I have been AWOL for some time due to personal reasons but just had to share my success story with you all who might be interested. I purchased a Stoeger X5 for my father a while back and while shooting it with him I felt a lot of potential from this little fella. Some time went by and I decided to get one myself, as all my springers are of the Magnum and Super Magnum breed. They are all loud with a violent shot cycle. The X5 has a direct sear trigger (don't stop reading) like the miserable RS1. But what made the RS1 so bad was the Magnum spring with the direct sear trigger. No way to make that thing work safely with less than about a 9 lb trigger. The X5 on the other hand is a 600 fps rifle with a soft spring. Can you say "modify me please". When I took her out of the box, my satisfaction with it was less than 1 out of 10, now it's 8.5 out of 10. I immediately disassembled her with my spring compressor and removed all that "mystery" goop from everything, deburred all internals and polished the pressure chamber. I finished the spring ends and put a chamfer on the barrel's loading port. I modified the trigger by removing a few coils from the return spring and then very slowly started removing excess metal from the latch area between the sear and the piston. I would assemble and try, each time better than before and each time I would bounce the bottom of the butt pad against the floor while cocked to insure I wasn't making it unsafe. Too much off and you'll be ordering parts as you can't put metal back on. The trigger originally had a mile of creep, so I knew there was some serious surplus engagement. I used gun oil on the trigger assembly, Castol open gear lube on the outside of the main spring and Moly on the ends, Moly on the piston and seal, (none on the face) and silicone on the breach o-ring. I also used Amsoil engine assembly lube on the sear to piston contact. Reassembled, and now there is zero spring twang, trigger is actually good and fairly light, accuracy is incredible at 20 yards and she's light enough to carry all day in the field at 6 lbs. If you like messing around with modifying springers, and you want a stealth-quite, easy to cock rifle then this is a good choice. Are there other guns that may shoot better out of the box for the same $99.00?, probably, but when you can make a poorly assembled rifle shoot at its maximum potential with a few hours of fun...that's priceless to me. CPHPs are her favorite, I loaned out my chrony, but there is a drastic difference in audible speed-to-target after the tune, hope this helps someone. As a word of caution, do not do any metal removal of the parts in the trigger, unless you are experienced in this kind if work. If too much metal is removed the engagement of the piston to sear it could be less than is needed to hold and could cause the barrel to come back to the closed position, pinching your finger off. Or, once it's loaded could spontaneously fire.
1st pic: rifle
2nd pic: the chamfer was added (didn't have one)
3rd pic: trigger assem.
4th pic: area most worked on (metal removal and polish)
5th pic: spring guide is sized perfect from factory
6th pic: piston seal (original)
7th pic: all parts but stock
Regards,
Steve
