Canadian Airgun Forum

As I understand it, the Hatsan (Ebay source) brand makes gas rams which allow you to adjust the pressure of the nitrogen in the ram.
The seller says they have shipped to Canada, but they don't explicitly suggest the product will make it past Customs.
I'd love to try one, though I would have to buy a different airgun to fit it into, I assume. I've been lucky ordering drop-in or near-drop-in gas rams of varying pressures (60kg 'BT9M22 type' gas ram upgrade I installed to replace my Crosman F11's 'BT5M22' gas ram) - everything thus far has consistently attained FPS well within Canadian limits - with only one fluke personal-record-setting shot of 496 FPS with a 14.3 gr Crosman pellet. As I've stated carefully - my intentions are to improve the consistent pellet velocity to within 10 FPS of the CDN limit of 500 - not beyond.
Consistency has been bad - on any given attempt, I can't count on a 14.3 gr pellet being faster than 450 FPS. After 10-15 shots, I'll see FPS drop 10-20 FPS then maintain that. I paid for 495 FPS, I'm going to mod this airgun til I get reliably within 10 FPS of it.

As I await a second replacement gas ram to replace the 60kg replacement, a 70kg gas ram, I'm led to believe it's no more powerful at all. It's actually shorter (body 4mm shorter, ram 2mm shorter), but I'm still advised it's a drop-in fit for my Crosman F11. It might be meant to have a shorter compression, so I can't just assume Shimming it on both ends to bring the position of the gas ram to match the one it's replacing. Nor can I assume a healthy pre-load on the 70kg ram match the 60kg one either.

I've got three questions on this topic if anyone has the time to answer. Hoping to become a good source of data & experience here myself so I can give back to this community. Until then, I'm a literal gas ram stuffed with 60-70kg of questions.

1. Where is the data that defines a gas ram's stroke-depth & expected FPS for any given Crosman piston? I know what the ideals are for the a gas ram with a 110mm shaft & 150mm body (Crosman F11's BT5M22 ram & the older, more powerful BT9M22) since I tested them exhaustively....but the gas ram for a Benjamin NP2 (108mm ram & 146mm body) might require a completely different ideal position in the piston, shim-limit & stroke length.
e.g., Should I pre-shim the upcoming shorter, 70kg gas ram so it's sitting exactly like the 60kg one was in the piston before I proceed to shimming it for pre-load? Should I instead try to shim the rear chamber cap so the ram is pre-loaded to cover the 2 fewer mm's of the shaft? A gas ram's ideal position & shim preloads for either/both ends could be forcing me to start over & it's SO much disassembly/reassembly.

2. The difference between the BT5M22 (stock gas ram for the Crossman F11) and the generic-brand replacement BT9M22 (older, more powerful gas ram that relied on relief holes in the pistons to reduce FPS) - there's definitely a difference - the BT9M22 is louder & definitely hits the intake port harder, the FPS has been improved - but not beyond the CDN limit. Do I have any reason to suspect a 70kg piston will increase FPS over one with 60kg, if all else were equal? What about 80kg? 90kg?

3. If I wanted to order a 'Vortex' type gas ram that simply gives me the OPTION of increasing the kg of pressure but by default only puts out ~50kg or something anemic like that, is this something that Canadians without PALs have been able to source? Would one of those $55 kits really be all I need to pre-load these gas rams to my liking? I'm not looking to wreck any air guns, I just want to capitalize on the availability of self-determinate pressure configs. If there is an issue with getting these through CDN customs but they're still legal to sell privately between Canadian adults, is there anyone who'd like to sell me theirs? I'm implying a legal, private purchase of a Vortex-like design that does NOT exceed CDN restrictions on FPS but would allow a good range of pressure tolerances for my future experiments.


Thanks so much again, as ever!

James

The Hatsan Gas Ram has an end on it just like the end cap of the Crosman tube. I don't know and have not found the diameter of the cap. The cap is threaded for the purpose of possibly repairing it or just for ease of manufacturing.

A 60 kg Ram in Crosman sends a pellet in the 750 fps range in .22 and close to 900 fps in the .177. in my guns. Crosman/ Benjamin has/had an XL line of guns that came with a longer ram it started with 1500. I think that would be considered a magnium gun. You could make a gas ram with higher pressures but it would become unusable.

Crosman sells a .22 vital shot that is full power for around $129.00 at D&L and $99 in Quebec

PCP have filled the spot for high power.

Robert

The gas ram for the HW90 is adjustable, as well. Maybe a supplier could get this part. Will it fit - who knows?

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl

Hey thanks Robert

I think it's finally making sense to me now - it's the piston itself, not the gas rams, keeping me at around ~460 fps. There's an old YouTube that showed the Crosman Phantom getting the same performance as my Crosman F11 stock (~430 FPS with 13.12 gr pellets), 'til he JBWelds the bleed hole & reported ~680 fps. A woman with a .177 version of the Phantom reported up to 900 fps on that mod. My piston has no bleed hole but looks almost identical - though there's no way I can compare them, there are no specs in the owner's manuals or parts explosion graphs. I've got to dig around on forums, bothering people about each individual part.
I looked at the pistons in those old, grainy, poorly-lit videos & thought they looked the same, so despite there being 150mm, 170mm and 190mm pistons - I thought mine was a newer version using the same piston but the wrong gas ram. These YouTube vids were so old & bad, the backup Camera on my 2016 Subaru is of better quality, lol. Either you or Daryl helped me with this topic a while ago, back when I thought gas rams were pistons.

RANT:
I looked up owner's manuals on the Crosman USA site because the Crosman Canada site is, well, it shouldn't be legal to have a site that bad. My airgun (7-CF11NP-SX) doesn't exist on Crosman.com, and only the full airgun is listed (out of stock of course) on the Canadian site. No owner's manual, not a single helpful shred of info, just the lie that it's 495 FPS. When I get my PAL, there is no way I'll ever buy another Crosman product - I just can't justify it. A brand that puts that much effort into preventing customers from finding any details about their products ...ugh, pardon the rant, I used to make practice websites like Crosman.ca - in community college, in 1998. They should be ashamed of themselves. Even the American site is very poorly laid out & their indexing is totally inaccurate. At least it fails quickly! Each page takes a full 10 seconds to load on Crosman.ca. If you want a image or even a vague measurement on the product you're ordering, forget it.
END RANT

So, what I'm going to try next - I'm getting the piston for the .22 cal Benjamin Trail (also used on Phantom models). Very similar to the gas ram model # pattern: BT9M22-03-100A. To my utter shock, the Canadian Crosman site showed it in stock. I'd roll the dice on ordering it on Ebay, but thought I'd humor Crosman. I have my doubts.
The 70kg gas ram I ordered from Ebay is a clone for the Benjamin NP2, and I already have the 60kg gas ram meant for the 'BT9M22-03-00' piston I just ordered, which works in the F11 piston - just not impressively:

BT9M22-03-00 : Piston / Seal Assembly Replaces BT9M22-03-100A
($37.65 CDN)

If it even fits into my F11 lengthwise & the trigger/cocking still work properly, this could be the solution. Even with the original wimpy gas ram, using it in a proper piston can still get the performance I'm looking for. A spot of JBWeld, a 70kg piston, my quest for promised 495 FPS could be on the horizon!

Once I get the correct recipe for modding the F11 so it gets the advertised FPS, I'm gonna share the whole process on YouTube & save people who own an F11 endless time & money by modding the promised 495 FPS. I thought for sure I'd end up with something too powerful by now, but I'm safely within the restrictions.
If the piston replacement doesn't work, I'm take it apart & throw it out. I'll wait til my PAL gives me permission to get something serious. The PCP tech seems to be a better investment for high power airguns, thanks for the suggestion!

I saw it, it actually looks like it would fit - but I'm doing one last attempt at replacing the piston instead in this vague assembly of parts called the F11 before I either celebrate acceptable FPS or take it apart in a tantrum & throw it out. Maybe I'll put my gas rams in my LazyBoy chair!
I'm for sure switching brands when I get my PAL. Like I was just ranting about in my other post, Crosman's Canadian site is a clear signal they have no interest in our market. The PAL is gonna present options that I won't be bothering you guys 24/7 just to eke out a simple 495 fps. I'm lurched past the 'fun' part of modding & I'm even annoying myself with all these questions!

Thanks, Daryl, looking forward to sending some pellets through plywood one of these days!

- James

Of course, a pump and a PP700 pistol would get you your 495fps - easy-peazy, in .22 as well. Mine runs 408fps with a 21.3gr. pellet & shoots sub 1" at 20 yards
with a red dot sight.

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl

That is one cool looking pistol! Getting 495 out of a pistol with .22 cal is quite a feat! Glad it's got that huge barrel. I might get into the pump guns now, since compressed air/gas makes so much sense for what we want. I had no idea non-PAL consumers had legal access to these - something with tech that allows the user to define the pressure.
My intent, as far as my involvement in (& respect for) this forum, is getting performance within CDN restrictions. With the tech involved in paintball & PCP pellet pistols colliding, I can see why that's an open wound for RCMP. An open market on consumer-defined power just seems inevitable. As long as there are La-Z-Boy chairs, nitro pistons will be legal, as long as compressed air is a thing, PCP rifles/pistols will be obtainable. It's unfair to say it, but there's a huge difference between myself & an 18yr old regarding access to powerful airguns. It's not age, it's life experience, maturity & temperament. Impossible to legislate that, so I'm not foolish enough to think these rules are meant to be broken.

The people I know with guns:

I know guys in their 40's & 50's, all Canadians, who have their restricted license & I visit them once in a while, most are simply NOT careful in their storage of their guns. My friend has a chinese A.K. on his gun rack, a .357 python near his TV remote, shotgun in the corner like it's a pair of winter boots. Bet you anything it had a shell in the breech.

I know another, who served in the Canadian military in Afghanistan, with 5 AR-15's. He's got a few pistols, mostly SigSauers, which I've never tried before but I find them a bit fugly. I think all of his are 9mm, not sure. He's a man of character, with a wife & 2 kids & he's responsible in that his firearms are all locked & unloaded. That said, he's got multiple full-capacity mags hidden away for both his rifles and pistols. A place I'd approach very slowly if the dollar ever collapsed, lol.
Most guys who owned long mags before the ban on 4-rounds-per-mag rifle limits & 10rnd pistol limits, just hid them. So that's one man with 5 AR-15's. He's got no respect for gun control efforts, though. I guess when you're shot at in Afghanistan, your sense of "what could happen" is heightened. It's legal to be paranoid, legal to disagree with the restrictions, but I'm sure he knows that unlike some American couch-Rambos, if RCMP come to get your guns, they're gonna get your guns.

It's more lax here in Atlantic Canada than I thought it would be - or rather than the resttricted licensing would have you believe. I was told that with a restricted license, the RCMP can do a warrant-free inspection of your premises & vehicle at random. I asked these guys if that ever happened to them, and one guy, who ran a bootlegger-type establishment, said he had one of those inspections & when they saw his unloaded .38 revolver lying on his bedside table, they told him to lock it, asked him who was living there, if anyone new had a key to his place, etc - but that was it. No fine. That was in the early 90s though.

Another guy I knew, a range officer who passed about 12yrs ago (I worked with his son), let us shoot almost all his guns at the range, including a full-auto MP40. He was a gunsmith. Full-auto is illegal everywhere in Canada, and when he died, that's the first thing his son had to let the RCMP "disable". It came from WW2 so it's a collectible. My uncle might/might not own a Luger that my grandfather & my great-uncle took from a nazi they deleted in France. I shot it back in the mid-80s, it was a unreliable as it was rumored to be.

A guy who strutted around the outdoor range like he was an obese Commando (Commandough?) from the 1700's would bring his musket & 2 percussion pistols. He had special holsters for them. That was a guy with a serious ego problem, TBH, but he let us shoot his guns. He was there to make a scene, but I shouldn't crap on him, he was generous enough to let me try his guns. He let me shoot the scariest gun I ever fired, his percussion pistol. Putting vaseline over the wax-filled chamber so the others didn't ignite, it was a big deal to load these. The kick is incredible - the 44 mag & the colt .45 had NOTHING on this, the ground beneath you gets sucked up your pantleg, lol! When that ball hits the dirt berm we're shooting at, you can split-second see the projectile - FPS do not matter. I'd rather be shot with ANYTHING else. A guy had a semi-auto "FIE Spaz" or something like that, which shot a single piece of metal rather than shotgun pellets - I forget the term. Even it didn't hit the sand like the percussion pistol. Second scariest, the musket. Same Commandough had a misfire while packing the powder down, while a guy was downrange - he was packing the powder with an aluminum stick, not the wooden one, and a spark happened. Guy on the range nearly filled his undies as he was propping up the metal targets. Powder went up, missed Commandough's hand luckily, but the sound of a musket is like no other gun. Even an outdoor range is no place for a gun like that. RCMP officer gave him a little talking-to about using the right stick next time.

Best gun I ever shot, though? Beretta 9mm. Especially after shooting all the novelty weapons & thrown-together pistols that would jam up after 4 shots. Even the silenced .40 Glock I shot in a Florida range, which was really quiet, didn't come close to the Ferrari-like feel of the Beretta. If I was in the pistol market, that's what I'd get - maybe a nice silver one. 9mm is enough for me & I'd like the option of getting accurate with a common round.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl

double Hmmmmmmmmm.

Now this has got me thinking, back in the day (ok 10 yrs ago) I was into gas rams. I bought a bunch form Dadco and still have them in my cabinet. And now come to realize I don't have a gas ram in my collection, although I do have some B18/19 carcasses that could be turned into something. The rams I have are adjustable - factory filled with N2 but can be hand pumped (or bled) to any pressure 0-3000 psi with free 80% N2. Maybe i'll join the fun..got nothing else to do ATM.

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Iacio, ergo sum

Duke can you post a picture of gas ram from the fill end you have.

Thanks
Robert

In the HW 90 the piston is the moving part and seal for the gas ram , the end cap of the rifle is the rod and charging port .It might be adaptable to another HW rifle with the same sized cylinder . ,I doubt it would work with most other rifles .

Saw that as well. It's similar in mechanism but like Daryl said, it's a mystery so that's enough to keep me from buying one on a whim. It's the self-determination of psi that interests me re: the HW90. Once I've suitably prepared my nitro piston airgun so I'm getting my legal money's worth, I might explore the PCP tech.

I'm enjoying playing with the nitro piston tech, though. It's so initially basic - gas rams with different velocities, optimal stroke depths, pushing a metallic sheath with a plastic cap on it, forcing air into a hole that allows the air to continue to the breech. This allows SO much interference in how that process works. My challenge has been, what makes a 1000fps airgun different from a 495fps, and what attributes from the faster one can I source to ensure 495fps?

1. Power of the gas ram itself (trying a 3rd one this week).
2. Range of the gas ram's stroke & how much, if any, pre-load is optimal (shimming)
3. Shape, length, overall design, material type & efficiency of the piston & its seal
4. Diameter, shape & length of the transfer port hole

Unless the F11 has a uniquely-designed compression chamber vs the American high-FPS models, my next effort will be to play a game of piston-Tetris by auditioning which will fit & still allow me to cock & fire. If I had access to all the precise measurements of the OEM & Ebay-sourced parts, I'd already know what fits & what doesn't. I might have to test and/or mod several pistons, maybe even other rifles - but I will hit the promised 495 fps (reliably 485-499 with 14.3gr pellets). It's become a quest!

If all the above fails to hit the 495, I'll explore some light intake port boring. I'll need to do my homework on whether the more modern intake ports are already bored out to maximize. I heard a dremel style bit is all you need, but you have to start out very small, like at most 3% & follow the existing port angle. Have metal files available to buff out any resulting sharp edges.

Sorry for the diatribes on my massive post above, it's annoying I know. I'm on this med called Vyvance for adult A.D.D. & I get urges to type too much when it peaks. I'll try to summarize my nonsense better, I know you guys have other things going on. Even this post is super long, but every time you guys give advice, I'm documenting it & it's saved me lots of money already. Any time it saved me has been used up by my typing, lol.

So much easier with the .25 FX Dreamline. Adjust the hammer spring, adjust the port size, adjust the regulator.
I left the hammer spring at almost max, adjusted the port to smallest:.177/.22 size, lowered the regulator from 140Bar
down to 100 bar and went from 44 shots on a fill, to 144 shots on a fill and must quieter for indoor shooting. I suspect I was still
running it in the 20 FPE range, but - a long lower than 55fpe it was before. Bug holes at 50' range.
Adjusting the hammer spring would have increased my shot count even higher.

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl

I'll send you some pics by PM.
I'm such a scatterbrain these days, I do in fact actually and for sure <edit> maybe have a Nitro Piston gun; you may ask "how could you forget?", but this is my life nowadays I often forget and it's getting scary. and to add insult to injury I was just in my parts bin and pulled out a BT9 Crosman piston which I believe came out of the shockwave. So I'll have to read my own thread and/or do some shooting to see if any I have are still NP.
topic90872.html

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Iacio, ergo sum