Minimag issues

[HDIDDY]

Hello there, I just purchased a used mini a month ago and had a blast with it the first time I took it out. Since I plan on having it for a long time, I took it out of service for a little while so that I could personalize it and make it my own. So I had the main tube and the rail it sits on powder coated. It still has the level 7 bolt, that worked fine before the powdercoating. After the powder coating the mag just isnt working right. It gasses up and fire once or twice with out problems. Then it starts to double fire, ill pull and hold the trigger actuating the bolt once, then when I release the trigger it will fire again. Then sometimes the bolt will get hung up and just leak air. Im thinking that maybe the powder coating has increased some of the tollerences between the sear and air valve. Im going to take all the paint off the top of the rail and bottom of the tube to see if that changes anything. If this doesnt fix it I may just buy a new tube and rail. Any ideas? Thanks.

[factoid]

Hello there, I just purchased a used mini a month ago and had a blast with it the first time I took it out. Since I plan on having it for a long time, I took it out of service for a little while so that I could personalize it and make it my own. So I had the main tube and the rail it sits on powder coated. It still has the level 7 bolt, that worked fine before the powdercoating. After the powder coating the mag just isnt working right. It gasses up and fire once or twice with out problems. Then it starts to double fire, ill pull and hold the trigger actuating the bolt once, then when I release the trigger it will fire again. Then sometimes the bolt will get hung up and just leak air. Im thinking that maybe the powder coating has increased some of the tollerences between the sear and air valve. Im going to take all the paint off the top of the rail and bottom of the tube to see if that changes anything. If this doesnt fix it I may just buy a new tube and rail. Any ideas? Thanks.

Yep, that's your problem. WHen you powercoat a mag body you need to mask of the areas between the rail and body. Those tolerances are very specific and anything more than a few thousandths of an inch affects it.

Hopefully you plugged up all the holes in the body when you coated it so that it doesn't have any coating on the interior of the tube, at least in the back half where the valve goes in. The barrel section is probably less of an issue, but it could possibly make your barrel a lot tighter and harder to insert and remove.

When I powder coated my steel bodied mag I laid a piece of painter's tape sticky side up on the rail, then put the body on. I used an exacto knife to cut the tape where body and rail meet. Then I pulled it off and removed the center strip. The powder coating place then covered up just that center region with their high-temp masking tape and removed the rest of the painter's tape.

For the rail they just covered up the entire center facet of the rail since none of it is visible with the body and valve installed.

If you have to sand away powder coating be careful with removing too much metal, especially on the rail because the aluminum will sand away faster than the stainless.

[cyberave68]

What he said ^^^^^ :ninja:

[HDIDDY]

I used a chemical stripper, aircraft paint remover. It did the job and now the marker works like the precision piece of machinery it is.

[211]

pics?

[factoid]

I used a chemical stripper, aircraft paint remover. It did the job and now the marker works like the precision piece of machinery it is.


How difficult was that do do? Can you just soak a rag or cottonball on it and remove in fairly precise areas?

Cause if this is a reasonable method for removing powdercoating it's a heck of a lot cheaper to get pieces coated if you don't have to have them masked off first. My coater charged me 15 bucks for the coating and another 15 or 20 for the masking and prep work they had to do.

[HDIDDY]

Here are some pics, is you want something closer or you want me to disassemble the marker I can get photos of that also. I got it pretty much stock, except it had forward grip, and a braided stainless line ran around the grip into the left of the air bottle adapter. I removed the braided line and put in place black macro, and black fittings, as well also moving the the line from the air bottle adapter from the left to the right.

http://imageshack.us/thumbnmail.png (http://img338.imageshack.us/i/guns005.jpg/)
http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/7073/guns004.th.jpg (http://img713.imageshack.us/i/guns004.jpg/)
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/6714/guns001.th.jpg (http://img530.imageshack.us/i/guns001.jpg/)

The chemical stripper is some pretty nasty stuff. You have to be very careful not to get any on anything you dont want fed up. The instructions say to pretty much paint on the stripper and wait 15-20 min. The stripper made the powder coat bubble in most places and could just easily be wiped off. In other places it made it really soft where I could peal off the paint, or use my thumb nail to scrape it off. Mind you, if you get any on your hands you want to wash your hands as soon as your finished. It will most likely cause a little irritation, maybe even a burning sensation.

[HDIDDY]

[img=http://imageshack.us/thumbnmail.png] (http://img338.imageshack.us/i/guns005.jpg/)

Another pic