regulator piston problem and thoughts

[athomas]

as of today im not yet find an good answer to my problem more then that most of the problem seems to come from that modern paint gets smaller and smaller and the barral to paint match dont get near the standard what is good and acceptable.

The closer you get to a perfect match, the more fluctuation you will get when there is an odd sized ball. If you want better consistency for all balls, you need to go really tight, or really loose. The downside of tight is that you will experience an increase in busted balls. The downside of loose is decreased air efficiency. I use a really loose barrel for competition. For reference, I shoot your ball size in a 0.693 or 0.695 inch barrel without any accuracy issues.

[athomas]

Also, don't use any oil that leaves a sticky residue. The light oils required for a mag provide a wetting for lubrication without causing a buildup or oring sticking.

[Sandman]

95 percent of velocity fluctuation is paint quality and barrel match. 3% is input regulator failure. 1% the gun. that leaves 1% for Extra Terrestrial interference.

[SWE HooK]

95 percent of velocity fluctuation is paint quality and barrel match. 3% is input regulator failure. 1% the gun. that leaves 1% for Extra Terrestrial interference.

well looks like the 1% of ET interference is what i got this time

took a close look at all my valves (3)and one is a 8hole mod the other is the one that got the FPS drop (#10046) and next seems to be a clone mag.
the #46 got tiny air passages ,070" (1.8mm) and some delicate job with drillpress in the valve body its now .118" (3mm) and in the regulator half .10" (2.5mm)
and woila the problem of shootdown during rapid fire seems to be gone altleast during test fire and i need to borrow the crono down at the field to get it confermed over crono if the problem of airflow is gone.

as i earlier have tryed both the 8hole regulator and clone on the #46 valve front and the problem of shootdown still appered but not with the 8hole walve as complete the problem got lokated to front valve on #46 and that got the tiny air pasages that is now drilled out to slightly larger and airflow got better as the area got up by 120% just by an increse of diameter of roughly 50%.
will get back to tell the rest of this storry as soon as i got the crono numbers.

[Sandman]

If the valve is matched and was made properly, drilling bigger air holes would not fix anything. A properly matched and made 68 Automag valve can pass about 10 times more air than you can shoot. That was calculated and determined when we first encountered the airflow problem with the original 3000 serial#'s. Tom made sure that problem would never happen again. If by drilling your valves you are "fixing" your problems then I certainly can't say to stop doing that, but I can say for certain if your valves are made properly...no defects etc... then drilling more holes, bigger holes etc...is not fixing your airflow issue, despite the results you seem to be getting.

To be clear I'm not telling you what to do or not do do and I have no specific knowledge of the valves you are testing. Your situation may be well outside the purview of a good condition stock valve.

[SWE HooK]

If the valve is matched and was made properly, drilling bigger air holes would not fix anything. A properly matched and made 68 Automag valve can pass about 10 times more air than you can shoot. That was calculated and determined when we first encountered the airflow problem with the original 3000 serial#'s. Tom made sure that problem would never happen again. If by drilling your valves you are "fixing" your problems then I certainly can't say to stop doing that, but I can say for certain if your valves are made properly...no defects etc... then drilling more holes, bigger holes etc...is not fixing your airflow issue, despite the results you seem to be getting.

To be clear I'm not telling you what to do or not do do and I have no specific knowledge of the valves you are testing. Your situation may be well outside the purview of a good condition stock valve.

thanks sandman for your input and as i dont got my hands on anny other valve more then those i got at this point but as it seem looking at pics of others valve mine seem to had unusual small air passages.
in my case ther seem to be working with the mod that had been done this time and yes the air passage from regulator to valve dident match as it where of quite a bit almost half a turn off.

[SWE HooK]

well today i got hold of the crono and som slight dimpled paint and it is cold today in sweden 40fahrenheit ore +5degrees to try out the mod with and the problem with random speed that coult be heard before that the marker lost speed and power is gone well there where some diffrent speed shown on the crono and tryed to get round 280fps and some shots between 270-290 most due to half ass paint but the shoot down is gone.

tryed the same paint in my other marker cronoed to 280fps (field limit) just for referance and got the same variable in speed also tryed the paint in firends marker (T98) to gett a referance in an other marker and he got same speed differance roughly as me so yes some of the irregular speed today got its reasons but the shootdown that could clearly be heard before is gone eaven tho the crono show some speed differance.

[athomas]

That was calculated and determined when we first encountered the airflow problem with the original 3000 serial#'s. Tom made sure that problem would never happen again.

I think they went well past the 3000s. The first mag valve I bought in early 1993 was in the low 8000s and it had the misaligned hole that caused flow issues. I marked it and properly angle drilled the back to match the front. The factory fix came after that.

[athomas]

the other is the one that got the FPS drop (#10046).....the #46 got tiny air passages ,070" (1.8mm) and some delicate job with drillpress in the valve body its now .118" (3mm) and in the regulator half .10" (2.5mm)

Have you checked the alignment of the holes. That was the problem with flow in earlier valves, more so than the size of the hole. The 8 hole mods were a quick fix, but only because they located two of the holes closer to the hole in the front half so it doubled the amount of flow through the small circular groove where the valves joined together. The front hole size increase will help, but not as much as the alignment, although any decrease in flow restriction is a good thing.

Mark the side of the front half of the valve, where the hole is located. Then screw the valve halves together and mark the back half to line up with the mark on the front half. If the hole in the back half doesn't line up with the hole in the front half, a new one should be drilled in the back so that it does line up. It needs to be properly angled into the reservoir in the back or you ruin the back. Its not hard to do with a tilted vise and a drill press.

[SWE HooK]

Have you checked the alignment of the holes. That was the problem with flow in earlier valves, more so than the size of the hole. The 8 hole mods were a quick fix, but only because they located two of the holes closer to the hole in the front half so it doubled the amount of flow through the small circular groove where the valves joined together. The front hole size increase will help, but not as much as the alignment, although any decrease in flow restriction is a good thing.

Mark the side of the front half of the valve, where the hole is located. Then screw the valve halves together and mark the back half to line up with the mark on the front half. If the hole in the back half doesn't line up with the hole in the front half, a new one should be drilled in the back so that it does line up. It needs to be properly angled into the reservoir in the back or you ruin the back. Its not hard to do with a tilted vise and a drill press.

as stated earlier my valve got its original holes of by almost 180 degrees and thay where tiny as heck on top of that, the holes shown in the valve seen in this clip from bacci the hole is huge in comparison to my hole before the drilling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inhflCbL5pE