Marker reliability...

[punkncat]

I see all the time on the forums people trashing this marker or that, talking about how it breaks all the time, etc. "Oh, don't get a ______, cause my buddies girlfirends cousin has one and its always breaking on him....." and so forth and so on.
(Of course none of that applies to mags or vikings)

Now I have owned almost every high end marker out at one point or another. There are very few mainstream markers that I haven't owned. And even the ones I haven't owned I have had something much like it with little exception. In all the years I have had all these different markers I have very seldom run into any that failed so badly that I was unable to play. And of all those times, MOST of the problems were my fault in the first place. Even then, with an o ring, some teflon or the like, it didn't stay down long.

Now maybe I have been really lucky.....but actually I attribute it to frequent careful maintainance and actually having some mechanical abilty. Some yo yo that can't boil and egg for himself goes monkeying with a marker and suddenly its a piece of junk.....I guess I should thank those kind of folks. I have picked up many a basket case marker for near nothing, took a few minutes to put it back together right and enjoyed much continued service from it. Kind of makes me wonder though. The two kings of reliabilty, one so simply built that its impossible NOT to be able to fix it, and the other is difficult enough to get into that it takes user error out of the equation. If you aren't smart enough to open it, you can't break it either....

[68magOwner]

I agree completley that people break markers, its not that markers just break. I have owned many vikings, many timmys, shockers, ALL generations of matricies excepts the VERY early mech ones, a quest, freestyles, imps, e-cockers, angles so on and such forth. And, while I have had some markers that worked better/more consistently for me, I dont think I have ever had any marker go down, maybe a marker needs to be lubed or have an oring replaced at the beginnig or end of the day, but, nothing more than routine matinance.

If your marker needs work, 99.7% of the time, its your fault.

[WenULiVeUdiE]

As stated above, most of the time it is user error.

When you read those threads, take notice to the upgrades in the gun. It seems to me that the more upgrades a user installs and uses, the more prone it is to needing repair. Now such a situation may be due to several factors. The first factor being the person merely installed the part wrong. Things did not go as they should and they damaged their marker. The second factor is with a large combination of upgrades, people still follow the standard guidlines of maintenance for that marker. Thus, they improperly maintain their marker. Also, the upgrades themselves may be detrimental to the markers performance.

I always do what ever the manufacturer says as far as maintenance and cleaning. They designed and built the gun. They know more about how to maintain it than some random person on an internet forum...

I guess with all that said, my ownership of a Viking comes as no surprise.

[buzzboy]

Most of the stuff about guns being unreliable is just dumb. Espicially when bashing smartparts. Everyone claims that Ions are cheap pieces of plastic that break often. Now everybody, How many people have you seen break an Ion and it be the guns fault?

The only guns I have seen actually kill themselves are brass eagles. Such as plastic parts breaking. So the moral of this story is:

If you have a decent paintball gun(made of metal) there is a good chance that if it dies

A)Oring
B)You broke it
C)You "fixed it"
D)You did a "MOD"

[can'tthink of1]

I've never had a gun work more than one day well. I have terrible luck with markers, I can understand everything, know how to figure and fix stuff, but it's crazy, i've never had a flawless working marker for the most part. With that said it's prolly some stupid little user error, but I've had even a tech buddy work on guns that never work quite right.

[NewbieMagMan10988]

The only gun that ever really "went down on me" was my old Doc's Machine Purple Rainmaker. But that had hoses that were 5 years old, pinched wires, old springs (it looked SWEET though...).

Other than that my guns have just needed simple repairs, orings, lube, teflon, tighten a screw.


I think most guns (aside from plastic) will last as long as you want them to.

I really think that (and i know many will hate me for it) spyders are more reliable than mags. I say this having owned 2 spyders that worked ALL the time nomatter what i did to them, And having a classic valve mag that only worked with HPA and used tons of oil to seal. Im sure it was an oring somewhere, but a spyder is alot easier to trouble shoot than a mag valve. Yes i konw alot of people cn fix mags, but ask just abuot anyone whos been playing for more than a year to take apart and clean a spyder and ask the same people to do the same thing with a mag....well, you get the idea.

What is this thread about again?


Just my $.02

I love mags, i really liked my buddies warp left x-valve mag when he had it. Maybe i just got unlucky.


Mike