Canadian Airgun Forum

I have two Crosman 38T. My .177 has a nice black finish and was in a nicer shape than my .22 so when it leaked a few years ago it was resealed with a kit from the forum store.



In the case of the .22, since the finish was very damaged, the revolver received a glass beading treatment and was resealed using o-rings from a Princess Auto kit.



As expected, when I tried them a couple of weeks ago, the .177 worked fine but the .22 (which, in fact, had been resealed several years before the .177) exhausted all the CO2 through the barrel in a few seconds.

Since I have successfully made a new valve stem/poppet or a valve seat for a few of my airguns (Ampell Acro1 plus two Crosman 622 and two Mark1), I decided to do the same for this 38T.

At least for this model, a lot of information exists on the Internet plus I also have the service manual. Nevertheless I just disassembled the minimum to access the valve/piercing assembly and installed new o-rings.

The Crosman 38T valve doesn’t have the seal material on the stem as a lot of other models. It is a separate part that sits on the brass seat which also has a #06 o-ring.

After making the Delrin replacement seal I went through the same process of heating it with my heat gun and smacking it with a hammer. This time again, I discovered that the seal grew slightly bigger. Since I didn’t want to file it down by hand like I did for the Ampell Acro1, I made a jig to hold it in the chuck of my lathe to machine the diameter down.



I reassembled everything with a thin coat of silicone grease only to discover that I should also have added a few drops of Pellgun oil too. After pressurizing it, I had a slow leak.

This meant another quick disassembly, the addition of Pellgun oil and reassembly. This time it worked.

For some reason, the Crosman 622 pump action rifles didn’t require any smacking to seat the valve stem seal and it seems that the silicone grease was enough by itself but for the other repairs the addition of the Pellgun oil was necessary so I making a note that I shouldn’t forget it.

Before wrapping up, I want to add that some people mentioned that reinstalling the pellet loader spring (38A083) was a pain. I experienced the same issue in my previous work on the 38T but this time I noticed that the procedure was indicated in the service manual.

It is simply installed last after all the parts are reassembled. One end is inserted in the slot behind the plastic loader, controlling the loose end with the fingers, a flat blade small screwdriver tip is placed between two coils to compress the spring until it could be pushed in the cavity and released under the loader. It worked very well for me so I hope it could be a useful tip to others.

R-Gun Pete