What is the worse, or most surprising, damage you have encountered on a marker?

[powpowpaintball]

I haven't played in years, but I recently moved and decided to address all the paintball totes that were put in my garage and not touched since 2024. There are a few gear lots I must have bought and never looked at, and as I am going through those I found this gem of a PMR bolt:




When I pulled the bolt kit apart I thought maybe it was a two piece bolt but no--the bolt is split in two. It looks like the Hulk gripped both sides and twisted it apart.

This got me to thinking about what other damage I have seen over the years . I did a fair amount of BST in the Pbnation heydays and had plenty of packages show up with parts sticking out of boxes, gear lots that were literally annodizing rejects, and cleaned/fixed dozens of markers that looked like they were never lubed and dragged behind a truck, but I think this bolt takes the cake for me. The simplicity of it being broken in half and my initial confusion as to whether or not it was supposed to be that way gave me a chuckle and sent me down BST nostalgia road.

So, what has everyone else dealt with? Any egregious damage that took your breath away? Any small flaws that ruined an otherwise perfect gem? Who has the best of the worst?

[Ecapnation]

Not by my own hands but being in the BST game as long as I have I've come across a bunch of winners.

- Shocktech intimidator where only the barrel threads were usable every else was stripped out and most ofvthe gun was held together by super glue.

- An early BBT modified cocker some idiot mini'ed and side tapped for air using at best hand tools. I cut most of the bad work off leaving a weird body project.

- A first generation aluminum bolt LED angel that had the bolt welded in place from use ( a factory oops because they left the bolts raw )

And a great runner up but not really damage.

- A John gross cocker shipped to me full of fire ants

[capedcrayola]

Was there a queen fire ant in the cocker? I would've kept her.

[Ecapnation]

I'm an engineer not an entomologist

[Olsson]

Brilliant answer. Simply brilliant in its simplicity.

[Jonnydread]

I've encountered a ton of broken power tubes, but I'd say the weirdest one was someone had aggressively installed SAE screws into a metric Spyder and the internals were from another blowback and just kind forced in. Poor thing had to be put out of its misery.

[TencenT]

Twisted feedneck on a system x vengeance that the owner tried to resolve by apparently sanding down the delrin end of the bolt until it cycled. I imagine at that point they realized you still can't get paint through the breach but hey, A+ for effort 😂

[acrewofone]

I once tried to unscrew a tank fill nipple, "just a little bit", while the tank was fully charged, to install a nipple cover lanyard, POW!, ripped the threads out of the regulater and shot the fill nipple into the ceiling. Yes, that was me that did that....

[mercpb]

that bolt break wasn't uncommon on first gen bolt esp. if run hot. There's SLIGHT differences over the years 2007-2011 probably for this reason. I have a few extra bolt assemblies around cheap if you need one.

I don't have any overly comical "previous user damage" stories offhand but to the post above me ---- I have damaged drywall in a similar fashion with a matrix LPR before!!!

[Jsc5150]

That’s actually not terribly uncommon with PMRs, those bolts aren’t held on by a lot of material and the machining is cheap china standards

When I was teching for velocity, there was a nightmare sft that would have random cycling issues. Took the noid apart, it was making a puree of ants

[heyzeus]

I had a cocker body with a stripped frame to body screw hole. I tried to helicoil it myself. It did not go well. Still have the body if anyone can help with that.

[Jsc5150]

Because you’re from America’s finest city, I’ll help

What happened that it “went badly”?

[heyzeus]

I didn’t tap it correctly so the thread spacing on one of the helicoil threads is too large. I assumed it’s going to require some machining to fix. Was going to hit up one of the fabricators on here.

[Socalpumpballer]

autococker body off eBay with stripped valve jam nut threads was one of the more annoying ones. More common being Nelson’s with snapped power tube threads

[RPP]

The most memorable are probably a scratched Shocktec SFT. Someone used something hard to remove the drive a left a fatty scratch which caused a leak. That one took me a regrettably long time to diagnose.

Another one is I've replaced a couple gamma core parts where the spool snapped in half...

[Jordan]

I bought a Typhoon off of the POG years ago that arrived with mud and sticks in the lower tube... despite being sold as "functional".

Nearly everything I buy needs work and I know that going in, but the Typhoon stands out.

[Ecapnation]

That was the lpr spacer lol

[ClockworkSoldier]

So this wasn't exactly a horribly broken part, but adjacent. About 4 months ago I bought an A5 off ebay. Decent price, had a response trigger, collapsible stock, an old Dye Boomstick, and was advertised as in "good working condition". The included pictures looked pretty good. I bought it, and as soon as it arrived, I could see that there was a ton of gunk and residue built up between the body and cyclone feed. I tried cocking and dry firing it, and it wouldn't even cock. Got a hold of the seller and he simply wanted a return for refund, but I didn't want to bite, since I knew he would just try and scam someone else who didn't know better.

I started disassembling it and photographing just how dirty it was, and every single thing wrong with the marker, as I went. Each time I would send the picture, and a detailed description of everything wrong with it, to the seller. He kept repeating that it was working perfectly fine when he shipped it out, and eventually started threatening to contact eBay's staff, because he believed I was harassing him for simply pointing out the issues with the item he sold as "in good working condition". That went on for about an hour, as I took my time disassembling it. But once I got inside the marker, and removed the powertube, I found black mold growing within all the gunk that was stuck inside the marker. I've only ever seen fuzzy mold on one or two markers in the past, that had been in storage, but never before have I seen actual black mold.

Thankfully, that actually came to help me with the issue, as my local USPS refused to accept the item for return, due to the mold, and eBay was happy to give me a full refund with a signed statement from a USPS supervsior. Unfortunately even after deep cleaning the whole thing, the powertube still needed to be replaced, and I still haven't gotten around to finishing fixing the thing.

[Swedgin!!]

Not damaged but I did get a cocker off eBay long ago and almost every thread had lock tight on it, even the barrel threads. Luckily it was all blue and not red🤦🏽♂️ but still… really the barrel threads?

[TencenT]

You dont want that barrel falling out on you when you're ramping that mech trigger.

[mercpb]

Not marker damage but I've gotten lots of stank soft goods. Paintballers are heathens. Like, this got put away wet 14 years ago

At least I can wash stank out --- my mother taught me well of the witchcraft of stain removal --- stale smoke smell is brutal. I have some nice grips --- GRIPS --- that I had to slather in chems and hang on a wire outside for 2wks before I could even tolerate them in a closed room.

I did have one guy leave his 420 stash in a complete gearbag he mailed, to my work. Killing me, smalls!

[Matt Drown]

Many years ago, I tried sprinting across "crumbled cement blocks". I failed horribly and went down hard. The automag I was rocking at the time sheered the brass 90 degree fitting on the dockbill clean off (it was on my left and I broke my fall with the gun). I also DENTED the dye stainless barrel that was mounted. On a plus side the knee pads, the gloves, and the redz forearm pads did their job and I stood up, let the 20oz co2 tank finish venting and walked away trying to figure out how I wasn't injured at all.

The Automag of course was uninjured, minus the need for a new fitting and barrel.