I have an Air Arms S400 and am thinking of fitting an altros regulator. Has anyone had any experiene with them and if so what improvement do the give.
I have an Air Arms S400 and am thinking of fitting an altros regulator. Has anyone had any experiene with them and if so what improvement do the give.
I have had two of them The first one could not be made to work in my gun. The second one, a newer model worked fine. The only improvement is consistency between the shots but this regulator is factory set to 120 bar which is tad too high for our rifles. The pressure is adjustable but for that the cylinder needs to be taken off which in case of the S400f is not difficult but it is a lot of messing about. I also have a second S400 that is not regulated and it is just fine for my HFT needs , about 70 shots around 15 fps spread and about 3~4 fps variance between 165 and 115 bar. I rather work with the unregulated S400, less to tune and worry about.
There are other makes of regulator like the Huma and Lane but these specially the Lane regulator need a lot of post tuning of the gun to get the best of them. Needless to say that the anti tamper has to be removed first.
A.G
The 400 especially the full length classic, gives more than enough shots imo to not bother pixxing about with regs and there added complexity. Just saying
Thank you for your swift replies. I have looked at both the lane and huma regs but both require drilling, which means there is no way of removing them at a later date without buying new parts.
Before I put an Altaros regulator in my .177 S400 Classic I got around 70 shots with a spread of 20 fps from 170 bar to 100 bar. After I fitted the regulator I got 67 shots with a spread of 12 fps from 200 to 100 bar. The Altaros regulator worked perfectly and was easy to install and adjust, but in my opinion the results of a 'drop-in' installation in an S400 don't justify the expense. The slightly improved velocity spread is so small you can only detect it over a chrono - it has absolutely no detectable effect on real world grouping or anything else, and the reduced shot count is a bit of a pita, especially as it means I need to get my air bottle filled more often.
All regulators do is make the air pressure per shot more constant, but without additional tuning and modification, you will get very inefficient use of air, which is why my shot count went down. If you really want to benefit from installing a reg in any of the Air Arms S400/500 series, you need to think in terms of a pretty drastic set of modifications including drilling out the transfer port, replacing the valve and hammer springs and lightening or replacing the hammer, plus a LOT of work balancing and tuning. After all that, depending on which model, you may get 80 to 100 shots in a 6 fps spread. You'll also probably have spent over £100 and got yourself something else to go wrong.
For me it was an interesting experiment, but I'd never do it again. In fact the regulator will be coming out as soon as I get round to it.
Alan
At first I had an Altaros. I liked it, although I was still the weak link in the shooting partnership. Then fitted a Lane. Liked it even more, I would spend the money (and considerable time getting the balance right) again.
But then again, you could consider a good MK4is, it's sent my S400 and HW100 into retirement.