BE Raptor wire detention improvement/replacement

[lhamilton1807]

My father-in-law picket up an OG green Raptor at a yard sale for me. New o-rings and a bottom ASA and steel line and it’s up & running. Noticed the wire detent is kinda eating the side of the aluminum bolt a little and sometimes allows small paint to roll down the barrel (found an old TASO Terminator barrel on eBay for cheap - so much nicer than stock!).

Any suggestions on improving the detent? Paint has gotten smaller recently.

[Grendel]

Bend new ones out of 24 gage spring steel wire would be the best solution. It takes some practice but if you make a bending jig and practice not too difficult. The other things you can do is add material to the leading face and tip of the detent. Nail Polish will work by building up the layers, I've heard hot glue has been used (but not done it myself). if you can find fine thin wall heat shrink you could slide that over the triangle and shrink fit it.

[glaman5266]

Side thought- I'm not sure what loader you're using on it, but force-feed loaders can contribute to rollouts/doublefeeds/chops with older STBBs. Agitated loaders are definitely better for these markers.

[JeeperCreeper]

I found this out the hard way when I put an Egg on my MR100. 2 or 3 balls at a time

[lhamilton1807]

Thanks, yeah I have a shake n bake hopper. This is a loaner gun and we noticed rollouts last we used it.

[JeeperCreeper]

You could always have a hole drilled and tapped for a cocker style screw in detent. Probably wouldn't cost that much at a local machine shop

[wthomas333]

I have just slightly bent the stock ones to where they stick in just a little bit more and that has worked in most situations.

If you just want to switch to a different body that uses the rubber detent, I have several laying around and will send you one for free, you just cover shipping. But it won’t be green.

But if you want to go extreme you can get a barrel rethreaded in Raptor threads that’s a smaller bore size. I got .676 and .682 Disruptive one piece barrels done like this. Because I have never seen the fabled Raptor freak barrel back, I also got a Dye barrel back rethreaded and freak bored to fit my Raptors. Only certain barrels will work since the threads are so far up the barrel. I think Palmers could also make you a brass barrel in Raptor threads.

If you want to do something like freak boring, you have to get a barrel back that can be freak bored from the front/muzzle end instead of the back end of the barrel. The upper tube on the Raptor body is larger than the o.d. of a freak insert and will allow the insert to slide back into the gun. That’s why I couldn’t just get a AC or Spyder freak back rethreaded.
Additionally, the barrel has to have a small enough o.d. so that it doesn’t interfere with the lower tube valve plug on the front of the gun. Which is why the barrels in the pic had the o.d. shaved down slightly up past the threads.

I have obviously done a lot of trial and error with this and Brandon at BMC is more well versed in Raptor barrels that he probably ever thought he would be.