What do I have here?

[MadMechanic]

Hello everyone.

I have been out of the paintball world for many years now and have been feeling somewhat nostalgic lately. I was surfing eBay recently and decided to see what Automag stuff I could get for what I thought would be good deals. I have never messed with Automags before so I figured this might be a fun little project. (I did own an Automag ULE with x-valve that I ordered new with a purple ULE body and single trigger frame, however I sold this marker in 2017 having never played a game with it)

I made a couple purchases and among them I have acquired what I believe are two 68 Automag Classic valves. Once I received my parts, I decided to take these valves apart and see if they showed any obvious signs of wear or damage.

What I found instead were some differences between the two valves so now I'm curious as to what exactly I have.

I'm no stranger to working on paintball guns, I did all of my own maintenance on my Tippmann 98 back in the day and about 10 years ago I built a fully functional AutoCocker from parts I bought separately having never owned or touched an AutoCocker in my life up to that point. I'm also a mechanical engineer, so I can't stop myself from taking stuff apart to see how it works.

Here are some photos of the valves.



The valve on the left has matching serial numbers (CF10684) with the laser etched "68 Automag" intact on both the valve body and the regulator body. The valve on the right does not have matching serial numbers. It's valve body is CF41928 but the regulator body is CF12630. Additionally the valve body does not have any evidence of the laser etching for "68 Aut" while the regulator body does have it's laser etching for "tomag".

The next thing I noticed is that the regulator bodies are different in their porting. EDIT: I have learned that this is the "8 hole" mod and I feel kinda dumb for asking about this now.


*CF10684 on the left, CF12630 on the right.

I also noted a difference in the regulator spring pack.



Beyond that, the numbers matching valve also had a .220 power tube spacer while the mis-match valve does not have any spacer.

Minor differences would be the regulator nut, CF10684 has a knurled adjuster nut with what looks like threaded holes for set screws to fix the nut in place while CF12630 has a standard nut that requires an allan wrench to adjust. I'm assuming the knurled adjuster is some after market part and not an original AGD part, obviously I could be quite wrong about that.

During disassembly of the numbers matching valve I discovered that the previous owner of this valve probably had no idea what they were doing because the on/off assembly was installed backwards.

So, what do I have here. I'm interested to find out.

Also, if anyone has any tips or tricks for unscrewing the power tube from the main valve body I'd like to know. Thanks!

-MadMechanic