E99 build and test thread

[RhoXi]

3/22/25 Roll Back Prevention

I had an idea while messing with the venturi last week. I thought how could I prevent the ball from rolling so far back into the bolt face? Then I thought what if the venturi was longer? So I got the idea to drill a hole in the front of the venturi and then thread it to accecpt a rod or bolt long enough to be flush with the bolt face.

After a trip to the hardware store, I ended up with a 10-24 x 2 socket head bolt and a M6x1.0 x 75 shouldered hex bolt. I wanted to try the idea with the socket head screw first in order to keep the venturi in the mix. I drilled and tapped (poorly) the front of the venturi and cut the bolt down to size till it was flush with the bolt face while installed.

It looked good but unfortunately that didn't cure my ills. I shot a few and velocity looked similar to last time. So far so good. Then I decided to shoot a long string as fast as possible and that's when it chopped at about 20 or so shots in. A definite stack clip as there was paint in the breech and feedneck.

Back to the drawing board but for now here's some pictures of my handywork.

[Kit352]

The micro switch on those are just normal 30g ones with the little metal flap removed. You can get lighter triggering ones if you wanted but they get touchy if you go to low. I think 15g is as low as you want to go.

[RhoXi]

Ah word thanks!

[MrKittyCatMeowFace]

If the paint is too small/oblong, you will continue to get stack clipping. Not using a force fed loader helps too. With 10bps being pretty much the standard now, non force fed loaders can keep up fine for the moist pork.

[RhoXi]

Lol that's a heck of a typo.

I've been using my Vmax+ becuase my Revvy wasn't keeping up when it double fires. Or at least I thought so. I'll give it a shot again next time. And yeah, this paint is small and not very round but such is the way of paintball in 2025.

[William the Third]

[flyweightnate]

I would try adding something soft to the face of that anti rollback bolt - like a cabinet door bumper or a mechanical pencil eraser. Steel is unforgiving.

Also, chamfering the top edge (like the Ego Cure bolts) might give you some blowback up the stack, but also might keep you from clipping that second ball.

On a lot of these, you have a .700" breech holding a .670 ball, so there's plenty of room to hit the next ball in line.

[RhoXi]

3/28/25 Sanity Check

I had a thought today that I should figure out weather or not it's the Spyder that's causing my my chopping issues or the paint. So this evening I loaded up my Promaster (which is normally pretty good with paint) and let it rip. To my surprise I got a chop about 20 or so balls in, just like the Spyder. Huh. So I went and got my Shocker NXT which should also be pretty gentle. Same exact thing. Chop about 20 or so balls in. Alright, so I then grabbed the Phantom. It should be to no one's surprise that the last 50 or so paintballs in the bag went down range without incident (Not totally true. The Phantom was struggling to seal up on 12g's for some reason so I had to switch to hpa. No chops though.)

I'm thinking these paintballs are just small enough and out of round enough that's it's just too much for my autoloaders to handle. Visually, they're not the most oblong paintballs I've ever seen but they're certainly not perfect. That combined with the smallness is just enough to cause stack clipping and headaches. I think I'm going to hold off on trying to improve paint handling much more untill I get some better paintballs. Still, I might throw down some numbers with the anti-rollback venturi mkII anyway but just single loading.

[nak81783]

I’m a little late to the party, but consider using nylon riot balls like I used in the first link below to take paint variation out of the equation for your velocity testing.

Also, do Spyders have the same issue as Azodins where the ball is shot into the barrel, rather than being pushed into it by the bolt prior to the air blast being released? See second link below for some pics and info of what I did to remedy that. Someone else posted some better pics which show the issue of an Azodin pump with the barrel removed and a ball sitting too far back in the breech with the bolt forward.

https://www.mcarterbrown.com/forum/paintball-news-aa/the-dead-zone/381611-velocity-consistency-at-playing-conditions-rate-of-fire

https://www.mcarterbrown.com/forum/custom/jeepers-cheaper-build-off/652503-the-nakdiii-open-bolt-azodin-kd3-pump

[RhoXi]

I do have some reusable paintballs lying around but I've only used them for function checking. Originally, I was just trying to hit field velocity and the re-balls I have shoot about 30-40fps faster than paintballs. I think I'll have to revisit them after reading through your testing (good stuff btw).

And no, Spyders don't have the same problems as Azodins. The barrel butts right up right where the bolt travel ends inside the breech like most 'cocker threaded guns.