Quote Originally Posted by Waski_the_Squirrel View Post
Very nice! I have a Challenger in a green finish, and I enjoy it very much. Parker made some truly great pens!

And, on a side note: I never took it apart to the level that you did. So I found your post instructive. Thank you!
Thanks, the pressure bar is actually still assembled in the pic (there's a tiny little tab that holds it together at the top end, and at the bottom end, the bent part keeps it anchored by the button with the button pressing in on the middle bar.).

Mainly had it dropped out when a friend of mine online was telling me to check for the 'tab' by the button to make sure the pressure bar was still probably good before purchasing it.

The Challenger is still inked (montblanc Irish Green) and with some minor adjustment to the nib and nib/feed placement it's writing rather well. Seems that whoever previously owned the pen really like writing at a high vertical angle so they kind of wore the nose flat, used a tiny bit of mylar on the sides to control the scratch of the edges, but I didn't touch the textured surface much at all in order to keep that pleasant almost hard-pencil feedback. (a 60x loupe is really handy for that). I'm surprised though that there's relatively a lot of tipping compared to some of the other older pens I have.

I will post new writing samples soon as the flow is a tiny bit wetter and more consistent, edges still sharp, and feels like a very good EDC pen. The only thing I *might* change is swapping out the 15 straight sac for a 20, assuming that's not too tight a fit for the barrel (despite catalogs suggesting it would work). It gets a little under half a mililiter or so, which for most casual writing isn't too bad, just maybe not heavy essay writing throughout the day.

I am actually liking it more than I thought I would, compared to my previous experience with some Vacumatics, but some of that has more to do with the feedback and crispness I'm getting from the nib (as the vacumatics, and similar, I usually got the previous owner did their own smoothing rather than kept it from the way it was in the wild).