liquid ( not the permanent kind you have to heat up to loosen ) loctite on the screws so they will not back off on you while shooting
this is a thing that will ,make you crazy if you don’t loctite the grub screws, you will be like why in the hell has everything gone to crap, and you find out the grub screws are loose and the top hat has moved.
you can loosen and tighten several times without having to reapply the loc tite, you just have to keep track of how tight the little grub screw is when you open it, when it seems to unscrew easy , reapply
Oh and i put the allen head wrench on the top hat screw from time to time and just put a little pressure on it to see if it is tight or not, just to make sure. i have had the grub screws loosen on me one time, but after that i have been doing this from then on , and not had a problem thru 10,000 plus rounds down range. 🙂
When you start experimenting, be super gentle tightening the grub screw that holds the tophat position; the cheesy, thin metal is easily dented by the screw.
[quote=”powderburner”]
there is so much to say, but most all is in this forum, but nick has it going on there for a base comparison, his top hat , and oring , with about a #3 or 4 on the power wheel should be great, just tighten the top hat for less velocity and loosen for more, you shouldnt need any more than a 2100 to 2400 fill for this,
You’re spot-on PB, the pw is set at 3/3. Fill pressure is 2400psi. The o’ring under the top hat is .040 in thickness.
I agree with keeping the velocity in the 900fps range or slightly less for accuracy, for some reason my rifle is exceptional at its current settings. Some time ago, I shot a starling at around 160yrds (132m lasered) with a s510, the velocity was 850fps and the 18gr Jsb went through, so even with a pellet moving at a snails pace it still gets the job done.
My current setup is for long range shots on crows as they’re a real problem on the farm.
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ok, well may top hat seals great to the breech, i get the resounding clunk when sliding the breech over the top hat. i would think that as long as your breech oring is tight on the top hat you should not get an air leak on fireing. so if you replaced the oring you should be able to turn down your top hat, yes