Extreme Performance Results

[bunkerhugger]

Week 1:
Spent the first two hours tweaking settings on the gun, especially the ACE. After dialing in a sensitivity, switching paint colors was a bad idea. Had to adjust the sensitivity again. A real pain when trying my bag of mixed paint collected over the last few months - every brand and color in the book.
After tweaking started playing and encountered what I thought was a feed problem. When shooting slow the gun performed great. When I leaned on the trigger the familiar level 10 sound would kick in. This would occassionally result in full bolt stick which would disappear when I changed the gun to manual mode. This should have been a tip off but I blamed the Halo and attempted to change batteries and hoppers, to no avail.
Went home, cleaned and oiled the gun and valve very well. Grokked. Realized it had to be a level 10, not feed issue. Changed to a looser carrier. Gun fired in rapid fire after that with no bolt stick.
New problem arose. When left sitting for a couple of minutes the first trigger pull would not fire the gun. Sometimes the second trigger pull would not fire gun either. Third trigger pull always fired gun and it fired fine after that unless left sitting with no activity for several minutes. This was in electric mode. When placed in manual mode the gun always fired on first pull.
Played next day. Trigger problem remained, but played tournament practice so problem wasn't an issue as I didn't let off the trigger for that long during games. Gun performed perfect other than that. Chrono +-4 all day, using two month old hellfire and a .687 Freak insert. Broke paint twice - once after someone put a ball straight down my barrel, the other when running low on air. Both breaks showed paint at the business end of the insert, but none within finger reach of the breach.
Trigger problem still here today. It's almost like the solenoid isn't strong enough to activate the gun on the first two pulls. Pressure building in inactive gun? Electronics lose power? I don't know anything about electronics, but the pressure build sounds more reasonable. Perhaps I'll try a looser carrier again.
My two favorite responses from the field: "I've never shot a gun with so little kick." and "An Emag? If I ever get shot out by one of those things I'm selling my gear and taking up golf."

[bunkerhugger]

Week 2:
Drained the battery the night before playing. Placed the battery on a car charger on the way to pick up buddies and drive to the field. Battery got approximately one hour of charge time. Stopped at Wal-Mart and picked up a thousand rounds of JT Carnivore paint. Drop test showed two out of three balls would break on first drop. None broken in box so we loaded up and headed out.

Still had the strange firing problem. When the gun is let to sit for a while it takes multiple electric trigger pulls to fire the first shot, after which the gun fires fine. A single mechanical pull also clears the problem.

Gun did not like the Carnivore paint. After two barrel and one breech break I switched back to Hellfire and had no more problems. Particularly troublesome was that when I had a break the gun would not shoot through it, probably because I have the bolt set too gentle. My guess is the balls were breaking as they reached the breach, causing paint to leak and create too much resistance for the bolt to fire through. Checked the Halo and found no broken paint inside it.

Loaned the gun to a Cocker user for a game. He promptly used 600 rounds and ran out of paint. I used 200 rounds that game and got smacked by his back block about a dozen times. His impression: "That gun is too addictive to use every day."

Fired 2500 rounds through the gun, had no battery problem, even with the one hour charge.

[magman007]

so, you seem to be un impressed, are you happy with your purchase? or waht? id like to know how you feel

[cphilip]

Some of your e mode firing problems sound like a too close magnet in the trigger to the HES. And if your not firing but the display is still lit up and not rebooting its not a battery contact problem. Check the setting in the trigger magnet. it may be too close to the HES.

[pbguy888]

welll if you dont like it , Ill be happy to take it off your hands;)

[P4ULuk]

Can honestly say I've had nothing like those sort of problems with mine! In fact so far the gun has performed flawlessly.:)
Sorry to hear about your problems.

Paul.

[Evil Bob]

A couple of solutions:

1) Use KC Trouble free in generous amounts. With a highly tuned LVL 10 you can run into alot of initial bolt stick, KC goes a long way in toward curing that problem.

2) Switch to the next smaller spring. You'll lose a bit of the gentleness you have, but your initial bolt stick issues will completely vanish.

-Evil Bob

[Butterfingers]

Take a dremel a pen and some never dull metal polish or equivilant.

Superpolish you superbolt stem. It eliminates ANY stiction that may be present in your gun.

[automan39]

how do u polish with a dremel a pen and some never dull metal polish? could u expand on that.
thanks

[Butterfingers]

Take apart a bic pen, put a little 1 inch square of never dull in the pen so it cups the stem of the bolt. Duct tape the pen to the chuck of the dremel, hold the bolt turn the dremel on slowly. You can also use a drill. It just takes a bit longer. I found that somewhere here on AO it works really well.

[bunkerhugger]

I didn't mean to give the impression I wasn't happy with my Extreme. Quite the opposite. I am totally in love with my gun. My wife sleeps on the couch because I don't want her rolling over on the gun at night. My friends say the look on my face is embarrassing when I'm eyeing the gun. It is absolutely the most incredible gun I've ever used.

I'm hoping this blow by blow account of my Extreme experience will give people an objective view of how AGD's new marker is performing. The initial set-up problems sound fairly typical for a new marker. The paint to gun performance I think is a fair assessment. With Hellfire the gun performs great. With ridiculously shoddy paint there were some problems. I wouldn't use wal-mart paint or Hellfire on a regular basis but it's nice to know what would happen if I did.

The electronics problem is still up in the air. It really sounds like the solenoid isn't getting enough power to fire but moves the firing mechanism just a little. Eventually the little bit is enough to fire the gun and release built up pressure. Once that happens the pressure is a normal amount and the gun fires fine unless allowed to sit and the pressure rebuild. That's my theory so far but I'm open to suggestions. I'm going to try the least invasive remedies first. Perhaps a dirty reg seat is allowing slow pressure build, perhaps there's something else small that can increase the pressure that I'm missing. I'll keep trying things until I figure it out. I don't see how the magnet could be the problem with the symptoms I'm seeing, but I'll play with that too. If the firing were erratic the magnet makes sense, but firing is dead on after the initial trigger pulls.

Again, I'm very happy with the gun. The rof in hybrid mode is so fast I'm wondering if it's legal. Consistency is good, the gun feels right, and the wow factor is amazing. And when the uniqueness of my purchase wears off, I'll still have a good, high quality marker.

[bunkerhugger]

Week 3:

Ten man tournament practice this weekend. Decided not to do anything to the gun after last weekend. No cleaning, no oiling, no changes of any kind. Since my normal mode of operation involves throwing all my gear in a bag and forgetting about it until the next weekend, this seemed like a good test. I also threw the gear bag in my trunk as I made a few out of town business trips so I could see what Arizona trunk temperature would do to the marker.

Pulled the gun out on Sunday and it was exactly the same as it was the last time I played, right down to the same velocity. I cranked the velocity up to tournament strength and played with it there all day. Not once did it shoot under 290 and not once over 298. This is with Kick'n Mettalix paint and a 287 insert. I played several practices where I shot over 800 rounds a game and had no new issues develop.

The field was Sup Air on what we jokingly refer to as toxic waste. The field is on top of what feels like dirty talcum powder. In places your foot will sink three inches and create large dust clouds just walking across it. I love to play front and my gun went into this mess game after game. I had no chops, no barrel breaks, no problems at all with the dust. I had expected problems with this terrain because I can see the brass part of my on/off assembly due to the C&C's carving.

The lingering issue of the double trigger pull being needed on the first shot in electronic mode is still there.

[SeeK]

Have you put a shim behind the Hall Effect sensor? It could move in there making all the fine adjustments of the magnet a bit off. Another thing I've done when it didn't fire in E-Mode was to put an Allen wrench in the adjuster and leave it. If it fires normally (you can hear the click) then just dial the magnet in closer. If not then go out.

[AGD]

The first shot sticking after a while in limbo is an absoulutely classic L10 problem. You must use the biggest carrier that will hold air and the middle spring if you want to fix it.

AGD

[bunkerhugger]

Originally posted by AGD
The first shot sticking after a while in limbo is an absoulutely classic L10 problem. You must use the biggest carrier that will hold air and the middle spring if you want to fix it.

Roger Roger. Will go back to playing with Level 10 settings, maybe super polish the piston for fun. Odd that the mechanical trigger pull always fires the gun though.

[BlackVCG]

This is just what I can come up with to explain the situation, but I haven't proved it. I would bet that it doesn't fire in electronic mode when it's sat for awhile on the first pull because the sear is pulled down and then returned back faster than if you were to pull it manually. I think there's enough stiction there that it takes it a split second longer for the pressure pushing on the bolt to overcome that stiction and fire the bolt. With about a 30ms dwell time (time that the solenoid holds down the sear) it's down and back up quicker than if you were to pull it manually. That's the how I can explain what's going on.

Polishing the piston, using KC oil and getting the loosest carrier o-ring fit will eliminate the problem.

[openboater]

My XMAG sn:xt00021 does the same thing, even on Manual. I've tried every combination and permutation of springs, carriers and shims and no luck.

I took a bolt and carrier from a working LVL10 mag and put it on the XMAG and the same result.

I took the XMAG valve and put it on an old classic mag body with stock trigger and same hiccup.

The marker is in a box to be delivered to AGD tomorrow. (yes, I got an RA#)

[bunkerhugger]

Week 4:

I super polished the piston on my bolt and the weird problem with the gun not firing on the first trigger pull in electro has gone away. Seems like a level 10 problem combined with a solenoid problem. If the solenoid were stronger it would fire (as it does in mechanical) but if level 10 stiction weren't there we wouldn't have this problem. Going to a larger carrier made slight leaking, so it seems polishing was the correct fix this time.

While on the way to a friend's house, his classic mag got jealous, jumped off the car seat and tried to kill my Extreme. It seems to have knocked something loose in the wiring. I haven't taken the gun apart yet, but there is definitely a loose connection which causes the gun to not turn on reliably. This happened late in the week and I didn't have time to take things apart to pinpoint what damage the impact caused.

Went to Kingman, AZ to play in the Summer's End Shoot Out, a local charity game which is run every year. Battery was drained because I forgot to turn off the gun after doing demos the night before. That combined with the loose connection had me playing in mechanical mode for the first two games. Rest of the games I played in hybrid. Gun worked perfect, I went through a bunch of paint and had no problems. I think the normal modes are well enough tested that I'm going to work on the ACE and order some magnets so I can play with trigger adjustments.

On a side note, Jim Drew of Wicked Air Sports was at this tournament. His entire team played with full auto markers. While this was legal for the tournament I find it odd that Jim would do this after the stink he made about why he didn't provide full auto software for his boards. Even with full auto they weren't able to beat the pump guys though - Yuma Rattlers won the tournament playing with their all stock class guns. Go Yuma!

[Fred]

Originally posted by bunkerhugger
On a side note, Jim Drew of Wicked Air Sports was at this tournament. His entire team played with full auto markers. While this was legal for the tournament I find it odd that Jim would do this after the stink he made about why he didn't provide full auto software for his boards. Even with full auto they weren't able to beat the pump guys though - Yuma Rattlers won the tournament playing with their all stock class guns. Go Yuma!

HA! That's great!

:p Stock class: Skillz conquer every time!

---Fred