Miilermatic 185......

Have had this thing sitting in the corner of the garage for years now. Been wanting to build me a table so I can play around/practice TIG welding so I figured might as well clean it up a bit. I took it outside and blew all the cobwebs out of it. Noticed that the wire was "loose" in the gun. Tension is adjusted correctly. Figured the liner was probably shot so took the old one out, ran some air thru the gun and installed a new one. Put it back together and wire is still loose. Best way to describe it is release the trigger to stop the wire from feeding. You can push the wire back into the gun a good 1/2" or so. Needless to say the mess that occurs if you try to weld with it....Any ideas?