Crosman 2240 Bolt Action CO2-Powered Pistol

FREE UPGRADES: I put the safety OFF (unsafe), took handgrips off and pulled out the trigger spring. I cut ONE coil off of it and put it back in. So much lighter trigger pull! No more pull, pull, sideways wobbley pull then bang. A light pull and it fires.

Then I took the top and bottom screws (and rear sight off). This makes the rear end cap of the co2 tube off. I cut 3.5 coils off the hammer spring. It doubled the amount of shots per co2 cartridge, makes the gun quieter and stops the wasteful cloud of co2 from appearing every shot.

To use this you must have: a tube of Pellgun oil; 12g co2 cartridges and some .22 pellets (not the usual .177 pellets). Out of the box:

Put two drops of Pellgun oil on the tip of the co2 cartridge before sliding it tip first into the big tube under the barrel. Screw the cap on.

Put a drop of Pellgun oil on the rubber ring that is exposed when you cock the gold bolt back. Add another drop every 250 shots.

I did a four dollar add on item of Gamo .22 pellets (which opened and spilled everywhere during shipping) and even with these cheap pellets that were bashed around this pistol is super accurate!

The first upgrade you’ll want to make is to order the steel breech, which allows you to do two things: get rid of the plastic “gold” bolt, and also to mount a scope. This pistol, in its stock form, has no scope or laser mounting rails or dovetails.

My first shot came out totally silent yet ripped a nice hole in my target. All the shots after that were super loud! This is way louder than my Crosman Fury rifle, my 10 pump rifle and my other Crosman pistol. It’s actually closer to my actual (real gunpowder) Ruger 10/22 rifle and pistols! LOUD!

After the 40th shot it still hits exactly where I aim, with zero drop off! That’s better than my .177 that cost more! With the first co2 cartridge in the gun I went to bed, woke up next morning and had shot 41 hit dead on. Shot 42 dropped noticeably and was less powerful.

The second co2 cartridge fit a little deeper and I was able to screw the cap down way more. I shot very rapidly until shot 55 which hit a little low, and shoot 56 was really low. One thing I noticed was that the big cylinder under the barrel got really cold while rapidly firing these 55 shots. I think if I shot at a normal rate the co2/pistol wouldn’t have gotten so cold-and would have lasted for a few more shots. Co2 is less efficient at lower temperatures: when you shoot, the cylinder gets icy cold. Also it’s winter in Michigan and I was in my basement. 65° and rapidly firing as possible gets you 55 dead accurate shots. Slower (normal) rate of fire would give you more shots. Warmer weather would also help get to the higher range of 70 shots many people achieve with this pistol. Breaking it in would probably help too.

I took the screw off the rear sight and the screw directly across from it on the bottom of the large tube, which allowed me to take off the rear end cap and hammer spring. I cut 3 coils off the spring and reassembled. Now I get between 70-80 shots, even though it got even colder (it’s snowing right now in April). I shoot indoors in a cold basement. The colder it is the less shots you get.

I got the little ten dollar intermounts that clamp to the barrel. These let me put a forty dollar Winchester 3x-7x scope. I can easily put two pellets through the same hole at 15 feet.

My .22 Pellet Testing Roundup in a Crosman 2240 CO2 pellet pistol. I shoot handheld at 10 meters (33 feet) indoors with a 3x-7x Winchester scope I bought on Amazon for thirty-nine bucks. In my Crosman 2240 every pellet tumbled and left a keyhole shape hole in paper targets. In my 1250fps break barrel rifles this happens when I try to use flat nose wadcutters. Wadcutters like lower fps or lighter weight wad cutter pellets according to some. After I cut the hammer spring about 3.5-4 coils this went away and I also get around 70 shots per CO2 cartridge as opposed to barely 40 before cutting the coil.

HERE ARE THE RESULTS FROM BEST TO WORST:
-Umarex RWS “Hobby” Sport Line flat nose wadcutters: these are so accurate I shot once and it hits the center of an X I drew in pencil on a piece of paper. The second shot went so perfectly through the first pellet’s hole I had to walk over and see if I missed the target entirely? Nope-the 2nd shot went right through the hole from the first shot. The 3rd, 4th and 5th shots did the same thing until there was a single, slightly larger than normal pellet hole in the center of the target. LASER-LIKE PERFECTION!!!!!
-Daisy Flat Nosed Pellets: 500 in a tin and ultra-cheap. I can put 4 through the same hole, but the 5th usually is a flyer about 0.5″ away. Really great performance at a really cheap price! The Daisy pellets leave a shocking amount of graphite(?) and/or lead on the fingers. Load one Daisy pellets and your fingers will be black (not grey). The pellets are black, not grey as well. It’s not lead, because my fingers stay black after scrubbing them in the sink. I go back and forth between whether the Daisy or the Gamo are better.
-Gamo Match Diablo wadcutters: these are just as good as the Daisy Flat Nose pellets EXCEPT the 5th “flyer” is usually closer to 1”-2” off target. Not a big deal, but not as good as the Umarex RWS Hobby with ZERO flyers. The Gamos opened and spilled in transit, but these are very accurate in my Crosman 2240. My next order included Gamo pellets and someone took the time to scotch tape them shut (thank you!) so they wouldn’t spill everywhere. I go back and forth between whether the Daisy or the Gamo are better. These are also really cheap, and show up for less than four bucks as a free add-on for Prime users.

-Gamo Magnum Energy “Spire” Point: these looked HORRIBLE in the tin, many skirts were malformed and the casting flash was so bad it looks like they are designed with two full-body fins running from tail to point…however: they really weren’t that bad. Shots 1-3 were fairly close (not same hole) but there would be 1 or 2 flyers in the a group of 5 that would go in random directions about 3” off target. Still, I was very surprised these did so well.

-Excite “Plinkin”: these came with the same exact sealing sticker around it as the ‘fancier’ H&N targets (see below) so maybe they’re made in the same factory? When I saw that I had high hopes. Funny is that they were awful and the H&N were even worse! The 2nd shot was about 3” from the 1st, and the 3rd shot was the same distance in the opposite direction, the next two shots were also just all over the place. No point in using these in my particular pistol.

-Crosman Premier Hollow Point: this is a rounded head pellet with a big dimple in the front. They’re cheap and come in a 500 tin pellet. These pellets are made by the same people as my pistol. The result however is even worse than the Excite pellets: you aim at the center of the target and take 5 shots. They end up 4” away from each other. The Crosman are so bad I thought my scope was broken! Seriously! I was in danger of missing the paper target complete with these-once at the top, once to the left, once to the right and just wacky performance. Bizarre! I literally starting swearing out loud thinking my scope was destroyed. Then I loaded some other pellets and everything was fine. I went back to the Crosmans again and again over the weeks and they’re always just awful!

-H&N Sport Field Target: these have what looks like a bb stuck into the front of them. DANGEROUSLY INACCURATE. The only thing worse than the Crosmans in my pistol. Again, it’s difficult to keep these on the 8.5”x11” target, let along the tiny little pencil eraser sized bulls eye! So fancy. So expensive. So bad. I was really surprised!

So there you have it. If you have a Crosman 2240 you should give the Umarex/RWS “Hobby” flat nosed sport wadcutters a try. You fire 5 shots-see a single hole and worry you missed the paper completely-until you walk up to the target and see 5 pellets in the same hole. Nice!

I also highly recommend the Winchester 3x-7x air gun scope. Sooo much fun being zoomed into your target!

I’m a librarian by day, at night I kill racoons with .177 hollowpoints; but with .22s I’m going for paper targets. Kind of backwards I know, but I have fun.
By the way: In .177 Benjamin HP’s are the best in my Gamo Silent Cat rifle, and my Crosman Fury likes Gamo Tomahawk pellets: I’ve tried about 13 different pellets so far in the rifles so far.

The point? Keep trying different pellets in all your guns. With my two break barrels (and a really old break barrel I found in a garbage can) I can put pellet after pellet through the same hole with the aforementioned pellets. The garbage can rifle is about 40 years old and only shoots around 500fps or less—and shoots perfectly with pretty much any pellet. Same with an old 10 pump I have: bull’s-eye after bull’s-eye.

Oh, the best thing you can do for a neat pellet trap is to: fill the bottom of an empty yellow kitty litter bucket with 12 pounds of Electricians putty (not plumber putty-electrician putty). Tip the bucket on it’s side and the putty will stop hunting rounds out of a 1250fps .177 Gamo Silent Cat break barrel rifle and .22 Crosman 2240 pistol.

Photos attached. My .177 reviews have pics of the actual targets. For these pellets I’m putting photos of my electricians putty pellet catcher (and the tins of pellets with the best at top and worst at bottom) in the reviews of the pellets.

I think if you click my reviewer name it’ll take you to my other reviews. If not, oh well,

I’ll update later…

…2 years later and I just added a TKO silencer (see photo). The pellet hitting the paper is louder than the gun now.

Mike from Detroit

I started out with the basic pistol, but soon began adding accessories. The picatinny rail adapter allowed the use of a red dot sight and laser. I initially planned to do just indoor plinking, but when I shot it outdoors, I found the report to be too close to the sound of a rimfire, so I ordered the silencer adapter, and installed a Buck Rail silencer. Now, it’s “backyard friendly”. This is a powerful pistol for a CO2 gun, and very accurate. Great fun to shoot for target practice or pesting. Highly recommended !

The Crosman 2240 was introduced in 1999, my example was purchased in March of that year. I have owned several CO2 powered pistols, but nothing currently available comes close in terms of cost effectiveness, accuracy, power, compactness and serviceability. I replaced one o-ring seal ten years ago, a very easy operation as the design is simple and parts are easily available. I have been certain to use Crosman Pelgunoil since that time, with no further need of repair. I am highly impressed with this pistol’s 25 years of service. Works as well as it did on the day I bought it!

The design is closely based on the Crosman model 150, made from 1954-1967. Many of the parts are the same or nearly identical. I acquired a well used example of this pistol from the late ’50’s and it too was easily put in working condition with the replacement of an inexpensive o-ring. I am equally impressed by this old timer, which shoots as well as my 2240.

If you are looking for a serviceable, rugged, reliable, accurate, and reasonably powerful CO2 powered air pistol the 2240 is an outstanding choice!