Still Messing With the Benjamin 3030

I’ve been busy with my visiting family but I did mess around a bit more with the Benjamin 3030.

There’s about 1/8” of slack between the point where the cartridge is contacted by the piercing pin and the hammer. Thus the valve opens up a lot more than I think is needed.

So I made a rubber spacer…

Installed.

It still pierced the CO2 cart, but not as much.

However the spacer slid and got between the hammer and the trigger (you can see the indent).

There’s a hardened steel insert in the hammer that the trigger engages. I only got a few more shots over the paltry 10 I was getting though so I pronounced it a failure, at least for now.

Then I thought about the hammer spring. Right is the “original” but probably not stock hammer spring. Center is the replacement I dug up, and left is an even weaker replacement I found in my big box of springs. I may need to make an even weaker one.

I also added an o-ring to the valve where it contacts the tube. I doubt that’s why there’s a groove there but I noticed that the valve was sliding back and forth a but as the hole in the tube that the screw sits in was larger in diameter than the head of the screw. Obviously the solution is to make a screw with a larger head…

Anyway I managed to get 20 shots with the weaker spring. Which is not a success, but lets me know that I’m on the right track. I think if I keep the valve from moving altogether I may see a slight increase as well. I think the hammer hits the valve, knocks open the seal, but then the entire valve body rebounds and bounces a but, preventing the seal from closing in a timely fashion. Or I could be wrong, which is likely. I also suspect that gas is leaking around the barrel, through the valve body and into the space between the hammer and the valve body, as well as the shot tube – sometimes the bbs bounce out of the loading port, but I don’t know if it’s the rebound or a gas leak.

The goal is the advertised “up to” 30 shots, so if I could just get it up around 25 I’d be happy. I still need to run it across the chronograph but it’s been raining for a week.