The Fabled "Magic Box"

[robertsr1811]

The "magic box" was also known as the "cheater box" where I played. You could tip your gun to run a pile of liquid CO2 into the box and then fire off a shot so hot it could rip the door of a chevy.

It's a neat thing from a historical viewpoint, but it's at best useless and at worst dangerous to use with CO2.

[SlartyBartFast]

The "magic box" was also known as the "cheater box"

And is it surprising that the thing was made by Smart Parts?

[Doc Nickel]

"Cheater" box? First I've heard if it- and I was around when the 'Box first came out.

All the box is, is an aluminum cover over two short pipes. One is simply an extension of the normal air-in fitting, the other is a capped pipe extension screwed into a hole drilled and tapped into the side of the dump chamber. The "box" is just an aluminum clamp that fits over the two.

The air-in extension doesn't do anything; it just spaces the fitting or QD out far enough to clear the chamber extension.

The chamber extension is just a piece of blocked-off pipe nipple. It adds a small amount of additional internal volume to the 'Mag dump chamber.

That's all there is to it.

When you're looking at a dump-chamber marker ('Mag, Shocker, Ion, etc.) you can do two things to alter the gun's velocity: You can change the chamber volume (more is faster, since a larger volume of compressed air holds more energy) or change the pressure (again, more is faster, since higher pressure air holds more energy.)

The "Black Box" mod added more volume, so to keep the velocity the same, you needed to reduce the pressure.

Chamber pressure reportedly dropped around 50 psi, from about 450 to about 400 or so. Not a huge change. This reduction typically cost you 10% of your tank efficiency- meaning that if a standard 'Mag of the time got 600 shots per 20 ounce, a 'Boxed 'Mag would get about 540.

Keep in mind that pressure has almost nothing to do with efficiency. A Phantom gets almost fifty shots off a 12-gram, and runs at 800 psi. An old Shoebox Shocker ran at 180 psi but would get, barely, two shots off that same cartridge.

The CO2 probalem Roberts mentioned happened to ALL 'Mags of the day, not just 'Boxed 'Mags. The regulator acted as a "check valve", and if you managed to fill the chamber with liquid, you'd get an astoundingly hot shot. Happened all the time back when we used to run a lot of 'Mags, especially in the winter.

Which reminds me of another bit- that "gold" bolt in that 'Mag is an old (around 1996) Pro-Team Products venturi bolt. The "gold" was titanium nitriding, just like you see on those fancy-shmancy drill bits at Home Depot. TiNitride is actually pretty good stuff, it's a surface hardening and lubricity treatment- problem is, on the PTP bolt, it was applied over non-heat-treated stainless steel with poor quality control.

The edge where the sear catches tended to wear- badly and rapidly- and if you had a few incidents with liquid CO2 like I mentioned above, the center post tended to start working loose, pretty much locking up the gun.

Doc.

[SlartyBartFast]

"Cheater" box? First I've heard if it- and I was around when the 'Box first came out.

It was my understanding at the time the box came out that the one the All Americans (I think) used wasn't the same as the one SMart Parts sold...

Could be wrong, I've been wrong before.


Now, to increase the efficiency of a mag, you increase the pressure in the dump chamber.

TK has before said that there was a kit of spacers tested with Mags that would be placed in the dumpchamber on valves that could be separated. There was talk of trying the same with modern valves and coiled wire or something else inserted through the powertube.

No one reported back any findings though.

[pump]

The edge where the sear catches tended to wear- badly and rapidly

yep!

[Doc Nickel]

It was my understanding at the time the box came out that the one the All Americans (I think) used wasn't the same as the one SMart Parts sold...

-There's nothing to the 'box that could really be changed between "versions". At best, one might have a lightly larger chamber than another, but that's it. It's just a portable hole.

Legend has it a Brit developed the idea as the "Black Box", and SP, always on the lookout for an unpatented idea they can snitch, swiped it and called it the "Magic Box", unchanged except for probably more production-quality parts.

Later, SP had some valves made by AGD that had a larger internal volume built in (holes drilled into the "dead space" of the valve body on either side of the on-off passages.) I don't know how many of these were made, but the idea was the same- just a larger dump chamber.

That's possibly what you were thinking about, as a difference between the off the shelf version and the factory-team's guns.

TK has before said that there was a kit of spacers tested with Mags that would be placed in the dumpchamber on valves that could be separated. There was talk of trying the same with modern valves and coiled wire or something else inserted through the powertube.

-There was another "special" version of the 'Mag... did they call it the HyperMag? "Made" by... geeze, my memory's going... Was it Fox River Games? This one went the other way- it had a smaller dump chamber volume, which increased the op pressure by roughly 50 psi. This boosted efficiency by about the same 10%, and on HPA, tended to give a touch quicker recharge and, supposedly, a little better consistency. (AIR regulators, like the Uni-Regs of the time, liked higher pressures, both in and out.)

Again, I don't know how many were made, or how they made them.

Doc.