The ULTIMATE AGA 62 Guide! (I think?)

[swan]

Hello all,

Recently, I have seen more and more of these pop up, so I figured it was time I share what I know about these markers. This will be a little bit of the history (at least what I can find), disassembly and cleaning, and some final thoughts.

First, the history:
The AGA 62 is a 62 caliber double action marker, but not quite a revolver. It is built upon the Crosman 357, which also has its own conversion by Crosman, the 3357, to be a .50 cal paintball marker, but that is a subject for another day haha. It is called the "elevator gun" due to it using an elevator assembly to lift paintballs from an internal spring-fed magazine into the breach. From what I can find, and anecdotes from my father (since he's the one who gave it to me), this was made by a company called AGA, or Air Guns of America. I cannot find anything about this company besides that they made this marker. It seemed to have some popularity as a rental based on VintageRex and peculiar paintball:

https://www.vintagerex.com/cgi-bin/i...GA%2062&man=AG A%20-%20Air%20Guns%20of%20America

https://www.peculiarpaintball.com/manufacturers/aga/62/


(what a rental setup might have looked like, my dad tells me his came with the tubes but didn't come with the holster). (Also, many came with grips that had the AGA logo. mine currently do not have them equipped, so it just has the Crosman 357 logo).

I believe they were made in the late 80's? But there are no sources to confirm this or deny it. Regardless, these markers are old, and without .62 cal paint, this is merely a relic and collectors item. It is an awesome talking piece however, i still bring it with me to games as a talking piece and a surrender device (not practical, but fun!).

For disassembly/service, here is my guide as follows:

Firstly, the barrel section has very few moving parts, so it can be removed as a single unit. As always, make sure your marker has no air in it and is not cocked or loaded!
To remove the barrel portion, unscrew the screw in the hinge and press down on the top locking lever, and it should come free on its own.


In this pic, I have the side plate for the elevator removed, this is unnecessary, this is merely to show how the elevator works. it has 2 springs that push the breech block down, and the silver lever arm moves it to the barrel when cocked.



Here is the barrel assembly removed. The elevator side plate has been taken off and the breech block should hinge out. Be careful so that the springs don't go flying! there is a pin in the gun and a slot on the side of the breech, this guides the breech so it moves up and down. To put the breech back in, the 2 springs will need to be lined up with the guide rods on the top of the barrel and the pin has to slot into the rail on the breech. Sounds complex, but fairly simple in practice.

Next is the main revolver body.




With the marker de-gassed and uncocked, remove the grip panel and Co2 cartridge, then remove these 2 screws circled above. The side plate should come off.

As you start to poke and prod around in here, be careful not to lose any pieces, as a lot of stuff is under spring tension and these have a tendency to explode outwards on me. However, there are no more screws so the rest of disassembly is easy, just start pulling stuff out. I will show you where stuff goes during the re-assembly guide.

[swan]

Alright, now comes the maintenance/service portion. Since this uses the exact same valve body and internal seals as the Crosman 357 and CR357, which are fairly common, there are many guides available on that and parts/o-rings available. Alternatively, you can harvest parts from from a working one and just drop in a fresh valve assembly.



This is the valve and Co2 puncture assembly. If your marker is leaking, this is where your problem is, it is going to be one of these parts. Nothing else in the marker holds any air or has any seals.


Alright, so you are ready to re-assemble your marker. Use some grease on all the pins and moving components to prevent rust and keep things moving freely. Firstly, we are going to put the trigger and hammer sear back into place. it should use a pin, the sear and a sear spring and fit neatly into this place:


If you are worried about which pin to use, there are a couple small pins on the hammer and trigger that are very small and do not like to fall out of their place which is nice. otherwise, there are 3 large pins, which are all the same size. It is one of these 3 large pins.

Now that the sear is in place, the trigger is next. We will first place the trigger spring in this orientation:



Note: I have 2 AGA 62s, 4 Crosman 3357s, and 2 357s, and some of the springs may look a bit different. Some are made of coiled spring wire, others are square spring wire. This should not really matter. The trigger spring is the one that rests in an open state, splayed out like in the photo. Now that the spring is set down, we will put the trigger in. There will be no spring tension yet, do not worry! It is much easier to place the trigger in first before trying to load the trigger spring! The trigger pin is one of those 3 large pins, there should be 2 left now since we used one for the sear. The last of those 3 big pins is for the hammer. Also ensure your trigger shelf has the little side pin installed. There should also be a black L shaped bar with a pin, this goes into the bottom hole of the trigger. More below:



Notice the red arrow, this follows the hammer linkage. It is an L shaped bar with a bent end to fit the pinhole the arrow points to. This MUST be put in with the trigger to fire the marker, or the hammer will not make contact with the valve. Also notice the bent up portion of the spring on the right is ABOVE the trigger. This is how the trigger is tensioned. Now, to load the trigger spring, use your thumb to push the left, straight part of the spring up and above the shelf cast into the frame, like so:





See how my thumb presses the spring up to the shelf? The spring should now form a V shape, and your trigger should have tension. You can test this by putting your thumb over the main trigger pin and lightly pulling against the trigger, but do not try to pull the trigger all the way or there is a good chance these pieces will explode and fly out all over you. Ask me how I know. If there is no trigger tension, look at the little arrow on the right. Is that little bent portion of the spring ABOVE the trigger like I told you? Mmhhmmm.....

[swan]

Next, we will put in the hammer assembly. There is a second spring here, circled below. This coil spring rests in a V shape, put this in first, then the hammer. Again, we will load the tension later.



This will also use the last of the 3 large pins as the main hammer pin. The hammer is also made up of a few components, but it is really self explanatory how it goes together. If someone needs a guide on just that, I guess I'll post one in the future, but that's a later problem. For right now, make sure the hammer and hammer spring looks like it does in the pic above.

Now, we move on to putting the valve back into place. First, we will start with the sealing face, which closes up the front of the marker when it is open, and seals against the barrel portion.



This is made up of 3 parts. There is the face, then this little tapered sealing ring, then a spring. Make sure the tapered piece is put into the face cone end first! This can then be put onto the valve end like so:



I have seen some of these press fit and hold onto the valve super tight, and others, like mine is a little loose. If you can fit it tightly on, great! If it does not press fit on tightly, do not worry. we will leave it off for now then. Just make sure those 3 pieces stay together.

Now for a little bit of difficulty. The hammer spring is tensioned off of the back of the Co2 puncture assembly. When inserting this into the gun frame, I find it easiest to start from a bit of an angle and rotate it into place, pushing the spring upwards and out of the way. If that doesn't make any sense, well then RIP. I have faith you will figure it out though.




Here you can see, the little curved arrow is my crappy representation of how I squeeze/rotate the puncture assembly into place. The arrow pointing to the spring shows how it should sit on top of the puncture assembly. Again, this is what gives the hammer tension. Next, we have to seat the main valve body into place. Remember, this has to be seated in place with the sealing face somewhat attached to it. Put them in together, it is MUCH harder to put them in separately.



The valve body and face should sit in fairly easily. Again, notice how that little nubbin sticking out of the face has a cone shape with a hole? it has to go cone side first....
Next is to put in the barrel latch and barrel latch spring. The MOST common issue with these markers is that spring is actually a little piece of rubber, which tends to deteriorate/melt/powderize and become entirely non functional, which is where the "broken latch" issue comes from. I have measurements of the original one, which i am posting here. A decent replacement I have found is to cut up a squishy piece of rubber eraser to the same-ish size as a replacement.





This gets placed above the valve assembly, and the little rubber piece squishes in between the latch and the valve. You can see my finger nails imprinted on the side of the rubber piece:



Last thing we need to put in now is the elevator arm assembly. These should be relatively flat, but most are not. One of the most common things I see with these markers is the latch fails, so the marker hangs open. People will then try to close the marker improperly, so the barrel assembly mashes against the elevator arm and bends it. If yours is bent, try to bend it back flat. Once you have remedied that, there should be 2 pieces to the arm, a big one and a small one, connected by a pin. With the small arm facing down, we will take the little hole at the end of it and line it up with the small pin on the rear most part of the trigger like so:



Now, while keeping that arm connected to that pin, the large arm will be brought down. The big hole on the big arm should align with the main trigger pin, and the rear little end of the large arm should be below the hammer's end pin like so:



Now the elevator arm should be set. Again, make sure the right pin goes in the right cutout and make sure the ass-end of the elevator arm is below the bottom hammer pin like in the pics.

Now, there should be no parts left, and you should be able to screw the two halves of the gun together. This can be a little finnicky, as the pins have to align on both sides of the shell and sometimes the Co2 puncture assembly likes to get stuck on the rear handle. But with a little bit of finagling, it should clamp closed, and you can put the two screws back in.



Now it should be ready to test! When you test it, the trigger and hammer should function in both double action and single action mode. To test the elevator arm, make sure it is in the down position. Cocking back the hammer should raise the elevator arm up. When you pull the trigger, the hammer will drop and strike the valve, but the arm will not go down. This is ok! The elevator arm is actually brought down by the spring tension of the breech block assembly on the barrel part of the gun, so just push it down with your finger to make sure it rides up and down smoothly.



See above, uncocked with elevator arm down. Cocked brings the elevator arm up.



Now its been fired, the arm stays up because the breech block isn't there to pull it back down, so just push it down with your finger, making sure it goes smoothly.

[swan]

Last thing on our list is to reconnect the barrel. This is done by placing the barrel assembly in the OPEN position and screwing in the final screw.



Now before you close the marker, to prevent bending the damn elevator arm again, make sure the gun is uncocked and the arm is in the down position. Then, with your thumb, push up on the elevator breech. you may now close the marker.



This should give enough open space so the elevator arm doesn't hit anything when the marker is closed. You can now test the full function of the marker!


For some closing thoughts, I really love this thing to death for no good reason other than the novelty of it. It is an absolute hand cannon, a big head turner on the paintball field and a great conversation piece. It's interesting to me that they are somewhat common in comparison to other rare markers, but because of the paint caliber and obscurity, no one really knows much about them. Hilariously large, kind of impractical, unshootable due to paint scarcity, yet this stays in my gear bag and goes with me to the field every time. I'll use it as a surrender device at my field and it always catches people off guard. I am still searching for some .62 cal reballs for backyard plinking, and I know COB has .62 cal paint games in the PA/MD area, but aside from that, really the only option to get this going again is to re-sleeve it for 50 cal. The inner barrel is not separate, it is just a .62 cal machined hole in the barrel block, so no replacement barrels are available. A true sleeve would have to be made. and for the magazine tube, it has a 6(?) round spring fed tube magazine in the bottom under the barrel, this would have to be sleeved with a smaller spring and follower to reliably feed 50 cal. And, the breech block would need a .50 cal size insert that would properly align with both the magazine and the elevated barrel position. This leads me to think it might never be done, unless someone with enough time, money and craziness (maybe me?) is willing to attempt this. Aside from that, this marker is doomed to fade into true obscurity, as if it hasn't nearly gotten there already.

Liked my guide? Hated my guide? Anything to add or fix? Let me know! Cheers until my next dumb post....

[swan]

Updated, Pics have been added/fixed (i think)