questions and help with fine tuning

[tmnothing]

This past weekend I had a problem with my xmag breaking paint. at friday's practice I broke a few balls (formula 13 paint) and I didnt really think anything of it because I think they were barrel breaks I dont think it chopped. Well at the tournament I played on sunday I was breaking paint like mad, leaving my gun basicly useless most of the day. Most of them were barrel breaks and some were chops. We were using rps hyperball paint and I tried various inserts for my freak. I even had my vision on (even adjusted it for the specific paint we had) and brand new batteries in my halo b and every time I tried to rip off a stream i would have a blender. Now right now I'm mostly blaming the paint (i dont want to admit that my xmag is not perfect) because it was really crappy paint and also the wet and rainy weather conditions but I still have a few questions.

I never changed anything with the x-valve in my xmag except putting a blue bumper on after the clear one disintegrated. The level x/spring are still as they came. I have checked in the past and my lx is kind of rough, not as soft as my other lxs. The spring that came stock on the xmag was a short spring. Is there a specific reason why a short spring came stock? Last time I installed a lx i was told to use a short spring for indoor play/low velocities. I want to try to soften up my lx a little so I was thinking of switching to the red spring, is that not a good idea? What about taking out shims? I've never had a leaking problem but I know if I take some shims out it will soften the bolt. I'm not even sure how many come stock, should I even mess with it and risk causing a leak?

Any other suggestions on how to help this situation here feel free to post! Thanks!

[Dayspring]

The short spring is the easiest to get running. You can use the red spring indoors, I do it all the time. It works just fine from 260-300fps.

Shims have no real effect on how soft the bolt will hit. They change where the oring will seal on the bolt, and will stop/fix bolt stick issues. It just changed where it'll vent when it DOES hit the ball.

If you want a soft set up, use the red spring, and a slightly tighter oring than what you're using. You'll need to give the reg a bit of a crank to overcome the friction from the oring and the increased tension from the spring. But it'll be softer.


I never changed anything with the x-valve in my xmag except putting a blue bumper on after the clear one disintegrated. The level x/spring are still as they came. I have checked in the past and my lx is kind of rough, not as soft as my other lxs. The spring that came stock on the xmag was a short spring. Is there a specific reason why a short spring came stock? Last time I installed a lx i was told to use a short spring for indoor play/low velocities. I want to try to soften up my lx a little so I was thinking of switching to the red spring, is that not a good idea? What about taking out shims? I've never had a leaking problem but I know if I take some shims out it will soften the bolt. I'm not even sure how many come stock, should I even mess with it and risk causing a leak?

Any other suggestions on how to help this situation here feel free to post! Thanks!

[Havoc_online]

The short spring is the easiest to get running. You can use the red spring indoors, I do it all the time. It works just fine from 260-300fps.

Shims have no real effect on how soft the bolt will hit. They change where the oring will seal on the bolt, and will stop/fix bolt stick issues. It just changed where it'll vent when it DOES hit the ball.

If you want a soft set up, use the red spring, and a slightly tighter oring than what you're using. You'll need to give the reg a bit of a crank to overcome the friction from the oring and the increased tension from the spring. But it'll be softer.


What's up Nick? I got more faith in you than that dude.

tmnothing
You can get away with the red/mid spring indoors like he said - just make sure you use a long tip on your barrel.

Shims do have a slight effect on how much time the bolt has to accelerate, so the fewer you can get away with, the better.

Don't do that tighter o'ring is softer crap... It doesnt work, it makes the bolt hit HARDER, once the bolt gets past that added friction, it has a higher initial velocity. Airgun was wrong about this. Using the biggest carrier that doesnt leak will be the softest.

As for your Xmag breaking paint. I think there is another reason. You would be amazed with how old and bad the paint my X lets me shoot can be. My guess is sure the LX could use some tuning, but the detent is probably the main problem. If you hear the LX kicking in at all under rapid fire, your not outshooting your HALO, but the LX thinks that the force of the detent and the ball is actually a ball not ready to load. So in that case, back the detent out a tad with some teflon to keep it tight. Now if you dont hear the LX kick in under rapid fire but your constantly getting barrel breaks and sometimes chops, the Detent might be too far out. It's trial and error until you've done it enough. You want the detent in as far as it can go without causing the rapidfire chuffs.

Hope this helps, if not I can take a look at it for you.

[tmnothing]

I'm going to work on the gun a little bit tonight. First I'm going to switch to the red spring but what does that have to do with the tip on my barrel? I have a 10" freak which means the tip is quite small. I dont usually play indoors but I usually keep my velocity at 275-280.

I'm not going to mess with the carriers and I dont want to mess with the shims especially since I had some leak problems with my lx and x-valve on my rt (if it's not broke dont fix it). Is there a set number that AGD would put in on a stock x-mag? I dont want to unscrew the tip unless I know how many are in there.

Havoc I'll do some trial and error with the detent. I was hoping there was something else I could possible blame this on, I didnt think of the detent. With vision AND the lx I was pretty concerned in the breaking. Also, now that you mention it I WAS hearing the level 10 chuff a few times when I was trying to rip at the chrono station. I dont know if it was happening during play I probably wouldnt even notice unless it was excessive. The reason I didnt think anything of it was because I switched from my halo b to my halo tsa (thinking maybe the halo was the prob) and so I figured I was outshooting it because i have that trigger set up (fireblade) so I can walk it like nothing. I'll work with that throughout tonight and tomorrow.

Thanks guys

[Havoc_online]

The longer the barrel tip you use, the more gas your wasting. So if you want to use the longer springs at lower velocities, using a longer tip tricks the marker into thinking that it's still shooting 270-300. Infact, if your chrono'ing that high with a 10" tip, you might not even have to adjust the velocity at all to shoot 250 if you slap on a 16" or so tip.

As for the amount of Shims AGD installs, could be anything from 1-3, usually 2 though.

[Hellaspaint]

You say that you replace the clear bumper with a blue one. That is wrong and you will destroy the sear. There is a thread about that and Black said that for sure. Please check that, it will save you money and time.

[tmnothing]

The clear bumpers last about 200 shots on my x-valve. I replaced it with a blue one a while ago and I believed I talked to some of the experts here and they said it wouldnt matter. I do remember BlackVCD had a thread where he suggested a rubber glue to hold the bumper in place... well I did that and yesterday it took me an hour to get the bumper off to replace it. What a mess. I dont see how any damage could be caused by using a blue bumper on an x-valve but i'm wrong, one of the techs please correct me.

Anyway, back to the original problem. I put the red spring in my gun and had to turn up the velocity a little to shoot. I dont have a chrono so I dont know what I'm shooting at right now, I'll have to wait until sunday. Anyway I started ripping on my gun and I got a few chuffs like in the middle of the string. I backed out the detent just a hair and then ripped off another string (until I was out of paint) and didnt have one chuff. I put a small o-ring on the detent to keep it tight since it looks like that was the problem all along. I'm going to keep working with it through the weekend. Thanks guys.

[Hellaspaint]

If you are using the blue bumper Black say's that you will wear the sear. The blue is harder so the energy of the bolt is not absorbed good enough and the kick with the sear is harder. Keep in mind the higher rates of fire, so a lot of energy in short time.
Any way, good luck.

[tmnothing]

Well I guess in theory that does make sense. I hate those stupid clear bumpers though they last like 5 minutes.

[Hellaspaint]

Yes, you are absolutely right. Listen what happen here. We have 6 XMags and 1 Automag with XValve. Two of them ( in a total of 7 XValves) had problem with there bumper ( i mean the bumper destroyed after 2000-3000 shoots). I replaced them from parts kit and are ok. I suppose there is a batch of that material with problem.