Originally Posted by
bisbonian
After a number of years I'm resurrecting my classic Automag and am realizing the reason I left it sitting so long is that it's never worked right since I got it.
I've decided to go back to stock, if I can get it sorted here then I can work on doing other things as I feel necessary.
I bought a new parts kit but haven't put any of it in yet. To start I just took it all apart and used copious amounts of oil on all prints.
I have 2 power tube spacers, .230" and one that measures around .225". The .230" spacer was what has always been in there but I thought stock was .220 so I decided to stick the .225 spacer in there initially as that was as close as I had.
The gun worked well with no leaks. I don't have any paint right now so the next bit is going by sound. If I shot slowly then it sounded like each pop had an equal and snappy sound, very nice. If I tried upping the pace then it began to sound like the shots would weaken and very little force behind them. At some point the bolt stuck, I took the barrel off and used a piece of plastic to push on the bolt and it reset (as shown in the Tom Kaye video). I remembered from the video that Tom had replaced the power tube spring for bolt stick so I decided my power tube spacer might be the problem.
Since the only other spacer I have is the .230" one I put that in there. With this spacer I had leaking down the barrel (leak stops with the trigger in) so now I'm believing the .230" spacer is wrong.
So my next thought is that I should pop for a spacer kit and try the .220" spacer. I want to check with the experts here before I do this to see if this sounds reasonable, I don't mind spending money to fix it but don't want to just keep on throwing cash out the window.