Testing A 1960s Crosman CO2 Powerlet

[tunnelrat]

Interesting post.

Have you checked the weight of your remaining Powerlets? If full, one should weigh 31g + 12.5g (the claimed weight of CO2 content) = 43.5g.

An obvious leak point would be the crown cap. Does it have some form of gasket to make the seal between the cap and top of the bottle?

Further destructive testing is called for.

[cinedux]

must try some and see if they are dead. In the late 1970s I could buy an outer of Nittan 12Gm Powerlets(20 boxes) or an outer of Crosmans (12 boxes) for $19.50....from Tisdalls Ltd(Petone).This included postage! I visited this store(a general sports store) on one occasion,they had 27 different air pistols.How change times. ;-)Those Crosman 1100 sets cost around $120 all up. Trev

[draitzer]

Years ago I bought a couple hundred Crosman 'bottle-cap' cartridges dirt cheap at a firearms show. It turned out that less than one out of three held enough CO2 to be usable at all and most were empty - a false bargain for sure. I've never dissected one, but surely there's a seal/gasket that deteriorates allowing the contents to escape. Interestingly, the old Sparklet 8-gram ones with a visible gasket are still reliable after 50+ years.

Don R.

[colin g]

Years ago I bought a couple hundred Crosman 'bottle-cap' cartridges dirt cheap at a firearms show. It turned out that less than one out of three held enough CO2 to be usable at all and most were empty - a false bargain for sure. I've never dissected one, but surely there's a seal/gasket that deteriorates allowing the contents to escape. Interestingly, the old Sparklet 8-gram ones with a visible gasket are still reliable after 50+ years.

Don R.

I bought a couple of hundred 12 gram ones that looked old and grubby off that auction site cheap to use on an old but boxed daisy 3357 50 cal paintball marker, Just blew cold dry ice out of the barrel in one go, Only 1 in 3 or 4 worked and not that powerful, Not weak but you can certainly tell the difference between a new capsule. A new 12 gram sparklet works perfect every time so they must deteriorate over a period time.. Not that cheap at 10p each if two thirds of them dont work.

[Abasmajor]

A shooting friend of mine had the means of testing the purity of various makes of CO2 capsules where he works and was surprised at the levels of contamination except apparently for those made by Umarex. I must have used capsules from many different manufacturers over the years without any particular problems that could be directly attributable to contaminated gas.

Brian

[FOZZD1]

Maybe Crosman were ahead of the game and were reducing their CO2 emissions long before the car manufacturers
got into the act.



Sorry I will take myself to the naughty corner and will be quiet.

[edbear2]

Hi John, we regularly scrap batches of 100's of aircraft life jackets at work that are C02 operated, some have powerlets similar but slightly different to anything used in any airgun (I used to see guys popping powerlets for days then scrapping the containers and thought "what a waste").

Anyway, the shelflife is to re-weigh at 4 years and there is a percentage that is allowable, much like a fire extinguisher test, on my gas inflated lifejackets on the boat they just say change at 4 years regardless.

Thing is, I have seen containers 20-25 years old from storage that are still perfect, but the are very high quality as you would expect, so maybe it's down to the type of closure as mentioned by another poster.

We must have binned thousands since I have worked there, I will see if I can find some samples to measure as it would almost be worth making an adaptor if you are a C02 buff,

The REAL fun (and dangerous due to the energy) stuff is letting off scrap aircraft slides and 60 person liferafts

ATB, Ed

[Josie & John]

A shooting friend of mine had the means of testing the purity of various makes of CO2 capsules where he works and was surprised at the levels of contamination except apparently for those made by Umarex. I must have used capsules from many different manufacturers over the years without any particular problems that could be directly attributable to contaminated gas.

Brian

Hi Brian,

One quick question - you mentioned contamination and Umarex cartridges being the 'cleanest'. What contaminates were present? Was it just oil or were other particles present? Not sure if your friend would know?

Kind regards,

John

[Abasmajor]

Hi Brian,

One quick question - you mentioned contamination and Umarex cartridges being the 'cleanest'. What contaminates were present? Was it just oil or were other particles present? Not sure if your friend would know?

Kind regards,

John

Hi John,
Unfortunately, the friend I mention is no longer a member of the club I shoot at so I can't be sure of the actual nature of the contaminants he was talking about. He was a big air soft shooter and used lots of CO2 capsules in his skirmishing rifles and pistols. In general, he would only load Umarex capsules with regular use of maintenance capsules as a result of his experiments. I can't say I have experienced anything more than the expected seal failures using various makes of capsule over the years with minimum preventative maintenance. I bought one of the first Umarex CP88 pistols when they appeared many years ago and used a lot of different make capsules before storing it away until just recently. Having made the decision to move it on, I test fired it first and was pleasantly surprised that it still held gas and was as powerful as ever with the original seals still in place.

Brian