DM3 detents & troubleshooting

[Jonnydread]

Hi all,

A friend of mine who has semi-recently gotten back in the game has a couple matrices that he would like to shoot. A friend went through them and made sure they held air, were clean/lubed/etc. but the issue we are now experiencing is the detents don't seem to hold paint very well. I'm not sure if it's a byproduct of today's tiny paint or what, but right now they would be difficult guns to use due to the double-feeding and so on. Is there a straight-forward solution to this? Maybe longer detents or something? I am quite ignorant about the matrix so any guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Jonny

[gabe]

I haven't had any issues with .680 paint with good fresh Gen-E detents. When I got my DM3 the previous owner had drilled holes in the detents and stuck a piece of o-ring in them so the end stuck into the breech further like little whiskers. I took them out but they probably worked fine.

[the_matrix_guy]

Hmm, there arent any different sizes for detents, so outside of making custom ones, you're pretty much stuck with the standard size. But yes, most likely the paint you were using is on the smaller side even by today's standards. Some of the stuff dips below 679, even, so I can totally see how that can be the culrpit.Also you can do a visual inspection of the detents. From my experience they dont really get a lot of wear so they should be fine, but you can just push em out with your index finger from the inside of the breech and inspect them. They come right out. If you cover shipping plus $5 I can send you a few pairs.

[Jonnydread]

I'm not sure what the issue would be if it's not the detents. The paint was fairly small, but not obscenely so. I didn't caliper it or anything. I'll take you up on the offer.

[the_matrix_guy]

I hope they fix the double feeding. I'll get those out tomorrow

[JCC]

Hole in the detents and cut o-ring sticking through as suggested is a common modification, but I just used my DM3 yesterday with no issues with small paint. A buddy and I actually talked about drilling the detent holes slightly deeper just like 1/32" on each side so ball detents would set in deeper while not being so far in to cause drag on bolt, but that is a do at your own risk idea.

Have seen botched top hat orings that were not allowing the bolt to travel back all the way that user mistook for detent issue as was getting chops at slow rof and thought he was feeding 1 1/2 balls when he was actually only feed 1/2 of the first ball as was getting caught on bolt and fully feeding. Fun thing with the modular setup you can pop that whole portion off and hook a hopper to it and inspect it from both sides to see how the detents do catching the paint or not catching the paint.

[Jonnydread]

Great point! I will do that

[the_matrix_guy]

I have a lot of rare PL’s so drilling the breeches and fucking up the ano is a no-go for me but yes, good point nonetheless

[Jonnydread]

Unfortunately the fresh detents didn't solve the feeding problem. Using a Pinokio Speed I was getting double feeds fairly regularly. I'm going to test with a gravity hopper to see if that helps, but I think I'm going to need a different solution.

[Tracker]

maybe try and find an NDZ breech, those were actually setup for threaded detents.. perhaps they stick in further?

[Jordan]

I read this thread a couple months ago and realized I had the same issue last summer when I was using my Matrix... and having found a spare breech on here, decided to modify my existing breech for Mini detents.

I'll know how they work this summer when it comes out to the field with me, but preliminary backyard testing shows [Borat voice] great success [/Borat voice]. They're almost invisible at first glance, so you have to really look to see what I did.

Obviously not something many will be willing to do, but I'd rather have a functional marker than one that sits on a wall looking pretty.

[Jonnydread]

That’s awesome man, looking forward to hearing updates!