Air Arms Owners Club

has any one on here put a tbt kit in their tx200 .22 etc

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251831271673? ... EBIDX%3AIT

Timmytree tried one, im sure if you pm him he will give his verdict

BBF

I’ve put a Tinbum kit in both of my rifles, a HW98 and Tx200hc both less than 4 months old but with more than 1500 pellets through each. The TX was very good straight out of the box but the TB kit did make it slightly smoother but the HW98 improved a lot. The TB kit in the HW made the rifle shoot smoother and the “twang” went which obviously makes the rifle more accurate and sweeter to shoot.

I have literally just put one in my TX200mk3 two days ago. It was an easy job, well took about 10-15 mins to do. I chrono’d it and found I had to take the two washers (supplied) out to ensure it was legal. Shooting at 11.4 ft/lbs. Nice and smooth too. For me it was a bargin but I must add I have only fired twenty or so pellets so not fully tested, although I can’t see any issue. I have just spoken to him regarding a kit for my BSA Mercury (40 years old) which was forgotten in the attic and found last night. £20.00 if your a member of his forum. Go for it, you won’t go wrong. Make sure you chrono it after fitting, most important.

I tried his drop in kit in my HC but to get 11+ ft-lbs I needed to add the second (delrin?) preload washer. It was a burger to fit, it was a very tight fit on a very roughly turned spring guide. The jury is still out on this one.

Here's the test I did originally.
Right then, I was asked if I would review one of Tinbums kits and give my honest opinion. Nick got one in the post to me straight away. Before it arrived I put my PS back to all standard internals (including the huge tophat) to make a fair comparison. It was ok but after running with my own mods it didn't feel as nice.
The kit arrived, neat package with simple instructions, a new guide, 2 power bands, 1 slipwasher and a new tophat, all nicely finished. Nick asked me for any reccomendations that I felt would improve the kit but more of that later.
I decided to do the test with 2 different springs, my own partworn and a brand new one from Julian, I left the piston seal alone as it seems to be particularly efficient.
First test with the old spring.
Assembled as per instructions with 1 power band and fired a few shots into my ragbox, felt nice and smooth on cocking and firing, much the same as it felt with my own mods, over the chrono it showed a variation of about 8fps overall.
Changed the spring for the new one, nice smooth cocking but the firing cycle felt slightly harsher, changing from AA Fields to Falcon AP smoothed it out a little so maybe the heavier Fields were inducing a bit of piston bounce. I tried with and without power bands but the results were pretty much the same, upping the power beyond about 11.0ftlbs created a bit of harshness, not nasty but I was aware of it.
I then decided to experiment with different tophats, the 2 AA versions, the 1 in the kit and a V mach one that I had in the box. By the end of the week my Prosport had been stripped and rebuilt maybe 30 times for this review. Changing tophats allows you to balance the feel of the rifle to the pellets you would normally use, obviously the spring, piston seal and pellet fit will have an effect. I eventually settled on the TbT guide and slip washer, 1 power band and a highly polished steel tophat from a .22 PS, the worn spring and AA Fields.
The chrono figures were very good!
766,768,766.766,766,764,765,764,770,765,764,764,764,765,764,770,766,765,764,766.
Nothing much wrong there and the PS was feeling sweet, accuracy was up to par and to be honest it didn't feel much different to what I produced with my own tinkerings over the years, the difference was the time element and little faffing about.
Next I put in the new spring but removed the power band, tried with the TbT tophat, heavy AA and light AA, again the lighter AA felt best for me but I must stress that I think a newer or tighter seal would probably alter that.
The figures were again very good.
775,775.776.778,773,778,778,778,778,775,775,775,775,778,778,779.774,775,775,775.
After that lot I shot 3 x 5 shot groups at 35 yards, 2 of which were neat keyholes apart from one shot which strayed by maybe 8mm.

The intention was to then transfer the kit to Big Dogs PS for him to have a go but his PS is currently in bits awaiting attention after I opened it up and found a wear problem on the comp tube, that will be presented to AA for their attention as it's effectively a nearly new gun. Not happy! :maddy:
I have suggested that the tophat is machined down with a smaller block, this will allow owners to experiment by adding steel washers to increase the weight if needed or delrin ones to increase preload. Personally I would try a range of weights from all steel to all delrin to see which suits your rifle/pellet set up best.

Conclusions.

The TbT kit comes ready to fit to your standard spring, it fits and in most cases will instantly make your PS or TX feel smoother on the cocking stroke. For rifles with a tight seal I think a straight swap will be fine, some people with easy running internals may need to play around with weight around the piston but that isn't hard to do. The benefits of the TbT kit against others (not sure if I can name names?) is that by utilising standard springs you save a great wad of cash to start with, when it also comes to renewing springs in the future it will cost you around £17ish. 1 kit I had cost me £50 because I "have to buy the guide to match" or so I was told, needless to say that kit went in the bin, hence my reliance on mainly standard parts.
Is it worth the money? Yes, definitely. £20 well spent and from posts on other forums, lots of happy customers.
Nick is happy to give advice and customer satisfaction seems to be his priority, a nice change nowadays.
Final point, I had that kit for free and enjoyed testing it, I've now passed it to someone else (who will make a charity donation but he doesn't know it yet!)
I will though be buying another kit from Nick if he incorporates the change to the tophat to allow fine tuning.

Regards
Tim

Wow TT, you certainly put some work into that mate, almost a Science in your testing fella. (I like this Geek Smiley, it was worth the forum upgrade just for that )

I'm very unsure of these type of kits,the tx is very good as is,maybe I'm a bit old school,but airarms make an excellent tx200,just my opinion,

fiestazetecmk2 wrote:I'm very unsure of these type of kits,the tx is very good as is,maybe I'm a bit old school,but airarms make an excellent tx200,just my opinion,

They also gift you with a sloppy fitting spring guide and grease fit for tractor hubs
my prosport regularly went twangy but now it has matched guides and is running very gòod
regards nick

Maybe in the future I will fit one and make my own conclusions,my mk2 tx200hc is very good at present ,I may be supprised who knows ,but thanks for the very informative test, fair play to you for taking the time to put a detailed test like that on the forum,