Every airsporter/mercury i've shot or owned has had poor feeling triggers, usually due to some berk winding in the adjuster screw till it locks(which makes the let off heavier) However they've all been perfectly adequate after adjusting & none needed tuning unlike every lightning i've had through my hands. The barrels could be a bit hit & miss in quality in bsa's of late 80's early 90's though especially in lightnings. My current challenger barrel matches my 50s hw for accuracy easily & to my surprise shoots most pellets very well indeed.
The HW's of the time beat the BSA in accuracy possibly because they weight 2KG more so soaked up the recoil!!
Great for paper punching or plinking but definitely need a sling for the field The HW were a pig to lug round all day, very accurate and well made but a pig never the less.
The BSA guns were lighter but less accurate (perhaps ?) . I have a Brum made BSA supersport. I only shoot out to 25 meters (hunt) and its as good as HW offerings for that and just as accurate , the safety is re settable and dosn't click loudly when released unlike the HW 's. It also diddnt eat the cylindfer when the cocking arm attacked it unlike my HW99s which did !
Recent HW offerings generally need a fettle to get the best accuracy out of them any way
Id say a old Super sports not too bad a gun
BSA barrels can be good, can be bad. They can be put in correct way round, or back to front. If you are lucky you can even find some pcp's with re blued barrels where the original s/n appear to have ben filed off () 'from' factory ! Some in right way round, some not !
Springer wise imo:
Superstar - Good
Airsporter RB s Good
Late Mercury's Good
Others - pants, ranging from a bit ropey, to shite, some design floored (over sprung from scratch for 12ftlb), others just piss poor QC
I like BSA, I have several of their pcp's. They are extremely pellet fussy in 177, and sometimes 22 too -
I think that getting a designer to design them was a great move after the springers, pity they didn't follow the designs more accurately or find better manufacturing compromises sometimes though -
Looking for TO-6 Trigger unit unmessed with or T0-6 kit for 34
Rob there are plenty of good BSA's out there and many will argue that 'less than optimal' is too broad a generalisation . Factory guns are always lacking something and less than optimal could apply to anything by any maker especially if you go down the road of custom tuning Springers and have only ever owned and shot with them first .
A 90's Airsporter RB2 , Lightning or Superstar or indeed Mercury are all fine guns . Custom tuning is great but ..not always a guarantee - once had me a tuned to death springer by a well known tuning shop - hardest thing to cock , underpower yet recoil seemed the same as my other same period kit .
Some rifles due to bore/stroke ratio's, transfer port length and diameter and piston weight coupled to seal design require excessive spring compression to produce the required velocities, end result is a stiff to cock snappy unpleasant rifle to shoot.
A prime example of this is the Mercury/Airsporter, short stroke with 28mm bore and huge preload along with an O ring seal!
To improve it you lighten the piston, discard the spacer, shorten the piston head by 6mm and machine it to accept a Diana 28mm seal, make up a top hat, new spring guide that is inset into the trigger block and add a rotary bearing on the spring guide to eliminate spring torque, then you find you can use a much softer spring to produce 11ftlbs with ease and end up with a far superior firing cycle, smooth and quick with little sight picture movement!
Quite right. There isn't or wasn't a BSA spring rifle that could live with an HW77, HW80 or HW35 never mind the Diana range or AA TX and PS series. The accuracy just isn't there nor a well engineered trigger or consistent build quality. They are mostly lovely to look at and to shoulder one is very easy like a fine side by side shotgun; the problems start when you try and hit small kill zones at 30 yards. I speak from personal experience, BSA spring piston rifles are barn yard guns, no more. Well that's my rose tinted spectacles firmly crushed
*Quick edit* Why was the Airsporter RB and Challenger rifles advertised with a 2 stage trigger when they clearly were not?
Last edited by derekj; 30-04-2017 at 02:02 PM.
I'm building another Meteor from gathered parts.
Wonder why I bother,the scrap man called round on thursday .
Just as a matter of interest but is this particular/specific BSA
http://bsaguns.co.uk/air-rifles/spri...-Tactical.aspx
Still made and readilly available and still is, (or always was), made in Birmingham.