CROSMAN PHANTOM 1000 opinions please!

If you have spatulate fingertips like myself, you will appreciate .22 pellet guns a bit better.

I have the cheapo Phantom that walmart sells, haven't really done that much with it. I should take it down and have looksee at the internals. I will have to rig up a spring compressor at some point I guess.
 
mwjones said:
I have a phantom 500 in .22. Tapped the bleeder hole and plugged with a grub screw, and shimmed toe spring to about .050 from coil bind when cocking. It shoots like a beast (pushing 725 depending on pellets, NOT those crappy plastic or tin ones) and is accurate enough to take crows out to 40 yards. It will hold 1.5" at 50 from a rest.

$109.99 for the gun
$0.25 for the screw
$0.00 for the scrap brass to turn a new spring guide

Good deal. I've been considering a grt trigger for it, but really, once you get used to the creepy trigger it's not too bad :)
Click to expand...

I thought about the grt trigger for quite awhile then I was getting a few things from Eric and added it to the list it really is great .
I would imagine you would shave that .5 " off your groups with it without any trouble.
Now if they would make one for my Webley Tempests and older Diana's the world would just be a brighter place.
Jack
 
Just picked up a .22 cal Nitro Venom (PAL required) version....have to say so far I am impressed. I have shot about 50 rounds through it now and it is really starting to settle in on the accuracy and noise department. My first .22 pellet rifle, man this thing is powerful..certainly need to pay extra attention to whats behind your target. I opted for the wood stock...think it was worth the extra $10.00 DL charged. So far quality wise for a $200.00 air rifle... I am impressed. The scope is ok, may look to swap that out down the road but for now I will live with it. I do have a GRT-III trigger in the mail...once in, it will be a sweet little rig.
 
I bought a Walmart 500 fps phantom, and then bought a piston and seal online. The gun hits hard, never shot through a meter, don't know how many FPS, but I've got dozens of squirrels and a few partirdge with the rifle. Cats would be a sure thing, lucky my neighbors don't have any...............
 
The walmart phantom in .22......plug the bleed hole will get you at least 650fps.....add a few pennies to the tophat will put you over 700fps. The trigger is very easy to improve for free also, search youtube.
Great little rifle for shooting offhand, but I find it hard to shoot well when scoped and benched, because of the twangy-ness/recoil I suppose. Both in stock form and hot rodded, doesn't matter, YMMV
 
squirrelshooter said:
I bought a Walmart 500 fps phantom, and then bought a piston and seal online. The gun hits hard, never shot through a meter, don't know how many FPS, but I've got dozens of squirrels and a few partirdge with the rifle. Cats would be a sure thing, lucky my neighbors don't have any...............
Click to expand...

Whare did you get the parts?
 
mwjones said:
I have a phantom 500 in .22. Tapped the bleeder hole and plugged with a grub screw, and shimmed toe spring to about .050 from coil bind when cocking. It shoots like a beast (pushing 725 depending on pellets, NOT those crappy plastic or tin ones) and is accurate enough to take crows out to 40 yards. It will hold 1.5" at 50 from a rest.

$109.99 for the gun
$0.25 for the screw
$0.00 for the scrap brass to turn a new spring guide

Good deal. I've been considering a grt trigger for it, but really, once you get used to the creepy trigger it's not too bad :)
Click to expand...

Can you post pics of what you did to your Phantom? I dont know anything about working on air rifles but i have lots of tools and im not afraid to use them. Lol
Took a quick look at one tonight at walmart, not a bad looking gun. If $99 + some creativity gets me a decent gun im in.
 
ive had one for 2 years there very picky with ammo,i use crosman wadcutters,with steel alloy rounds i get 3" groups at 60 yards.
the scope i use is the tasco red dot,ive had it on for a couple months and i shoot it alot,its never moved, its the only scope it won't eat
 
Riven said:
Can you post pics of what you did to your Phantom? I dont know anything about working on air rifles but i have lots of tools and im not afraid to use them. Lol
Took a quick look at one tonight at walmart, not a bad looking gun. If $99 + some creativity gets me a decent gun im in.
Click to expand...

I'd have to take it all apart to take pics :) If you look on YouTube for Crossman phantom tune you should get LOTS of hits. Regarding the spring compressor, i made one, but I'm not entirely sure that I really needed it. There wasn't a whole lot of preload on the spring when i took it apart. Putting it back together would have been a little trickier :)

On the detuned models, they simply drill a hole right through the face of the piston to bleed air through and lower compression. It's right there plain as day, you can't miss it. If you have a tap and die set, you can just thread the bleeder hole for whatever size screw you have lying around, put some thread locker on it (or soap, like, rub it on a bar of soap before putting the screw in), and grind the head of the screw flat afterwards.
 
Hey guys, here's my Phantom. Not a typical one now but I did buy it at Walmart. I did a few mods to it alright, tune and moly job(polished the spring, piston and chamber), new seal, piston, spring, trigger, barrel. Changed the stock cause I love the look of the Summit. Hope you all agree. Had a Centerpoint on it and upgraded to a Accushot 3-12x30mm AO mildot. Set of Allen swivels and Allen sling, cause she's not the lightest when squirreling. And she has taken many a squirrel. Shooting less then 1"groups at 30 yards. It's come along way from a $99 Walmart special.

Phatom.jpg
 
Here's mine, first Phantom of '14!

Oh, whoopsy--no pic yet. I got my Phantom .22 at Wally World last week. It's actually a lot better rifle than I was expecting, especially compared to my 'Winchester'/Daisy '1911' BB pistol. With this Crossman I'm able to predict with a much better degree of certainty, where my next pellet is going to hit.
The best way to hit anything with that BB gun was to take it and throw it!

One of the nice things about PGs is that they're legal and safe(r) to shoot in the back garden. My property is large enough to safely shoot a .22 rf, but it's not really 'legal', e.g. municipal bylaw: "No shooting or hunting within city limits" The neighbours are cool, and far enough away to not be alarmed by the occasional .22 report, but no way I could get away with shooting my .308 :0D
Now, with the Phantom, I can blast away and still be legal and quiet.
I've set up a sawhorse in front of a natural backstop and suspended some mini-gongs from wires and put tin cans resting on the cross-bar. I've also printed off some squirrel sillouettes to tape onto cardboard. My adult daughter was over yesterday and we both enjoyed pegging off the various things.
Of course then she's like, "Hey Dad, where are the zombies??" :^ ]
 
I had a 22 version that was dead on POA up to 40ish yards. Best bang for the buck. careful the 1000fps claims. those like 6 grain alloy pellets and good for nothing other than boosting fps claims. a 14 grain pellet at 700fps (the real world expectancy of the 1000fps air gun) is plenty up to 40 yards for pest removal.

yours looks great!
 
I had a Canadian tire Phantom 500 in .177 that I played with for a while. It wasn't working great so I ended up getting the Phantom 1000 repair kit and upgraded. Through a chrono it went from 430fps to 824fps and did a much better job killing pigeons around the grain elevator. The increase in piston recoil ended up breaking the plastic rear sight and the next two airgun scopes I put on it. The only pellet I found that was at all accurate was the Crossman premier wadcutters, everything else was terrible.

Ended up selling it for $60 and buying an old cooey 75 for $40. With CB caps or subsonics its almost as quiet and much more effective downrange.
 
mwjones said:
I have a phantom 500 in .22. Tapped the bleeder hole and plugged with a grub screw, and shimmed toe spring to about .050 from coil bind when cocking. It shoots like a beast (pushing 725 depending on pellets, NOT those crappy plastic or tin ones) and is accurate enough to take crows out to 40 yards. It will hold 1.5" at 50 from a rest.

$109.99 for the gun
$0.25 for the screw
$0.00 for the scrap brass to turn a new spring guide
Good deal. I've been considering a grt trigger for it, but really, once you get used to the creepy trigger it's not too bad :)
Click to expand...
I had the exact gun/process... shot about 680fps I also upgraded to the GRT trigger.. you can make it feather light. http://charliedatuna.com/GRT-III Trigger New.htm
also a walther 4x airgun scope stayed zero for 1000's of shots of Crossman premier hollowpoints.
You can shoot pocket change at 50 yards pretty easy. I benchrested the center of the gun (where its curved) on top my bbq on a folded up towel and only held the grip trigger and nowhere on the fore end, pull the trigger and let it 'hop' and it would shoot tiny holes as long as you 'let it do its thing'.

Loki610 said:
Ended up selling it for $60 and buying an old cooey 75 for $40. With CB caps or subsonics its almost as quiet and much more effective downrange.
Click to expand...
exactly what I did, except I bought a Savage FV-SR and shoot shorts/subs/CB's. and now 1 of those Norinco NS522's its awesomely inexpensive! but next time 1 of those phantons in .22 goes on sale at wallymart I'm buying it only because I just realized I have a bunch of pellets left I need to shoot!
 
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sk8snwmx said:
... exactly what I did, except I bought a Savage FV-SR and shoot shorts/subs/CB's. and now 1 of those Norinco NS522's its awesomely inexpensive! but next time 1 of those phantons in .22 goes on sale at wallymart I'm buying it only because I just realized I have a bunch of pellets left I need to shoot!
Click to expand...

I'm coming round to the same conclusion.
Yes, the Phantom is a tonne of fun, but pitted against the .22 CBee caps it's no contest. At 50' the CBees punched ten overlapping holes on POA (shooting my 25 yard zero). But at 75' the CBee will drop 3" below POA.
In sum, the pellets are fine for pegging off tin cans at 50', but for vermin I expect the .22 shorts @710fps are the more humane alternative. And they're really not that much louder. My other 'short' round is the CCI copper HP @1105fps which hits harder, but is as loud as a LR cartridge.
So I'll continue to practice my trigger pulling skills on my back porch with the pellets, but I'll be using the CBees on the Grey Squirrels.
(BTW-- I think the reason air guns are so popular in Euro is in part down to their Byzantine/restrictive gun laws).
BTWW-- My .22 is a Savage FVXP with a Boyds thumbhole stock. It's a great rifle, but more expensive than the Phantom :)^ ]
 
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