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Ion and paint problems

I'm trying to clear my way through a lot of the myths and what my mate said kindof stuff, and tryiing to home in on hard facts... so bottom line. Is the faster action of the firing bolt the reason I am breaking 'cheaper' paint in the barrel, whereas my stock ion would shoot anything?

From what I have seen so far it would seem so but has anyone else got any further comment?


Marcus I applaud you for trying to sort the fact from fiction when it comes to theories about guns.


I do often go on an anti QEV tirade, and I will always maintain a QEV will make your Ion harder on paint. But as Lucky tech has pointed out, I fail to see how site paint would ever be too brittle for an ion of any description.

This paint goes well enough the siteguns yeah? They are blowbacks right?


In that case it can only be the size and shape of the paint thats causing a problem.

The stock barrel should be loose enough to shoot all but the biggest paints, do you have any of this paint left to test with? If so, try putting one through your feedneck and out the front of the gun, see how easily that fits.... Try sizing it up with your freak inserts to see what kind of calibre it is.

If your paint is bigger than 0.70 calibre :eek: , it may not fit in the breach.
 

Marcus Geezer

Platinum Member
Thanks guys for your help and confidence.

I havent got any site paint left, and it's a shame cos with the detents changed and the lucky stage 3 installed I would have been interested to see if these would have made any difference, however considering I believe the fault lies in the increased speed of the bolt, as a result of the faster action of the QEV, these probably wouldnt make any difference.

I did try sizing one site paint up (Diablo formula 13) with my freaks and found that most fitted the size two down from largest, but then the odd ball wouldn't fit, so decided to go with the largest freak bore, which pretty much all fitted down.

I suppose you have a trade off here. You install a QEV to reduce cycling time and increase efficiency, but you lose the ability to fire cheaper site type paint.

Well, considering that if you buy more than a couple of boxes from somewhere like LiPS, you can buy good quality paint at equivalent rates that site paint is being sold at when you do a walk-on, so as long as you plan ahead, your ok, and you are disciplining yourself to shoot good paint which helps improve your days play.

I'm happy with the QEV cause as a conclusion unless anyone can say otherwise. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't in isolation with regards to my paint barrel breaks and QEV suspicions.
 
I dont think we can be certain that your barrel breaks wouldnt have occured even if you didnt have a QEV.

If the problem is that your paint is too big and oddsized to easily pop through your SFT oring, then reducing the bolt force will simply turn the chops into misfires, as the bolt now no longer has enough force to load and fire the ball within the dwell time.

Of course the only way to know that for sure would be to test it.



Cheaper paint isnt necessarily more brittle. In fact site paint is generally very tough, in order to withstand being stored onsire and being shot through the well used blowback site guns. The diablo you shot with no problems should have been more brittle than the site paint.


Conditions affect the paint in many ways so its a shame you dont have any of that paint left as there are some tests you can do to see how brittle the paint is.

My thoughts at the moment are that it isnt too brittle its either far too big or oddly shaped or both.
 

Marcus Geezer

Platinum Member
I'm off to a site this Sat, and one my mates will prob buy the site paint.

I'm gonna put a hopper through my ion to see how I get on, but also if you could let me know what tests you can do, other than the drop test, I'd really like to try them out. I'd like to establish through technique and experience what is good and bad paint, for ongoing use.

I agree that site paint tends to be harder, but if the paint is new and in good condition, should it have a certain level of pliability which site stored paint wouldn't have. Tough older paint could denote a hard shell which will break rather than give.

Your explanation regarding odd-shaped and inconsistent balls and them popping out of the sft o-ring sounds plausible , whereas the harder site balls arent as pliable and break rather than give slighty when they pop through the sft o-ring (and possibly the detents), and therefore shatter causing a 'barrel break'? I'm just trying to think whether the faster bolt action does anything to this, but at the end of the day when the ball is travelling away from the bolt to go through the detents and sft o-ring it will be travelling at a speed as defined by your setup at the chrony? (i.e no more than 300fps)

Just as an afterthought, I stated that the speed of the bolt is a constant, but isnt the bolt speed as defined by the input pressure through the regulator, which is adjusted to give different fps?