Posted by jjh on January 02, 2001 at 14:03:30:
Having still 17 days left of warranty period, I think I have contact my dealer quick: during shooting my LP10 seems to be losing some pressure and that shot is of course ruined. The pellet will fly somewhere close to target or even hit it, and you can hear the pellet hit much later than it should normally. Strange thing is that this happens very randomly, maybe once or twice in month. It may happen with completely full pressure on tank or also less. I am cocking the gun normally, at least I can not notice any difference.
Has any of You experienced anything alike?
I am afraid service guys can not find anything wrong, if nothing is really worn out or damaged.
Any clues appreciated.
Posted by Lane S. on January 02, 2001 at 17:27:14:
My LP-10 has about 5000 pellets through it at this time. This same thing has happened to me twice. I fill my cylinder up after each match. The last time it occurred was while shooting Jon Powell's match. I heard the soft sounding shot and was afraid to look thru the scope. There it was, a 6. It could have been out of the scoring rings though. Trouble is, my friend in the same match only beat me by one point. I have been trying to beat this man for twenty years and I had him on the ropes. Sure makes for a good excuse though. It's a shame but true. There’s always next match. I started to make sure I was cocking the gun fully. As you said, it might go another 1000 or two before it happens again. As LP-10's are relatively new. We will have to wait and see if this is a problem.
Posted by Raymac on January 03, 2001 at 00:11:49:
Occasional pressure loss with your LP10 may well be related to the friction operated recoil absorber located inside the bolt. I have had occasion to repair more than one. It has a latching mechanism in it that latches the small piston in a forward position before firing. If the latch does not engage for any reason the result will be a much lower velocity shot. the latch can be seen on the top side of the bolt near the front [part # 61 in your manual]. It pivots on a small pin. It works like a rifle extractor. The best you can do without gunsmithing capability is to make sure the latch is clean and lightly lubricated.....It is a tricky operation to dismantle the bolt mechanism on these. Fortunately they usually work without trouble.
Posted by pilkguns on January 03, 2001 at 19:23:39:
In Reply to: Re: Occasionally lost pressure on LP10 posted by Raymac on January 03, 2001 at 00:11:49:
But I think this diagnosis is not quite correct.
The problem is the shooter is not closing the loading gate all the way. Rather it is getting stuck halfway between dry fire and fire, and an enough gas is escaping to push the pellet out the barrel. Sometimes, there is a slight catch in the lever as it comes down, that feels like you have passed the dry fire stage and are into the fire stage, but you are not. It only seems to happen every once in a great while awhile. This is what happened to Daryl Szarenski’s gun. Steyr has since changed the location of the pin on the dry-fire lever on LP10s, thus giving it a different fulcrum point, and a more “positive” feel, when going past these points.
I was so taken by surprise by the previous answer that I didn’t want to respond to this immediately until I had time to experiment some with his proposition. Even if the absorber was all the way to the rear, it shouldn’t make any real difference to the velocity of the pellet. Or so I thought, but I wanted to check it out. I fired an LP10 with the absorber working (that is resetting), and then allowed it to function without resetting, which is easily done by removing the rear sight, since the screw that holds the rear sight acts as the contact to point to reset the absorber piston. I found that with the absorber unset, (all the way to the rear) that the gun consistently shot only about 5 fps slower, which wouldn’t move the shot out of the group, which is basically what I thought the gun would do, but wanted to make sure before I made a public announcement.
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