Calvin's multi-Minimag resurrection fail to win thread.

[Hooptie]

Hi Calvin, did you have any velocity issues after your rebuild? My rebuild is stuck at 220fps and I can’t get the Minimag to go any higher. I read that there are some stock spring packs that aren’t HPA friendly, and new spring pack is the remedy.

I don’t believe there is an orientation to the spring pack, but I’ll try and flip mine and see if that helps.

[Meglomachinist]

Is it venting before you can get to velocity when you adjust up? If so it could be your regulator piston. You can pop it apart and flip the insert. If that doesn't fix it most likely a spring pack.

[Calvin]

I purchased new regulator spring packs from wthomas333 for all my mags and an extra. The original spring packs that came in them were all visibly damaged except one. There is an orientation for them, and that is washer side down towards the piston. That allows the center post to push through the washer into the piston as the pack compresses.

I also encountered the early venting issue in all my regulator pistons. I think at this age that the ring ridge at the bottom of the piston has pushed into the seal so long that the seal material no longer pushes back enough to seal well. I made a wood block jig for my vice, and clamped the pistons in it. I used a very small torch to heat up the area of the plug threads to loosen up the locktite. Dont overdo it or you could melt the seal disc. Do just enough to melt the locktite and start the lock plug turning. Clean everything in the piston up with alcohol to remove any dirt/old grease and flip the seal disc. Re-assemble and tighten down a smidge past the lip and you should be good to go. New piston assemblies can also be purchased now at airgundesigns.shop. I think they are 20 bucks.

[Calvin]

Got out to the field yesterday. I purchased a Dye LTR from the pro shop for 120.00. The LTR fit perfectly into my center feed body and into the Sconi lean elbows without sanding or taping. I placed the LTR into my center feed body and chronoed to 280fps within 10 shots. I placed my revy on the first RF body with lvl 10, and it is shooting right at 300 with the red spring. Any lower and it stops being able to function. I will put the gold spring into that one as Superman suggested, but it would be perfection at a 300fps field. I got in about 10 games with a 7 man group. The center feed mag, lvl7 long nosed bolt, RT on/off, Doc double detent AC adapted, with a Dye LTR was absolute perfection. I do not say the following lightly: This was as close to mechanical perfection in a paintball gun as I have ever attained. You could feel with every trigger pull how smooth the entire system was. It didn't matter how I was leaning. It didn't matter how I moved the gun while running. It was fantastic. The 14" .689 Lapco Bigshot was throwing darts. First game I hit a hopper repeatedly, with the final shot blowing the lid open and dumping his paint (I felt bad and helped the guy clean it back up to working status before the next game). The gun went through almost a half case without a break or hiccup of any kind. It felt like it could run forever.

The decision to go with Automags for this re-equipping project was one for which I had considerable self doubt. If modern guns allowed me to use a T-stock and drop, I probably would have gone that direction. Today was the kind of positive affirmation that one rarely receives in this world. Sublime.

I need to spend some more time with the Sconi lean equipped RF versions so I can give some feedback into them. They feel fantastic with the LTR mounted. Everything was working so well today that I just didn't want to break the spell by changing anything. Many thanks to all those who sent me parts or encouragement during the workup to this point in the process.

[Hooptie]

Glad to hear your mag experience went well. My wthomas333 new spring pack corrected my low velocity issue.

About the trigger, did you make any adjustments and if so, what helps? I can easily short stroke my mag, and would like to see if there is a way to improve this (minimize short stroke). And is there a way to make the trigger pull lighter?

And I heard a suggestion to pull back the velocity adjuster when not in use, so the spring pack isn't under pressure. It would be neat to have a dial on the rear velocity adjuster where you can adjust to storage mode and back to playing mode with ease. I've seen tool-free adjusters, but they were still quite tough to turn from what I recall.

[Calvin]

I didn't touch the trigger rod adjustments. They passed the credit card gap visual test when aired up and seem to work properly on all 3 mags. I did put RT on/offs in all of them, and it does lighten up the trigger. Its nothing earth shattering, but it is noticable. I would say its probably a 25-30% reduction in trigger pull weight.
I am planning on getting a decent double trigger frame at some point soon for the primary setup. I think that mechanical advantage increase will probably be pretty impactful on ROF.

[Calvin]

I have had the thought of capping the reg and running the pressure adjustment from an AKA Sidewinder stuck in my mind since reading Superman posting about it. I prefer a plain tube vert grip anyways, and that is the Sidewinder. Was pondering it today and had an epiphany. What if I placed a washer over the reg piston and replaced the spring pack with a brass tube cut down to the proper size to allow the cap to be screwed down on top of it and keep the piston pressed to the maximum depth? From cursory and uneducated study of the rear reg body, that would seal off the reg, but preserve the over-pressure safety function of the reg piston. If I then removed the reg seat, reg pin and it's spring, I would be left with a sealed reg body ready to be fed air adjusted to the correct 450ish psi by the AKA Sidewinder. Am I crazy, or would this work (or both)??? Crudely drawn lines for illustration.

[Jackson]

No clue if that would work. I run my automag on a Sidewinder reg. But I have a cap that replaces the entire stock automag reg body. No over-pressure relief, but I'm not concerned.

[Calvin]

Day #3 of PB comeback yesterday. I had about 4 hours available, so I threw my gear into the car and went north to Indy Paintball Battleground. The operation seemed to be run well, and there were a good number of people there. The 4 games I was in were around 15 v 15, so a lot of paint flying. Paint was HK grade 2, which I could buy for 40 bucks at Academy sports, but had to pay 75 there. I guess folks need to make a living. On the positive side, it seemed reasonably fresh and shot well all day. I had received an order for an X-Frame Friday late PM from airgundesigns.shop, which I had immediately slapped onto my backup autococker adapted rig with RF. I got it chronoed in and went out onto the field.

Game 1: Zombies vs Survivors. 5 Zombies vs 25 Survivors trapped in the fort complex. I was on the top level to start and shot some rounds to test the ranges. Saw a bunch of zombies go into the brushline that lead to the back of the fort and realized that I should go down there and be ready to get shots into the area they would emerge from. Went downstairs and gave the team signal to the first guy in that section and went up to the window to survey the shot lane. 5 seconds later the world exploded from behind me with lines of balls going past me on either side into the sunlight streaming in the window. When it stopped a few seconds later I slowly turned around to see some kid's mom, who was undoubtedly on my team, slowly lowering her rental marker. I just nodded and walked to the zombie resurrection zone. Having just been yea verily lit up by someone's mom, I took a fresh start as a zombie. The folks on the top level of the fort had a pretty substancial range advantage due to height, so I made a move up to a minivan wreck just inside my range where they could see me through the intact windows of the minivan. There I proceeded to make the establishment about $1500.00 by popping out and taking short bursts at the heads on the second story railing followed by at least 10 people raining everything they had down on me. The mag ran great through about 200 rounds. All of a sudden, the on/off pin didn't reset. Nothing....nada. Oh well, this silly game had gone on long enough for me. Hands up and a short march to the shelter had me switching out to the centerfeed autococker adapted rig. It chronoed low 290s without any adjustments. Good to go.

Game 2: Speedball field with round corrugated plastic bunker setups. Can't go past mid field and re-spawning. Right off the bat, things were different. I felt like the priest in Caddyshack without the bad weather. Went left tapeline so I could shoot slantways across the field with my right handed shot. I hit 5 people in first minute. It was fantastic. The gun was absolutely humming just like it was 2 weeks ago. Game went well. I had a few challenges against people from my left side trying to get the corner bunker on the midline in front of me, but got the one guy that tried to make the final move into it. Didn't get hit. Horn blows.

Games 3 and 4: Much like game 2 on similar field layouts with square box bunkers. Gun was running great. A gentleman with a beautiful Viking made the move into that left side. Had a firefight trying to dig him out, but I couldn't get out left as well as he could pop out right, and he got me on the hopper. Great fight.

Thoughts and lessons:
1.)Don't install new parts the night before while packing up.
2.)Classic mags have a great firing rate for rec play. I can shoot plenty fast enough to take advantage of opportunities, but I can maintain a long annoying fire down on people that often outlasts their large bursts. I could tell when I became an issue to the electro kids. Their incoming fire changed from strings to cones.
3.)An LTR hopper on a well detented Lvl 7 mag is a beautiful thing. Rock solid. The Centerfeed and the RF Sconi elbow were both money.
4.)Talking to other old timers is a blast. The guy with the Viking came over to talk about my horizontal 4 pod Redz pack, which I believe to be the pinnacle of paintball harness technology. He agreed. I love talking PB gear with people who no longer buy into marketing hype. He has a setup with the flex band rotting off, just like mine was. Looks like he's gonna try to rebuild it having seen how I did it.
5.)25 miles a week and a lifetime of Ultimate has left me the fastest old guy on the field. No one came close to hitting me on breaks or moves. Felt great, and taking advantage of that while it lasts is one of the reasons I came back to PB. I need to revamp my lower body gear and pad up so I can get back to sliding again. Some of the moves to small midline bunkers that I wanted to make would have beaten the shit out of my knees/hips on the finish, so I didn't make them.

All in all, it was another great day of paintball. Mags once again reaffirmed my faith in them.

[Meglomachinist]

Love the stocks.....

[Calvin]

I picked up these 1911 grips. Needed to drill out the screw holes to fit 8-32 button heads. They look and feel sooooooo good. $19.99 FTW!

[Calvin]

Day #4 Paintball comeback:

Felt most old yesterday of all days so far. Accidentally swung a case into my right calf while loading. Probably should have just unloaded then, but it was free play the day after Thanksgiving. I also had half a case of that field's paint left over from two weeks ago. Two of the three mags were down as I have a local stainless fabricator making the reg bodies into caps with 1/8"npt bungs welded onto the back. The remaining marker is a twistlock setup with RF via a Sconi lean elbow. Going up with a single gun was, of course, going to be an issue. It was 33 degrees but sunny as I exited the truck, so this is a good test day for my desired winter play. I aired up the marker, and..... on/off leak. I pulled out the valve body and made sure the on/off assembly (classic) was firmly seated, added 4 drops of oil and reassembled. Still leaking. I plonked myself up in the truck, which is thankfully setup perfectly inside as a mobile gear table, and pulled the on/off assembly out. After massaging the o-rings, oiling them directly, and saying incense laden prayers to the Omnissiah, she held air. I slapped on a smart parts AA tipped 14" .689 I had recently picked up and chronoed good immediately.

Not many people were there, so several of us joined the speedball kids. I made it to my dorito and got a hoppers worth of shots in between the sheets of paint flying and bouncing past. I know I bounced some off two guys as you can tell by the body jerk. One guy rose up from the opposite side snake and tried to take a shot at me. Luckily, I was already looking at him, so it was an easy goggle shot. Bouyed up by the success, I stuck my dumb head out into the storm of flying paint and took a goggle shot myself 5 or 6 seconds later. Noticed I had tweaked my left calf, probably from favoring it over my other bruised one. Gun was running great.

Game 2 was a few more people added to the same group and was on the corrugated plastic drainage tube field. The sun was directly behind our opponents, so even seeing them at certain angles was very tough. Got 2 kills, and got killed twice via goggle hits. One was a solid mouth hit. I went to respawn and a 12YO kid had taken one in the mouth of his mask. He threw down his gun and exclaimed, "I'm not all right!". Being the Dad-like figure I have devolved into, I closed up his hopper lid, wiped his mask off and handed him his marker (nice gun, btw. His Dad was taking care of him). The toughening up of life in real time.
My left calf was straight up pulled by the end of this game. Didn't notice it so much during the adrenaline of the match, but sure did walking off the field. I decided to pack it up and avoid further injury. I think I will be able to run again in a couple days. I used to be built like a piece of surgical tubing. I'm still tough, but much more vulnerable now.

I ran about 700 rounds through the twistlock setup with no breaks or doublefeeds. No issues of any kind. That makes about 3500 rounds through my mags since getting my LTRs without a feed failure. The TPU detents have been great. I'm using the same design as BW uses, but printing them out of Elegoo Red TPU 95a. It's noticeably softer than his. I also used Netfabb to trim down a bit of the tip on the model so it folds down into itself perfectly as the bolt pushes it down. I don't see any wear or loss of stiffness after yesterday's 700 rounds.

I also had noticed how some twistlock barrels had some looseness to them in the gun, and that people used o-rings to tighten them up. I noticed that the gap behind barrels was different, so I made up a set of flat washers that I printed from the same TPU as the detents. I did them in .25mm increments of thickness starting at 1mm and going to 2.5mm. That range seemed to work for all the barrels I had. It allows you to get the tightness just right for each barrel and can't work its way out into the path of the bolt.

This is the first outing with a level 10 bolt. This drop setup only fits the 48/3000. I was getting about 2700psi fills. 2nd game I fired a hopper and a 160 round Dye lock pod and was at 1400psi. According to my calculations, thats about 3.42 psi per ball, and should allow me a hopper and 2 Dye lock pods, which works great for me. The other mag setups can fit the 68/4500 if I need to shoot a full load (that sounds wrong).

Last week I managed to find another BT static paintball vest locally on closeout. This allowed me to remove the rotted elastic band on my second Redz 4 pod pack, grommet it up, and mount it to a second BT vest. I have some buddies that want to try PB with me, so it is nice to have a second pod harness. I really like this harness setup.

Although it wasn't a particularly good day of paintball, I did learn that I can do cold weather play with mags and my truck setup. I also have played twice now with John, who I know is on MCB. Great guy. People are what make the magic happen. So, that was worth it. Oh, yeah....it was free. Free is my favorite.

[Calvin]

I picked up a couple double triggers, and was installing one today. I wondered how much excess travel I could take out. I assumed the rearward travel to be needed to the limit of the frame to prevent short stroking, but I wanted to remove some of the excess forward travel. There isn't any meat in the CF frame over the trigger's front for a set screw. The front of the sear slot looked perfect for a plug that I could use to limit forward travel, so I whipped one up and printed it out of the TPU I have been using for detents. It allowed me to make it about .4 mm oversized in width so I had to press it firmly into the slot. It isn't going anywhere. It took a couple versions before I got the gap over the trigger just right for the reset. Resets reliably now and eliminates about 3/16" of the forward trigger travel measured from the tip of the trigger. Next day of play will show any deficiencies.

[StaticShocked]

Nice solution to the forward over-travel!

[Calvin]

After 3 busy weeks of alternative activities, it was paintball day #5 today. Went back to Indy Paintball Battleground because John sent me a message on here saying people would be up there playing today. I tried a different approach today. Aired up both markers at home on the bench. Added barrels and hoppers and placed my safety barrel socks on. Now I knew both markers would be ready to go when I arrived. I went with both twistlock setups. A DAC tulip .690 is on the top one and an ANS stainless steel on the bottom. The bottom marker is new to me from ThatBobbyjoe a few weeks ago. Got the level 10 working with a new gold spring. I also put on a new stock setup I modded from a 6 weeks ago acquisition along with a lapco grip extension. Its a very comphy and handy setup. I got my table setup and then had to see John's beautiful X-mag on his table. She's a looker.

After filling, both chronoed perfectly within 1 slight turn of the adjuster.

Game 1 was on a field in the way back that I had never been on. I spent most of the game trying to figure out the lane and bunker interaction. I used the bottom rig with the ANS barrel. The gun was running great, but I didn't feel like the ANS was throwing that good of a ball. I also noted a level 10 chuff 3 times in the 400 rounds I shot. No balls broke and none double fed. Might be the LTR hopper through the modded feed. Either way, results were perfectly acceptable other than my getting hit twice with no eliminations.

Game 2 I used the upper rig with the DAC tulip in .690. I had read high praises of them. Inspection of it shows a fairly normalish single bore barrel with a very phallic look. We were on the tube field with the sun again in my eyes. We got a guy into the left side snakes. I was on the back left bunker at the time, and the sun was right over him. All I could see was the reflection of the sun on all the paint coming my way. Got hit. Afterwards went to the right side, which had better vision. Got 2 eliminations, and then was hit again. A better game. The gun ran flawlessly. I couldn't see well most of the game, but I felt like the DAC was throwing better balls than the SS ANS.

Game 3 was on the square plastic water tank bunker field. I made sure to walk over to the side with the sun at my back. Went to the front left bunker and got in a ton of shootouts with a 75 degree fan of people from straight ahead to right. Those cubes are not very wide, so you gotta get close up for cover from the angles. They are also sort of corrugated with vertical banding of sorts in the mold, probably to strengthen them when holding liquid and stacked. Anyways, they seem to break most balls that hit their side. The 2 guys in front of me were really spraying both sides of that cube down the whole game. They really coated my arms and gun with misted paint. I confirmed that the DAC tulip is indeed a fine shooting barrel. Very consistent shots. Got 5 eliminations this game. Mid game, a kid in the front midfield bunker, who was my primary assignment, got me with an excellent shot to my right elbow. I managed to get him back at the end of the game. Great fights.

Weather was 45 rising to 50, and felt great. I had the HK Army level 3 paint this time, and had zero ball breaks of any kind. I shot 1200 rounds today, so that makes about 5000 rounds so far through the mags without a break since I got the LTR hoppers. Both barrels today were using my printed TPU detents, and they index perfectly. Post match inspection shows no visible wear. Since Automag detents never have the bolt resting on them over time, I think they should last. They are also very cheap and easy to change out.

My new forward trigger stops also worked perfectly. Didn't budge or cause me reset issues. Very pleased.

I had to get home because we are having people over for dinner. Can't wait for next time!

[Drcemento]

great reporting - thank you for that. as a want to be mag fan trying to tune and tweak a couple mags to ones that I really want to play with this is great, and similar to what I have seen in terms of not breaking paint etc.

[Calvin]

Thank you, Sir. I'm hoping to leave a written record of what the common clay of the new west can expect if they randomly choose to fire up some old automags for modern rec use. At this point in the journey, I have been really enjoying playing with them.

[Calvin]

I got tired of my masks being blown around the table between matches by the wind. Found a hook on thingiverse that was close, and did some tweaking till it fit my tub properly. PB setup just got a notch more civilized.