Role of bolt o ring

[Impactfour]

So I was rather embarrassed to find part #14, the bolt o ring, was missing when I took my phantom apart after the latest outing.

It has only been missing for the one recent outing as best I can tell. Looking back, it wasn't my best day of shooting. I'd blamed my poor play on the fact I was playing in large games with almost only non pump players. I'm guessing this o ring serves as a seal, and could have been the source of an inconsistent shot, or am I grasping at straws?

[Jackson]

Yeah, that could lead to inconsistency. Without the o-ring to make a seal, you are probably going to have a lot of gas blowing back around the bolt. And the variable position of the bolt shot-to-shot is going to change the amount of blow back.

[Impactfour]

That's what I figured. I played the worst I have in years this last Sunday, couldn't hit the side of a barn. Hopefully I can confirm it was the tools fault and not the users this upcoming Saturday.

[Jonnydread]

Dude you should have said something to me, I had spare bolt o-rings in my bag.

[Impactfour]

I somehow only realized it today when I went to give everything a nice cleaning. I appreciate the sentiment though!

[Chuck E Ducky]

Oh yeah replace that sucker they are very important. They work without one but that oring makes sure you have a consistent seal on the barrel after you load a ball. You will get excessive blow by causing erratic consistency and terrible efficiency. If you had a unusually bad day it’s probably due to that oring missing.

[The Jayster]

I have the new body with the ASP mod and a Freak-bored barrel. I played on Saturday and only experienced one roll-out. I did use a 0.689 insert (the next lowest I have is 0.682 I believe) because it was really humid and was afraid the paint would swell during the day, and figured I had the ASP mod. But once I experienced the roll-out, I became conscious of the issue and periodically shook my gun really hard every which way, and the ball stayed in place. I guess that particular paintball that fell out must have been really small. We were using GI field paint that was decent but not that consistent.