Last time I tried shooting a cat, probably 2018-ish, I ran into 2 big problems.
1 They don't like HPA.
2 They HATE small paint.
While I was able to figure out how to get it working on HPA, I was unable to fix the small paint problem and would have a barrel break from stack clipping every 30-40 shots consistently.
In a fit of frustration I stupidly sold my gorgeous splash green Alley Cat, because apparently I'm an idiot.
Long story short, my brother's old Thunder Cat arrived in the mail today, and I "think" I've finally solved both issues this time around.
Getting it to work on HPA was actually pretty simple, they like the extra volume a gas through front grip provides. This makes a ton of sense, especially because the VASA is pretty much right on the valve, so essentially it acts as a huge valve chamber. In the past, a gas through front grip along with some careful tuning of the Velocity/Recock Set screws and the RVA was all it took. This time around, I decided to drill out the VASA airflow hole with a 7/32nds drill bit as well for even better HPA compatibility. Stock that hole is tiny! Any larger then 7/32nds would have marred the edge of the VASA and it probably wouldn't have sealed.
Now for the stack clipping issue.
What was happening was that the bolt for the Thunder Cat sat too far back in the breach. With large old school paint this was fine, but with the tiny ass modern paint we have today, this extra room in the breach allowed the paint ball to roll back onto the surface of the bolt. When this happens, the next paintball in line sits lower then it should, so that when the bolt moved forward it would "clip" the bottom of the next paintball in the ball stack as well as fire the shot in the breach. This creates a consistent soupy mess, and for all practical purposes makes the gun unusable.
You can get a good idea of how far back the bolt sits stock in this picture.
So the obvious solution is to get a longer bolt, thus keeping the paintball aligned where it should be. For Spyder's there are tons of aftermarket bolts available (The Shocktech Super fly is my personal favorite) that are usually a hair longer then the stock bolts, and they almost completely eliminate stack clipping in my experience. To my knowledge cat's have always been too niche to ever receive any after market bolt upgrades, so a little bit of DIY was necessary.
Enter two $0.15 1/4" flat nylon washers from the hardware store. I matched the outside diameter of the washers to the outside diameter of the center part of the bolt as close as I could (its was shockingly close) and used a dremal tool to grind out the inside hole wide enough to slide over the edge of the center part of the bolt.
After both washers could slide over the lip, I threw them on and reassembled the bolt. At this point I was fairly certain that this wouldn't work, because while the outside diameter was close, it was still pretty visibly larger then the center part of the bolt. Figuring I had nothing to loose, I reassembled it anyway, gassed it up and gave it a few test fires. It sputtered pretty bad and machine gunned a bit..... and then magically started cycling perfectly🤨 I disassembled it again, and the bolt had "beat" the nylon washers into the correct diameter.
You can still see the excess material peeling off in the photo above. I was able to clean it up perfectly at this point by just scraping the edge of it with my fingernail.
And now the bolt sits MUCH further forward in the breach!
As a final test I threw a gravity on, went into the back yard, and ripped as fast as I could pull the trigger. I made it through an entire hopper of D3fy flawlessly before I ran out of paint. Not a single chop, barrel break, or stack clip.
I should be able to make it out to the field this weekend for additional testing, but I suspect this is about to become my new favorite blow back!
1 They don't like HPA.
2 They HATE small paint.
While I was able to figure out how to get it working on HPA, I was unable to fix the small paint problem and would have a barrel break from stack clipping every 30-40 shots consistently.
In a fit of frustration I stupidly sold my gorgeous splash green Alley Cat, because apparently I'm an idiot.
Long story short, my brother's old Thunder Cat arrived in the mail today, and I "think" I've finally solved both issues this time around.
Getting it to work on HPA was actually pretty simple, they like the extra volume a gas through front grip provides. This makes a ton of sense, especially because the VASA is pretty much right on the valve, so essentially it acts as a huge valve chamber. In the past, a gas through front grip along with some careful tuning of the Velocity/Recock Set screws and the RVA was all it took. This time around, I decided to drill out the VASA airflow hole with a 7/32nds drill bit as well for even better HPA compatibility. Stock that hole is tiny! Any larger then 7/32nds would have marred the edge of the VASA and it probably wouldn't have sealed.
Now for the stack clipping issue.
What was happening was that the bolt for the Thunder Cat sat too far back in the breach. With large old school paint this was fine, but with the tiny ass modern paint we have today, this extra room in the breach allowed the paint ball to roll back onto the surface of the bolt. When this happens, the next paintball in line sits lower then it should, so that when the bolt moved forward it would "clip" the bottom of the next paintball in the ball stack as well as fire the shot in the breach. This creates a consistent soupy mess, and for all practical purposes makes the gun unusable.
You can get a good idea of how far back the bolt sits stock in this picture.
So the obvious solution is to get a longer bolt, thus keeping the paintball aligned where it should be. For Spyder's there are tons of aftermarket bolts available (The Shocktech Super fly is my personal favorite) that are usually a hair longer then the stock bolts, and they almost completely eliminate stack clipping in my experience. To my knowledge cat's have always been too niche to ever receive any after market bolt upgrades, so a little bit of DIY was necessary.
Enter two $0.15 1/4" flat nylon washers from the hardware store. I matched the outside diameter of the washers to the outside diameter of the center part of the bolt as close as I could (its was shockingly close) and used a dremal tool to grind out the inside hole wide enough to slide over the edge of the center part of the bolt.
After both washers could slide over the lip, I threw them on and reassembled the bolt. At this point I was fairly certain that this wouldn't work, because while the outside diameter was close, it was still pretty visibly larger then the center part of the bolt. Figuring I had nothing to loose, I reassembled it anyway, gassed it up and gave it a few test fires. It sputtered pretty bad and machine gunned a bit..... and then magically started cycling perfectly🤨 I disassembled it again, and the bolt had "beat" the nylon washers into the correct diameter.
You can still see the excess material peeling off in the photo above. I was able to clean it up perfectly at this point by just scraping the edge of it with my fingernail.
And now the bolt sits MUCH further forward in the breach!
As a final test I threw a gravity on, went into the back yard, and ripped as fast as I could pull the trigger. I made it through an entire hopper of D3fy flawlessly before I ran out of paint. Not a single chop, barrel break, or stack clip.
I should be able to make it out to the field this weekend for additional testing, but I suspect this is about to become my new favorite blow back!
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