Want to fit a silencer adapter to a Mk 5 Meteor or BSA Scorpion Pistol?

Just out of interest (it being Sunday and me being at a loose end) I measured the diameter of the barrels on my Mk5 Meteors and one of my BSA Scorpion pistols (the .177 one). As follows ...

Scorpion Pistol .... 15.5mm
Mk5 Meteor ......... 15.7mm

also my Mk2 Webley Vulcan in .177 ..... 14.75mm

The idea was to put a silencer on the .177 Meteor but in all honesty it would make it a bit long. Might finally get around to taking the piss-awful Webley Pro-System off the Vulcan and put a decent silencer on. It will involve cutting off the aluminium tube that's crushed onto the barrel from the internals of the silencer. I gas-rammed the Vulcan a couple of years ago and it's up there on the 12ft/lbs limit and does pop a bit without some moderation.

UPDATE - 9th June 2011



this is the tasty Webley Pro-System silencer ..


This is a later pic of the gun ..

Turns out that the tube that's crushed onto the end of the Vulcan barrel is actually steel not ally, and on closer inspection my guess it was heated up and shrunk on .. bit of a permanant fixture. Also it's noted that at some point between the gun leaving Brum and arriving at me (via North-West England which is where I bought it from) it lost about 4 inches off the barrel through some fairly injudicious use of a hacksaw and file. The gun shoots as straight as anything so whoever did it was either really lucky or they re-crowned the barrel. I've had a good look and it doesn't appear to have been crowned, but I'm not going to do anything about it on the basis that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I tried some Birchwood Casey Super Blue on the offending part and it's now matched to the rest of the barrel making the business end actually 15.95mm in diameter. Plan is to get one of those 16mm - 1/2UNF brass adapters off ebay and put a Weihrauch moderator on that's currently sat on the bulked AS2250X Crosman and getting bugger all use.

So it would seem I'm ending up putting a decent silencer on the Vulcan rather than on the old .177 Meteor. That's my life that is .. start off doing one thing and end up doing something else.

An email received and responded to ..

I got an email from a guy named George with some questions .. my responses are in bold/italic ...

"Hi George!

Hope you don't mind me emailing you, found your detailed blog about doing up a meteor or two and thought you might be able to advise me. – If I can help

I'm working on what I think is a mark 3.

I've put in standard spring, polished everything, relubed and put back together. – Good start!

Was putting out a measly 1.5 ft pound! I know what you mean .. frustrating.

Sorted out breech seal. – was the old one like crumbly cheese?

Now measly 3.4... Getting better though!

Will it make much difference replacing buffer washer and o ring do you think, they seem in reasonable nick? – It’s funny, you really can’t tell by looking at them. It’s possible the internal face of the cylinder is worn, and the O ring (this provides the gas seal in the cylinder) is not seating as snugly as it should. I had this problem on the .177 Mk5 I did up. I put some PTFE plumbers tape in the groove under the O ring on the piston head .. I cut the tape to half its width and wound it round twice as tight as I could get it without it snapping. Covered it with silicone oil, put the new O ring on, wiped off the excess and gently rebuilt the gun – be really careful not to damage the new O ring as the edges of the cylinder that you need to get it past can be razor sharp. It should be a sliding fit .. not so loose you can move it easily by hand, but not so tight you need to really force the piston ... hard to describe, but you’ll know when it’s right.

Could I have over polished piston so that it is letting air past? No, the piston doesn’t provide a gas seal, the O ring on the piston head does

I've spent a bit of time doing up the gun and want to get the power up to 9 any ideas what the problem could be? Gas seal .. O ring ..

I think I'll take it apart again and try pushing the piston covering the port to see if there is a leak. .. this will tell you that it’s losing air somewhere but it won’t tell you where .... Also maybe new buffer washer and oring and soak in silicon gun oil as you suggest which I didn't do before. ... this should do it

As an aside I've stripped all the parts back to bare metal (polished with gun stock wax which stops them rusting) which looks pretty cool - bluing was poor, used rust remover to remove it all. Sounds good, although it’d make it a bit visible to pigeons and squirrels!

As for the loose jaws, I think you mentioned using a drill bit? .. I did, don’t ask me what size. The best fix was to use a spring pin though.

What I did was tapped threads into the original pin at both ends and shortened it by a mil or two at each end so you can then use flat headed bolts into the pin on either side which pulls the jaws together as you tighten them, making it as tight as the ducks end you mentioned. .. sounds like a proper solution to me!

Any tips on upping power would be appreciated... .... it sounds to me like you’ve made a really good start. From what you say I reckon the issue is the gas seal provided by the O ring. There seems to be no hard & fast way to sort this beyond a little trial and error. I think I rebuilt the .22 Mk5 about seven times before I was happy with it, and the .177 was a bit more straightforward.



Thanks for getting in touch. I’m certainly not an expert, more of an enthusiastic amateur

Lee "

Meteor Mk5 in .22 ... do I pick 'em or what?

bought an old Mk5 Meteor from another member of an air rifle forum I belong to in March 2010. Got it and wished I hadn't bothered. From the pellet jammed 3/4 along the barrel that had obviously been there a good while, to the 1" side-to-side play at the end of the barrel, through to the ox spring jammed in (don't even think it was the right spring for the gun) and the total lack of sear release. Oh dear. Nice wood though, and the enamel in the barrel & cylinder are ok-ish Isn't it funny how none of this had been mentioned in the ad for the gun .. either the seller was blind, clueless or greedy. Buyer beware I suppose, although there is such a thing as lying by omission.

Took ten minutes to calm down. Big deep breath. Stripped the gun without even attempting to fire it. I though it safer not to try without further investigations.

Tapped out the pellet from the barrel with a cleaning rod, ran a brush through the barrel and then ran a .22 boresnake through with some bore cleaner. Came up bright & shiny - rifling is perfect and no sign of rot. Barrel seal was cheese & was cleaned out with the blunt end of a 2mm drill and a pin.

Took the cylinder/action apart ... spring compressor actually ran out of room which leads me to think the square section ox (?) spring someone had hoiked in there was wrong for all sorts of reasons. Piston ok, inside of the cylinder ok too, just a bit dirty. Piston head a bit battered but servicable when polished, O ring ok too, but buffer washer a bit beyond help.

Ordered some new bits from T C Chambers .. their usual prompt service was up to scratch and the parts arrived this morning. While waiting over the past couple of days I spent a bit of time tidying up the cosmetics, and had a gentle go at sorting out the barrel wobble. It's better but not resolved and I don't think it ever will be totally sorted. Cleaned & degreased everything, rebuilt the trigger set and took 3 turns off the spring just to see if it would help. Fitted a thin sleeve in the piston (made out of a 'Relentless' energy drink can bought for the purpose .. don't think I'd ever drink that crap, but nice to know the cans have a use ... ). Smoother, but I don't think that square section springs are good for anything in particular. Have ordered a standard spring from Chambers, don't mind the reduced power at all. Better to hit what I aim at than have an unpredicatable gun.

Put the new seals in and rebuilt the gun. Trigger in the gun is a nightmare to set up from scratch .. initially the sear would not release, even with a fair amount of adjustment it was still locked up. Bit more adjustment and it wouldn't stay cocked .. got it working now, but maybe the new standard spring I have on order may improve matters, but I actually think that I'll need to polish the sears a bit and fanny about a bit with the trigger set up. It's all about the fine tuning I suppose. Don't really want to replace the trigger throughout as well.

Gun now fires fine and seems pretty tight. Clearly well below 12 ft/lbs but it's a Meteor I think I'll need to source some open sights as this particular part of Birmingham's history is never (in a month of sunday's) going to zero with a scope .. not with the ongoing barrel wobble. Still be useful & fun gun to use for vermin in barns and back garden plinking I think.

LATER ...

well, I fitted the new spring from Chambers (MS024) having lubed & set up the internals properly, re-tapped the front mounting holes for the stock in order to rebuild with black M5 allen bolts as the original screws were long gone having been replaced with some crap M5 machine screws that had been forced in and that were too short anyway. Reset the trigger release put it all back in the woodwork and set up a rough sight on the front & rear using electrical tape. I've now managed to secure a full set of sights from an Airsporter Mk6 for free (same sights as Mk5 Meteor had as standard at new), so I'll try it out properly when the sights arrive and the world thaws out.

Test fired 20 pellets at 10 yards into a target/steel pellet trap using Bisley Long Range Golds. Raggy hole in the paper, and judging by the state of the flattened pellets in the trap I roughly reckon it's doing between 8-9 ft/lbs which would be right for the gun. I appreciate as a test it's not that exact, but my Scorpion pistol damages the same pellets less at 10 yards and that chrono's at 5.72 ft/lbs, Webley Longbow SE vaporises them and that does 11.89 ft/lbs with the same LRGs. Meteor is much smoother with the round section spring fitted, acceptable recoil and not too lumpy on the trigger. . Should settle down a little bit more too I reckon.

Next job is to restore the wood - strip old varnish, light stain and oiled finish I think. Looks like there might be some nice figure in the wood on the forend. When it's all done I'll post a photo - should have taken some as I went along. Never mind.

Serial number is TH50866. Places it as a Mk5 from about 1980? Might just see another 30 years now! Should be a nice light rifle for bimbling through the woods this summer - bit quieter than my .410 shottie anyway .

LATER AGAIN ...

Finally got the Meteor to a place where I'm happy to shoot it. I did refinish the stock, but tried to give it a patina that was sympathetic to the gun's age and overall condition rather than trying to make it like new again. Used a darker stain than normal and applied 6 coats of Danish oil. Finish is good & durable and I think it matches the gun. The gun now looks like a 30 year old gun that's been cared for with a couple of updates to strengthen things up. Wouldn't make sense to me to try to make it mint.

Full list of work done;

- Cleared blocked barrel, full internal clean of bore
- Strip and full clean, inside & out
- Renewed all internal/barrel seals
- Re-blued rusted/worn external areas on barrel and cylinder, and other visible bits as required (eg. hinge pin ends, etc.)
- Polished all internal parts as required
- Fitted new main spring to original spec & re-tooled original spring guide end to produce a thinner double layered bearing to stop spring grinding on cocking.
- Fitted thin tin sleeve inside piston to reduce friction/noise
- Relubed internals as required,
- Polished piston head face and fitted new buffer washer
- Light polish on sears and reset trigger to usable breaking point
- Re-tapped front mounting holes to take new M5 machine screws .. also fitted countersunk brass collets into the mounting holes on the stock to take the strain off the woodwork.
- Fitted over long bolts and filed to length in situ so they fill the available thread.
- Cleaned and re-blued.
- Re-tapped rear mounting bolt hole to take M5 cap head bolt replacing original screwhead (badly chewed)
- Rubbed down & re-blued trigger guard
- Refinished stock to my liking.
- Obtained a set of original die-cast Airsporter sights for free ( ), stripped, cleaned & rebuilt them.
- Resprayed front sight in matt black to aid sighting.
- Used better screw to mount front sights as original was mashed.

Gun is now all set for the future. It's all as tight as a duck's chuff, shoots nicely and hits consistently on the open sights at 25 yards - good enough for what I'll use it for. Cost to me has been £54 in total, but only because I got the sights for free. It won't win the 'most original Mk5 in show' but it will hold together and get a lot of use.

latest ..

cured the barrel wobble by fitting a slightly oversize hinge pin made from the shank of a drill found in my 'crap' box. Won't bore you with the details, suffice to say that I found out again how hard drill bits are to push a junior hacksaw through,

Barrel is now rock solid. Go figure!

The saga continues ... having sorted the barrel wobble and had a bit of fun with the open sights, I just bought (off the 'bay for £17) and fitted a good condition BSA 4x20 sight that's contemporary with the gun. I'll have a go at zeroing it later this eve. Funny, it now looks like the gun I always wanted when I was a kid. Just put the gun through the chrono after 100 pellets. It's doing 8.9ft/lbs with a spread of less than 10 ft/sec. Not too shabby.

UPDATE if anyone's interested ...
gun has now settled down to just a shade under 10fpe, I put an old BSA 4x20 scope on, and zeroed for 22 yards .. seems to shoot flat out to about 30 yards, bit surprised but these things sometimes make no sense. Seems to like any pellets, but shoots best with SuperDomes. I took it to an informal field target shoot two weeks ago and it actually held it's own against my AA410 and several other rifles. Velocity spread is +/- 8 fps over 10 shots earlier today. Trigger is ok, but I've gotten soft through too much time with the AA410. There is definitely life in the old dog ..



GUN IS NOW FOR SALE MINUS THE OPEN SIGHTS

Spring stuff ...

I posted the following onto an airgun enthusiast forum in response to a question asking for tips when changing a mainspring ..


"The main tip is be very careful.

Second tip is make sure the gun is unloaded and uncocked.

For a spring compressor I use an old sash cramp - the long type that cabinet makers use to hold stuff together. I've made a couple of wooden blocks that fit in to protect the cylinder as well as an insert that goes into the back end of the cylinder and pushes on the washer behind the spring, and which then allows the retaining pin to be taken out once the spring tension is taken up by tightening the sash cramp. Generally I take the barrel off as it makes the cylinder more stable in the sash cramp, and to be honest I wouldn’t attempt taking the spring out with the barrel still on using my set up as I reckon it’d be a recipe for broken fingers.

I've just read that back and it sounds more complicated than it is.

Expect it to be messy as the old lube on the spring will be horrible, black, peppered with swarf, and as sticky as baby crap. Use lots of rag to protect your hands from crap and sharp edges, and remember how it all came apart.

While it's apart you might as well change all the seals and the buffer washer, and give everything inside a clean-up and a re-lube. T C Chambers are good for parts.

Third tip is take all the trigger parts out before you try to take the piston out of the cylinder.

Fourth tip is either draw a diagram of how the trigger goes together or take a photo. There are only 3 parts to the trigger and 2 pins so it's not complicated, but unless you like doing the rubic cube I'd suggest keeping a visual record of how it fits together.

Tip four and a half is give the new O ring a good soak in silicon oil (Abbey is good) for about a day before you put it on. Seems to help with gas seal and I'm told it lengthens the life of the part.

Tip 5 is be gentle when re-inserting the piston/head assembly with the new O ring into the cylinder as the metal edges it needs to be manoeuvred past can be sharp and they’ll take a slice off your nice new O ring.

Tip 6 is be sparing with the lube you put on the new spring. Don't get any lube down the tube in front of the piston ... silicon oil won't cause dieseling, but it will cause the rifle to shoot below power for a while. Use only an original spec spring (did I mention that T C Chambers are good for parts?) and be careful when you reassemble. There's nothing quite like being hit in the mush by a metal spring covered in grease.

Any help? As I say, I'm no expert and I'm sure other forum members can add some better insights than me. :) "

Take one Mk 5 BSA Meteor ....

I bought (yet) another BSA Meteor, this one's a Mk5 in .177 ('NH' serial number) and the plan is to refit and shoot it. It's not my intention to get it back to factory original condition .. I want to make it usable, accurate, consistant and solid. I like the idea of keeping as much of the original gun as possible, but some of it has to go. Sorry if this upsets the purists. Here's how it went.

September 2010 - still a work in progress ...

Bought another Meteor (Mk5 in .177 - NH serial number) through an online forum site .. bought it on the strength of these photos ...







... and I took a few when it arrived that are a bit clearer ...

In the above photo you can see the mounting holes for the rear sight, front one is threaded, rear one is for the little lug on the bottom of the sight unit. A previous owner had managed to snap the little plastic lug off inside the hole - you can just about see it poking up. I managed to get it out by pushing a red hot pin into it, waiting for it to melt onto the pin, and pulling it out.

You can see that there were some horrible scabby bits on the barrel, I suppose that there were 4 areas about 1/2 inch in diameter each that were especially bad with rust. The bore was good though, and came up clean and bright with a bronze brush . All in all it was absolutely as I expected it to be, and I bought it to provide me with some fun in restoring it and shooting it. It's actually in better nick than the Mk 5 .22 Meteor I bought at the start of the year for the same price, so I'm happy all round. This is a detail of the same part of the barrel from the now refinished .177 .

I didn't shoot it as it stood when it arrived, but judging but the state of the seals and all the excess lube in there I suspect it would have been lucky to be over 4fpe out of the barrel and would have dieselled horribly.

First inspection of the breech seal showed it'd turned to cheese, but they always do on these guns; too much of the wrong lube for 30 years will do it every time. Took the stock off and tapped out the hinge pin (it pretty much fell out) then I removed the barrel. If you haven't done this before, be aware that the spring loaded catch that sits under the breech is held in place by the hinge pin, and as it's spring loaded it can take off across the room once the hinge pin no longer retains it in place. This one was held in place by 25 years of crud, so it actually took a bit of wiggling with pliers to get it to come out.

This barrel hinge pin was way past re-using and the gun had the horrible wobble that's pretty standard in old break barrel guns. I've tried a few things with previous guns, but a really good fix here is to put a slightly oversize spring pin in. It holds tight to the inside of the mounting hole below the breech and gives a snug fit into the holes on the front end of the cylinder. It also has the advantage of being slightly flexible, thereby allowing the gun to opn and close without adding strain onto the parts involved. It really does resolve the wobble, and in the absence of running a special part up on a lathe to replace the original hinge pin, it's a cheap and durable way to get the barrel tight again. You can just make it out on these photos of the finished gun.

When I took the stock off there was only one of the original screws in situ at the front end but I planned to replace with countersunk socket head machine screws mounted into brass collets sunk into the original screw holes (they fitted with a bit of gentle sanding), and which sit flush with the woodwork. It makes for a much stronger fixing, and is less prone to coming undone. I did this with the .22 Meteor I sorted out a few months ago and it worked really well. This from the .177 ...

The trick with this is (while the barrel is off) to re-tap the original mounting holes on the cylinder to take an M5 countersunk machine screw, fit some in with the stock in place and tighten to the right tension. Then file the screws down from the inside so the thread fills up all of the available hole but still sits flush with the inside of the jaws where the barrel mounts - like this ...

Woodwork was actually quite good for the year and it only needed some sympathetic attention. What I did was use some Birchwood Casey Stock Sheen, and give it the once over. I then used a good quality furniture wax to reseal any gaps in the varnish, and give an appropriate patina/finish to the stock. I've previously totally stripped and refinished stocks with oil for Meteors and while it probably makes for a better looking stock in the end, it's a long dull process to do on a £40 gun.

I had a 20 minute bash at the trigger guard. Like the other metal parts on the outside of the gun it was more than a bit manky with surface rust. It was rubbed down with fine sandpaper, buffed with wire wool, wiped off with thinners and sprayed with 2 coats of satin finish black Hammerite. Quite pleased with the result;

Turned my attention to the cylinder assembly. I started by stripping and degreasing it .. never seen so much horrible grease in a gun - literally spoonfuls of the stuff!

I don't know what gun the mainspring that was in it was supposed to fit, but it's not a Meteor spring .. looks like someone tried to squeeze extra power out of it with an Ox spring Not overly worn inside, so maybe the copious amounts of grease were a good thing as it would have slowed everything down. It needs the usual parts replacing so no surprises there - piston seal 'O' ring, buffer washer, and the mainspring.

We, the enlightened ones, know Meteors were never meant to go above about 9.5fpe, and many have been destroyed over the years by owners jamming an Ox spring in there in the hope of higher power. I actually had a bit of a job getting the spring out without it flying out across the workshop - my spring compressor allows for about 7 inches of decompression and this spring was still under some serious tension with the end out of the gun by this much. I put an original Meteor spring in there when I rebuilt it. I made a point of running an M5 tap through the rear stock mounting hole so I could use an M5 domed socket screw when I reassembled the gun.

The piston was fine apart from being covered in far too much grease. I gave it a light polish but to be honest it was in good order. The aluminium piston head was in good order too, but the 'O' ring seal was knackered, so I put a new one on along with a new buffer washer. The retaining washer needed a bit of a buff up, and it all went back together fine. This was then lubed with Abbey Silicone Oil and left to soak for a day. When the reassessembled piston assembly was inserted into the cleaned out cylinder it was clear then some air was escaping past the 'O' ring when the port was covered and the air in the cylinder was compressed. I took the assembly back out, took the 'O' ring off the head again and put a double wind of PTFE plumbers tape in the groove to sit under the seal and give it a bit more diameter .. only about .25mm. Reassembled again with appropriate lube on the piston and this time it was fine. I put a new Meteor spring in (appropriately lubed with moly grease), compressed it all, and rebuilt the gun.

Cosmetic issues proved to be pretty minor really, barrel cleaned up well when I got stuck in and refinished it with a full rubdown and respray in satin black Hammerite (3 coats). Cylinder was done to match, although it meant losing the colouring in the 'BSA Meteor' lettering along the top. The nice thing about Hammerite is that it gives a finish that doesn't look too shiny and new .. the point is to protect the gun and tidy it up, not reinvent it. Also, the paint, when fully cured out (about 2 weeks) is almost as good as an enamelled finish and should last for years.

I'd already got hold of a set of open sights that came off a Mk1 Scorpion pistol that went straight on to the Meteor, and pretty much match the age of the gun.

I know it's a bit OCD, but the devil is in the detail. I've resprayed the blade from the front sight with matt black Plastikote, and when I reassembled I used 4BA countersunk socket screws (cut & filed to length) to retain both the front & rear sights.

I appreciate this isn't original, but it is better as the socket head screws are neater and less likely to get chewed when being slackened/tightened.

The gun is now finished, and I have tried to add pics to this blog to cover the stuff I haven't talked about. If you're interested enough you can always mail me with any questions - I'm no expert, but I'm happy to give an opinion.

What I've now got is a hand finished Mk5 BSA Meteor in .177 that looks good, shoots brilliantly and knocks out a consistant 8.5fpe which fits perfectly with any expectations of a 30 year old BSA Meteor. This may improve a little when the gun settles down. The trigger was reset to release at about 1.5lbs, and I have to say this is the best trigger I've ever had on a Meteor. The trigger on my .22 Mk5 isn't as nice as this and even though I rebuilt both of them, and set them up using the same process I'm not sure why, I'm running it with a Nikko Sterling 'Mountie' 4x20 scope which is roughly contemporary with the gun (1982-4).

It's set up for 25 yards, and shoots flattish from 10 yards out to about 35 yards, and still giving 5.2fpe at that distance so good for light hunting and pests. Am I happy with it? Yes. Will I probably end up with another old gun to sort out? Yes, just don't tell the wife. :)

Additional 11th October 2010; Approx 250 AA Field (4.52mm) pellets put through since the rebuild. Gun has settled down at a shade below 9.2fpe with the ft/sec spread being +/- 8 around the average of 699ft/sec over a 10 shot string. At 25 yards the chrono has it at 592ft/sec so it's still hitting at 6.5fpe, and that's good enough to use for pest control.

Gun is shooting smooth as anything, and is a pleasure to use.

Since the barrel is as solid as anything I've swapped the Nikko scope for a newer AGS 6x40 Mini Mil-Dot. At 25 yards it's grouping at about 1/2 inch with the odd flyer, and holds zero brilliantly. I'll put a photo up when I think on, but you probably get the idea that I'm more than happy with it.

lee_hodgkinson@tiscali.co.uk