After 3 weeks of working with the 140, I'm beginning to arrive at some conclusions. Figured I'd better carry on with it here, as it's more nuts and bolts, than pictorial...

I like wood a lot on an airgun, especially a pumper. This 140 likes it's stock castle nut to be run up tight. It seems to make the gun more consistent that way. Pump pressure seems to run up faster with a tight stock nut.

The self cocking valve (take a hint blow-back pistols ) is pretty neat. Trigger pull on this gun seems to level out after 6 pumps. I can go 6 or 20, and the trigger weight is the same. It is heavy at 6 pumps, but not quite to the point of un-manage-ability. I learn to compensate, and get used to it. Getting a shot off takes a little longer than a hammer system, but like I said, we learn to compensate.

Gun was definitely not made for a delrin flat top piston. The one I had in there saw fairly light use, and rarely exceeded 5 pumps per shot. The length of the compression stroke is easily better than twice that of a 13-XX. No wonder the tube generates heat. At any rate, after 150 shots, that delrin piston was pretty burnt. I have a home made brass piston in there now. I had to pull a Bob Sterne and put an intake hole in the tube for the tighter-toleranced home made unit. It seems to be working well.

I've been doing a bit of reading, through a link provided on the other forum. Apparently, some later variants of this rifle had a bbl set screw through the top of the breech. Looking at my breech, there doesn't seem to be a lot of steel there. Perhaps these later variants had a heavier breech? Just wondering if this is something I should attempt... I still have it in the back of my mind to try and adapt a current SBK kit steel breech to this platform, among other things. According to the same source, the earliest variants of the 140 did not have the self-cocking valve. I wonder if that means a hammer and valve stem system?

Here's the link:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/27115892/C...rvice-Manual-1

The intermounts I have on it aren't the greatest, but for now, they work well enough for my purposes.

I think the thing I like the best about this rifle is that I simply cannot put it down

Regards,

Doc Sharptail