Getting a Dynasty Stryker (I know, I know...) above 210fps

[The Inflicted]

So I put my phone into my pocket while I was doing some chores while the eBay app was still open and accidentally bought the world's most embarrassing paintball gun.



I contemplated contacting the seller and offering to pay the winning bid but not pay the shipping if they agreed NOT to send it to me, but curiosity got the best of me. I've already sunk a regrettable amount of time cleaning decade-old paint gunk and melted O-rings out of this thing, and gotten really tired of having to wrench the rubber molded foregrip thing down so that you can split the gun apart, but now it's actually working pretty well.

I'm now determined to attach my scopecam and shoot some people at the local field with this thing but my problem is that the velocity is stubbornly refusing to go above 210fps or so. It was shooting in the mid-100s with the stock spring, and having gone to a red Spyder spring and cranked the adjuster all the way in, this is high as I can go. I'm assuming that the next thing to do would be to reduce valvespring strength but the problem is that the valvespring is an odd size for a Spyder clone- it's really narrow like a Pro-Lite mainspring. I don't have anything of similar diameter so I'm not really wanting to cut the one good one I have, so I'm wondering if anyone has experience with these type of guns and if there's something I might be missing. Do the valves and/or exhaust ports need to be widened to get optimal velocity? Is there a really wide gap around or behind the detent or something that by design keeps these things from shooting at full speed? Any help is appreciated.

[Chuck E Ducky]

What if you just bump input pressure way up with an air rifle reg. See what happens. Worked on the Hammer7

[SETHZILLA!]

I've been looking for one of these to get up and running myself. Subscribing for more shenanigans!

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[Cdn_Cuda]

Really needs an unshrowded flatline barrel.

[Olsson]

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!

[Trbo323]

So I put my phone into my pocket while I was doing some chores while the eBay app was still open and accidentally bought the world's most embarrassing paintball gun.

A likely story. We all know you were trying to recreate the magic feeling of owning the first marker you ever shot.

Check the valve orientation for sure. I've seen stbbs where the lower hole for the set screw is a different size than the top one. Also, big hole forward. I would also check the action of the valve stem sliding in the valve itself, I've seen ones where there's scoring and the valve stem often hangs up. I would expect more inconstant velocity over consistent but low though in that scenario.

One other thing, in the velocity adjustor, many of the spyders and spyder clones needed a flat metal disk, like a washer with no hole, in between the adjuster screw and the spring. If it's missing the spring just goes over the adjustor screw and there's a lot of extra space for the spring to move back. I've had a few where they would do exactly what you are describing, would always shoot but consistently low

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[Ecapnation]

Have you tried hills science diet?

Lol

It looks like a dog pooping.

Anyway...

It's almost always the main spring, the detent being backwards or just general plastic deteriorating

[flyweightnate]

Kevinqmto said this once and is the only thing I've been able to see since

[Tarsun2]

looks like a PMI piranha setup you have there.

is the ball to barrel bore a good fit?

im going to assume air flow is your limiting factor.

https://www.warpig.com/paintball/technical/paintguns/stryker/

this is what you get from focus groups i suppose. lol

whats the valve body look like?

[jokers]

A likely story. We all know you were trying to recreate the magic feeling of owning the first marker you ever shot.

I have video proof now! I am sure one of these good gentlemen is The Inflicted but not sure who the other is maybe he can enlighten us!

[Toestr]

So much for an efficiency test.

[The Inflicted]

A likely story. We all know you were trying to recreate the magic feeling of owning the first marker you ever shot.

Hah! This piece of junk came out a few decades too late for that.
Maybe one of these days I'll pick up my own NW Spitfire II.

Check the valve orientation for sure. I've seen stbbs where the lower hole for the set screw is a different size than the top one. Also, big hole forward. I would also check the action of the valve stem sliding in the valve itself, I've seen ones where there's scoring and the valve stem often hangs up. I would expect more inconstant velocity over consistent but low though in that scenario.

Valvestem looks OK. I've not gotten into the valvebody itself yet but I would be shocked to pieces if the previous owner(s) ever had the valve out of this thing. I'm not 100% sure if the valve is actually user-removable, given that just getting the outer body shell off to look at the Detent involves warming up the foregrip cover with scalding hot water to make it pliable enough to slide it out of the way to access the screws.

Looking closer at the valve is probably going to be the next step but since it's a metal insert in an otherwise plastic gun I'm not sure that even if I get it out there's going to be a traditional bottom retention hole like you see on Spyders.

One other thing, in the velocity adjustor, many of the spyders and spyder clones needed a flat metal disk, like a washer with no hole, in between the adjuster screw and the spring. If it's missing the spring just goes over the adjustor screw and there's a lot of extra space for the spring to move back. I've had a few where they would do exactly what you are describing, would always shoot but consistently low

Should have mentioned this, but mine was missing the equivalent part- a spring guide that also acts as the perch between the mainspring and velocity adjuster. I found a metal pin of the right dimensions to work there in mine (the adjuster IS effecting the velocity) and have tried shimming it with washers to give the adjuster more forward travel but it's getting to the point where the gun is difficult to cock so I think I've reached the upper limit of hammer spring strength to solve this.

It's almost always the main spring, the detent being backwards or just general plastic deteriorating

Detent's fine. I've tried multiple different mainsprings.
Not sure about deteriorating plastic, since it cycles and re-cocks just fine.

https://www.warpig.com/paintball/tec...tguns/stryker/

this is what you get from focus groups i suppose. lol

whats the valve body look like?

This one's a totally different animal from the one in the WarPig article. For starters, the grip frame doesn't actually house the trigger- it and the sear and all the trigger guts are all contained in a block molded below the main tube of the main body.

Haven't dug the valve out yet because it's in a metal insert set into the plastic inner body and I haven't figured out how to get it out yet, if that's even possible without cutting the gun in half with a bandsaw.

I'll take it apart again and get some pictures this time. I've fixed up dozens of Spyder clones in my day and this one is utterly different.

[Tarsun2]

i actually picked up a Rhino Spitfire just because that was the 1st "real" marker i got. prior to that it was the stingray ii...
or maybe im messing that up lol either way, i picked up a spitfire purely for nostalgia.

[glaman5266]

Go to a local hardware store & buy a weaker spring for the valve.

[The Inflicted]

Alright, so the teardown.
As you might imagine this thing is profoundly different from its ancestors in terms of build quality, but perhaps not in functionality



The best feature of this thing by far is that it has a proper quick-strip bolt with a spring-retained pin, something that took Kingman forever to implement on the mainline Spyders.



You have to admire their efforts to idiot-proof (or kid-proof) this thing.



The rest of the moving parts come out with the pull of a simple retention pin. Hammer takes a tank O-ring.
You can see the substitute spring guide I put in there.



Now it gets interesting. The big Autococker SR-esque grip has to come off.
It's retained by tabs at the top and a single phillips head screw running from the rear of the grip.

[The Inflicted]

Removing the grip exposes the smallest 4 of the 8 body shell screws... and an anti-theft tag.



The trickiest part of disassembly is wrenching down the rubber overlay on the foregrip. This is definitely not intended for the end user to do.
Hot water helps, as does a few prying tools and excessive force.



Now that it's off the final 3 body shell screws will be exposed.
Note that you cannot remove the grip frame until the body panels are removed, and you can't do THAT until the foregrip cover is slipped/dragged off.
This thing is a bit of a puzzle box.



You can now take the gun's clamshell panels off. There are 8 screws holding it on of three different types- #1 phillips, micro phillips, and three 5/32" allen bolts on the foregrip. The shell panels must be removed to let you remove the grip frame, access the ball detent, or any further disassembly.
The gun almost starts to look normal now, for a moment.



This is the best time to unscrew the bottomline hose, which is non-tapered, metric (I think) and sealed with an O-ring.
The bottomline ASA itself is entombed in the grip frame and as best I can tell cannot be removed.

[The Inflicted]

Removing the body shells also gives you access to the ball detent, which is Tippmann-style and I believe shared with the other Brass Eagle "Aegis" line of Spyder clones.




You can now undo the two bolts holding on the grip frame, and note that I saw "grip frame" and not "trigger frame" because the trigger, sear, and all its compoinents are housed in a molded plastic bulge that is integral to the inner body tubes. The frame is simply dropped down, leaving the double-finger trigger in place.



To my surprise the grip frame is attached into metal inserts in the body.
You can remove the rest of the hose here too- threading into the body is different from that on the bottomline ASA and much wider, but it is also sealed with an O-ring.



As I showed earlier, the front valve plug can easily unscrew, letting you drop out the cupseal and valvespring. One semi-interesting thing about the valvestem on these things is that the rear section has flats on for blowback gas on two sides unlike traditional Spyder valvestems, which only have one flat.
This is as far as I could go.
The valve body itself, like the metal insert the barrel threads into is entombed into the body- unlike the "Cybrid" version of the Stryker the inner body halves do not split apart, so there's no taking those out. I removed the valve retention plug (which had been glued into place) and tried pushing on the valve body in either direction using a dowel but it didn't want to budge, and I'm not convinced it's a separate part. It would make more sense from a design perspective for it to be integral with the rest of the cast metal insert in the lower tube, because you would have two fewer O-rings that could fail. Looking up through the valve bolt retention hole you can see clear through into the breech, which tells me the valve orientation is fine. I could see no obstructions either impeding the path of exhaust gas.

So, while I learned a few things with my further teardown I don't think I've seen any likely culprits for the low velocity.



The grand finale: A full exploded view of the most embarrassing paintball gun ever made.

[The Inflicted]

Go to a local hardware store & buy a weaker spring for the valve.

Tried that but my local Ace only has the basic Hilman Spring assortment which contains just one spring of the approximate dimensions, and it's hopelessly too weak to seal the valve at rest.
I'll keep my eyes open for possible replacements because that's probably the only way of boosting the velocity up.

[Toestr]

I don't think a spring is strictly required to keep the valve sealed in a high pressure poppet; the pressure behind it does that. I think valve springs are more for keeping the cup seal centred and keeping the dwell reasonable. I'm sure it helps somewhat for sealing (especially at lower pressures), but I have used blowbacks without valve springs before.

[glaman5266]

I agree with Toestr . Maybe find one that’s close enough in diameter & weaker. You can always cut it down. You’re gonna have 800psi up against it as well.