Originally Posted by
tinbum
I bought a tatty 97 on Friday, and this afternoon I got a chance to have a play with it. On the outside its not great, wear and speckling to the bluing, dings in the wood and an inexpertly fitted adjustable butt pad.
I opened it up to the usual sight of excessive grease, poorly finished spring and badly fitting rear guide.
I heated and finished the spring, degreased everything, polished the piston and fitted a 8mm short stroke extension and new HW seal. A snug set of guides were made for the spring, and finally I opened the TP out to 3.9mm to improve the SCR.
I fired a few test shots and it felt nice, but underpowered. Refinishing the spring must've taken too much out of it. Bum!
Ran it over the chrono to be sure and.... 13.6!!! Oops! 1 1/2 coils off, refinished and 11.1 ft/lb. and when I say 11.1 I mean 11.1! I was getting variation of less than 1fps for 80% of the shots.
Now I have a 97 that shoots superbly, but looks terrible.
The temptation is to get it blacked and buy a custom stock, but by the time I've done that I could buy a new one. The wise thing to do would be keep it as is, but what fun would that be?