After some thought I think I'm going to go down the rd of buying an immaculate or near as possible to very good condition used PCP.
I've seen the above gun in .177 with a high end Nikon scope around the £900 mark.
Not entirely sure why this model has the 'R' letter after the 510 but the rifle doesn't look that old to me & represents a big saving on new.
I shouldered an AGT VIXEN but didn't get the smile on my face that the above rifle gave me!.
Be careful before you commit as there’s issues with the Air Arms ‘R’ regulator and at some point it will cause you problems.
I’m in the process of replacing a regulator on exactly the same model at the moment and they aren’t cheap.
The issue lies with the machined Peak sealing face which where it seats in the brass piston will eventually fail. I haven’t been able to work out yet whether the Peak wears the brass or the other way round, however it results in the sealing face moving around and not giving a consistent seal.
The way to test whether the regulator is working correctly is to fill the cylinder to 200 bar. Fire a shot and note the power, fire off enough shots to get it down to around 160 bar, then do leave ten to fifteen minutes fire it again and note the power. Then do the same at 120 bar and finally 100 bar. You can leave smaller gaps between the test shots, however you must rest the gun before you’re going to test fire as you want the reg to creep, if you get an increase in velocity as the cylinder pressure lowers then the regulator isn’t working correctly. If it’s not working, in all likelihood air is escaping past the sealing face into the prechamber and the increased or higher pressure on the rear of the valve is leading lower velocities. As the pressure in the cylinder decreases as does the pressure on the rear of the valve and it stays open longer and the velocity will increase.
Personally I wouldn’t bother with any Air Arms gun with the ‘R’ regulator in it until the issues are sorted out. If you like the gun design then go for a standard non-regulated version, it’ll be cheaper, just as consistent if you run it through its most efficient pressure operating band and you won’t get the reliability issues.
I’ve made a few replacement regulator pistons, one for
@bob4026 which alleviate the design issue, however I don’t have a reg tester for them, although
@Fatbob 59 has promised to make me one in his machine shop!
However, the answer is to not get a regulated version.
The original S510 arent regulated , I have an S510 supalite
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