What's the deal with this warp?

[factoid]

I just bought a used warp feed on the cheap. I bought it knowing full well that it was someone's "project" and I expected it not to work out of the box.

The pictures showed some bizarre wiring coming out of the dust cover and they had drilled in an on/off switch.

So I get the thing and immediately take it apart to clean it and figure out what's wrong with it.

The internals are filthy but in pretty decent shape. The urethane disks are still flexible. The screws have gotten rusty, but I can either sand those clean or replace them. It has all the parts except for a couple:

The upper tube cap
The dust cover
and the PC BOARD!

The board is completely gone and sticking out of the dust cover is a weird electrical-taped wiring mess. They've desoldered the board from the motor and resoldered some new wires to it (badly I might add). There's an on/off switch that was added to the circuit, and then it goes to a female molex two-pin connector.

The mail end of that connector is even weirder. It's a mess of electrical tape and wires that all lead to a tiny lever microswitch. Not the same one used in AGD Intelliframes, but even smaller and without the roller on the end.

Nowhere in this wiring setup is there a power connector of any kind. So what you have is basically a circuit consisting of an on/off toggle, a microswitch wired for Common and Normally Open, a motor and no power source.

Odd, right? Does anyone have any idea what the previous owner might have been attempting to do with this thing? Can you really forgo a PC board entirely and just wire the motor for on/off operation?

I'll try to take some pictures tonight or tomorrow.

[vf-xx]

Possibly they intended to wire it in series with the solenoid of an emag?

[factoid]

Possibly they intended to wire it in series with the solenoid of an emag?

THat's kind of what I thought, but they didn't really leave any connection spots for power. If you ignore the on/off toggle it's basically a lever microswitch attached to a motor. Maybe there's some unused leads underneath the electrical tape mess.

[leloup]

Get your money back? Or talk to Tuna, he might be able to hook you up with the pc board (if not him, call AGD and they will).

[factoid]

Get your money back? Or talk to Tuna, he might be able to hook you up with the pc board (if not him, call AGD and they will).

Nah, it was a fair deal. I got it dirt cheap. I just cut a deal for a used board so I should have it up and running soon, as long as the motor is still functional. I guess I should check that before I order the other spare parts I need. Seems like a standard DC motor size, so if it's busted I can probably get a replacement cheap from digikey or someone like that.

[factoid]

Checked the motor and it works fine. Got a used board arriving next week. I don't know if I'll get to play with it this season or not, which is kind of a bummer. It's been been cold and rainy on the weekends lately. The cold doesn't bother me but we all know how well rain and paintballs mix.

Maybe I'll get one or two dry weekends in october, otherwise the first use this thing is going to see is a winterball game with my cousins at thanksgiving. What sucks is that I'll have to learn how to fix up my uncle's old piranhas without actually having them in hand until I go out there in november, otherwise we'll only have about 4 or 5 guns between us.