First experience with a Marauder

[JimC]

..............And I humbly apologize for offending Jim in his own house. Loyalty is nothing to be ashamed of, but we each arrive there by different means. I'd love to shoot with you Jim and see what the Marauder should do. As I'm not going to be a Marauder owner, I don't want anyone to think that I'm going to come here just to bait the regulars. I will be reading and learning as much as I can though, and I genuinely hope that the Marauder finally achieves it's potential. Soon.

Skeptic I think you have completely misinterpreted my post. I believe I said you ARE AN EXPERIENCED SHOOTER and from your posts you are quite capable. It is from this perspective that I completely agreed with your frustrations. If I had ended up with the two rifles you have I would have had the exact same reaction. Actually I would have already purchased the AA410 by now.

If Pomona Air would have had an AA410 in stock when I called, I wouldn't even be here. I took a chance buying the Marauder because my research seemed to indicate they were pretty accurate but had their share of lemons. This is why I purchased the MAC1 version of the rifle. For about $100 extra I believed it upped my odds of getting an accurate rifle by quite a bit. More importantly, Tim would make the rifle right if I did get a lemon. I considered the MAC1 tune cost insurance. I did not even find out about Greg Davis until after I purchased my Marauder but even if I had known of his service I would not have waited 3-4 months for the rifle. Like you I was lead to believe that the Marauder was JUST as accurate as many of the Euro Air Rifles. What I failed to figure out was that SOME of the Marauders were just as accurate as their Euro cousins, but with enough work most could be. For many of the people who buy the Marauder a 2 inch group at 50 yds IS EXTREMELY ACCURATE. There is a group of Marauder owners who are not happy with a 1/2 inch 50 yard group, I know you are one of them. I don't own a rifle that is not sub MOA when shot by me. I suspect my air rifles will follow suit. I look at my Marauder as a work in progress. It is just accurate enough for me to keep, so now I will learn the art of fine tuning a PCP rifle, just like I learned the art of developing hand loads for my rifles.

What I find most troubling about your experience is that you would get a second rifle no more accurate than the first. How did your supplier determine that the second rifle was accurate? Did thay actually fire a few groups with the it? If so you would think their results would be repeatable. I can't imagine that both rifles would be damaged in transit.

I would love to meet you and would be happy to shoot with you anytime, I'm sure I could learn quite a bit. If nothing else I'd love to see some of the air rifles you mentioned in the flesh. I would love to get together at one local ranges for a fun air rifle day with members of this forum. I got into air rifles because I thought it would be an inexpensive way to practice my rifle skills. The practice part is right on; somehow the inexpensive part is not working out as planned.

I apologize if somehow I offended you, because that was not my intention.

Jim in Sacramento

[REARSPROCKET]

[Informed Skeptic]

Jim C:
I apologize again for obviously misreading your earlier post. Imagine the frustration of getting something you have waited almost two months for, only to have it fail miserably, twice. I guess this thing has me at the end of my rope.

The shop I'm working with is quite a distance away from Sacramento and they have been working closely with Crosman engineers to figure out exactly what the cause could be. The guess is that the stock is not playing nicely with the action due to ambient environmental factors such as humidity and resident elevation. They are a mile and half high and I am at a few feet above sea level. The shop tested my first rifle, out of the stock and in a vise, and they say it's shooting great. They put the action back in the stock and groups stayed tight. The second, and for now the last, rifle is on it's way as of 6 hours ago. They will test this one the same and forward their results to Crosman.

I trust the shop to act in the best interest of their name first, and the customer second. By that I mean, the chance these guys are going to keep sending poorly performing air rifles out is slim because the air gun community can be pretty tight and word spreads fast. The satisfaction of the customer comes as a by product of integrity and this shop went the extra mile to represent themselves by sending a rifle they put their hands on. The performance of the two Marauders does not relate in any way to the practices, ethics, or personalities involved with this shop. Like I told them today, I believe that the Marauder is a freight train and although the complaints keep rolling in and problems keep surfacing, the lag time to get a fix and implement the fix is too long to hit the market fast enough to curb experiences like mine. I was VERY reluctant to send the second rifle off, but it was clear that something is very wrong with the last couple of shipments that came in to the shop and I will say now that I believe I WILL own a Marauder again. Maybe later than sooner, but eventually. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the Professionals at the shop and will do my best to give them my business in the future and to encourage others to do so also. Great guys, beginning to end.

The fact that I am still attached to rifle irks me as I still think that I should have and could have found a solution. But 5"-8" groups show a wide gap between maybe and never.

REARSPROCKET:
I remember reading your thread when it appeared on the yellow re: your GD Marauder. Like Jim said, the option of a Professional like Mr. McMurray or Mr. Davis wringing the kinks out a rifle is worth the premium paid in both time and money. I don't have that option right now. I don't give up easily and I would love to have the opportunity to lap the barrel, polish the lead in, have the barrel recrowned, and then test again. And those are all things that I could do myself. Shooting a dozen different pellets might help, but, like I said earlier, the money that I spend on pellets would be over budget if I had to buy Double Golds, Boxed Premiers and the like. I shoot a couple other rifles and they all like JSBs. Having one or two pellets in only two different weights makes buying and shooting much easier for me. "Pellet fussy" rifles are not new to me, but I've been lucky, apparently, with just one pellet.

This experience cost me a couple of good shooting days, a couple of tins, and more than a few magazines worth of shots that should have been hits. Too much frustration and a lot of effort have made me look for an easier way. I wish for Crosman all the luck and I'll congratulate them on getting REALLY close to a superb rifle. When the Marauder gets on track it WILL be the eminent PCP among rifles costing much more.

[oletom]

I just received a new maurader and am also finding it hard to get 1" groups....after much tuning the spring i finally ended up at 6turns clockwise with the 1/4" wrench and o turns with the 1/8" wrench and I can get a decent group 3/4" @ 35yds. using the H&N baracuda 21.1 pellet, crony at 775-790....I spent 1 box of cp's at 900fps + but culd not get any grouping better than 4"....finally got the cp's to group but only at the 750- 825fps settings....after reading hundreds of postings I really expected to have a more accurate rifle but I guess I will be satisfied with what I have for the time being...

[REARSPROCKET]

[Supercharged86]

Hi Oletom, Welcome to the forum, sorry your first post had to be on the down side. For some reason these rifles are very finicky when it comes to pellet choice. So barring anything that looks obviously wrong, scope included, it will unfortunately require trying a good half dozen or so pellets until you find one she really likes. And like you have been doing, it will require trying them at different velocities, so start high and end low and see if they begin grouping better as you go along. Worry about finding the optimum veloctiy vs. accuracy setting first then you can go back and tune around that velocity to achieve the best fill pressure vs. shot string setting.

I have had really good luck with the Eunjin 16.1 and the Crosman Premier Heavy 10.5, but only get marginal results with the Beeman Silver Arrow 11.6 and Crosman Premier Supermatch 7.9. It really hates the Crosman Premier Superpoint 7.9! I'm still waiting for some H&N and Predator pellets to show up to try. Everybody gets good and bad results, so don't get discouraged yet, although we all know how you feel. You'll find the right combination. Cheers. Steve

[Informed Skeptic]

I wanted to post last night, but there's no hurry with this. Because I wanted to see how easy and responsive the Marauder was to tweaking it's many adjustments, I went through almost a hundred shots through the chronograph at half turn increments of the velocity adjustment screw. I believe that I was using a 2700 fill psi and ended up at about four turns out on the velocity screw. I remember that JSB 18.1s were at an average FPS that gave me about 28 FPE. I can't remember exactly though. ~800+ FPs or close. I was now shooting about 100 FPS faster than before, yet the groups were still ~5" at 15 yards.

Anyway, throughout the chrono testing the rifle proved very consistent. Ten shots strings showed an SD in low single digits with ES pretty tight also. The most interesting part though was retrieving the pellets from the trap. I was shooting through a cardboard box into loosely packed and folded newspaper. None of the pellets I retrieved, (approx. 100), showed rifling engraving. I know that the barrel is supposed to be choked and the JSBs are 5.52 head size. There wasn't any substantial engraving on the skirts either.

Holes in the 1/4" plywood at 14 yards were clean and didn't conclusively show tumbling of the pellet. And part of the chrono test was with the action out of the stock.

What should we make of this?

[oletom]

baracuda's I have are from PA and looks to be 5.51 head dia. will be ordering some jsb 18.1 today....also need to get the tank topped off I'm down to 2700 psi......thanks guys

[REARSPROCKET]

[Informed Skeptic]

Thanks REARSPROCKET, you've been helpful and encouraging and I appreciate that.

I did adjust the spring, but because the documentation with the rifle states that the rifle is set for a fill psi of 2500-2700 and my shop reiterated that fact, I left it largely alone. In fact, for the second rifle, I spent more time tweaking and experimenting with the velocity and hammer adjustments than the first. But, like I said before, I ran the gamut from low to high, in regards to both velocity and fill pressure, and nothing improved accuracy. Keep in mind that I tried 6 different pellets.

During chrono testing with the second rifle I would shoot two mags, then refill to 2700 psi. Adjustments were made between every three shots or so at the end of my testing. Chrono numbers and fill pressures become easier to read with experience and having an educated guess as to what to expect. I should have slugged the barrel before sending the second rifle back as I would have a better understanding as to why the JSBs showed no rifling.

What is the head size of the Crosman Premier brown box pellet? Has anyone slugged one of these through the Marauder barrel?