Marauder .25 Synthetic 2

Benjamin Marauder .25 Cal New Synthetic – Take 2

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About this Video:

Our last look at the new Synthetic Marauder .25 Cal may have left us with more questions than answers. In this follow up video, we’re going to take a look at what you may need to do to get your .25 cal operating at optimal performance. The beauty of the Marauder rifles is that just about anyone with a chronograph, a handful of simple tools, and a dash of patience can tweak the stock configuration to perform to their needs. So let’s go ahead get started.

What you need:

Adjusting the Marauder rifles is a pretty easy affair. The most critical tool you are going to need is a chronograph. Without this critical piece of diagnostic equipment, you’ll have no way of knowing if your modifications are effective. Make sure you have one before you even start thinking about changing anything.

Before I start, let me tell you why I want to change my .25 cal Marauder in the first place. From the factory, this rifle did not really perform like I wanted. There was no power curve even with a full fill to 3000 psi. So each subsequent shot was slower than the previous shot with an extreme spread of just under 100 fps across 16 shots. That’s not going to make for an accurate gun.

There are 3 adjustments that are outlined in the user’s manual. The hammer tension, the pretension, and the flow valve. The easiest to adjust is the hammer tension. This is accessed by the rear of the gun using a 1/4″ allen wrench.

Now, having done this before with my old Marauders, I’m betting that all I really need to do, is reduce the hammer tension as I believe it is hitting the valve too hard and just wasting air. By reducing the hammer tension, you create a more balanced use of air, thereby creating a more consistent shot string. The trade-off is that you’ll also get less velocity. Personally, accuracy always trumps velocity as far as I’m concerned. And, I don’t just want my first 2 shots to be accurate, I also want shots 15 through 20 to be accurate too.

Before I started adjusting anything I got a baseline. My allen wrench is pretty large so I have to go in 1/2 turns. I counted 9.5 1/2 counter clockwise turns before I bottomed out the hammer spring to its least amount of pressure.

Next I started adding 1/2 turns back to the hammer spring. I started with 7, 1/2 turns and then shot a test string of 16 shots. The difference was dramatic. My extreme spread was reduced by nearly 400%. My average velocity dropped to 830, down from 877. While this looked really promising, I wanted to see what I could get if I turned it back one more 1/2 turn.

Here’s where I hit exactly what I knew this rifle could produce. My extreme spread across 16 shots was now down to only 20.8 fps. That’s close to a 450% improvement over the factory setting. Simply by taking 5 minutes and setting the hammer spring.

I’ve got my .25 Marauder performing in the shop just like I want. But before heading to the range I want to make sure that the barrel is clean and ready to go and I also adjusted the trigger a bit. It now breaks at very clean 1 pound 8 ounces.

I was hoping for a nice calm day, but instead I got some gusty cross winds. This is not at all what I wanted for my tests, but last time I checked we often have to hunt in less than ideal conditions, so I setup at 50 yards and double checked my scope. After a few shots I was ready to get going.

What I want to test is how consistently accurate our test rifle would be across say 2 magazines, without refilling between reload. This is really a stretch but that’s why we adjusted our Marauder in the first place.

The wind was gusting a bit during my first shot group and you can see that reflected on the target. Things calmed down a bit for the second set of shots. Again, I did not refill the air cylinder between groups so this is a pretty accurate example of what you could get from 2 full mags at 50 yards in less than ideal conditions.

So here we are wrapping up part 2 of the new .25 cal Synthetic Marauder. It’s pretty obvious to me that this is one amazing airgun. 5 to 10 minutes of bench time yielded some really amazing results on the range.

There are more expensive and more powerful specialty airguns on the market, but if you’re an average everyday shooter, looking for an above average rifle with tremendous flexibility and ease of use, then then new Marauder needs to be on your short list of options.

Man it’s a great time to be an airgunner! 

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