First, I bought my MS over a year ago and only did some minimal mods, AR removal, OPV removal, making room for bladder expansion, and plugging the whole on the white winged piece.
It then sat on my shelf until recently, with the bladder unscrewed from the front bladder 'collar'.
Now i saw the Assult Magstrike mod, and got really giddy about having an automatic gun with 70'+ ranges, so I pulled my dusty MS off the shelf and tried to reassemble it. Well it leaked, a lot. I did some tests by submerging it in water and i thought the leak was coming from where the air inlet/output piece (attached to the pump and then up to the trigger valve) sealed with the bladder. I hesitated to goop it because A)it would become immovable, and
I'm not sure if its wise to goop a connection that will be dynamically moving (would the goop restrict the bladder inflation? would it even hold tight?). So i decided to just smear all the fittings on the inlet/output piece in goop, and wait till i got back from work 8 hours later. Well It seemed to improve a lot. There was no longer any hissing, but depending on the orientation of the pump (I held it underwater without closing up the shell, and had to keep pumping it to keep it inflated), there would still be bubbles.
After inspecting the vinyl tubing i noticed a tiny 'scratch' that didn't even appear to penetrate the entire tube, but i slobbered it in goop anyways and went to bed.
I woke up this morning and pumped up the bladder and submerged it once again. Eureka! I didn't see any bubbles at all!
Satisfied, I left the bladder inflated and took a 10 minute shower, but when I returned, the bladder was totally deflated. I was perplexed.
Frustrated, I submerged the entire blaster, and noticed that the only place bubbles escaped were in the piston assembly. At first i presumed this was just the piston displacing the air with water, but it never stopped! It was a quite vigorous stream of bubbles compared to the previous two, so i was in disbelief that it did not hiss or anything. Also, this would mean that the trigger system was not closing all the way, because air was getting into the piston without the trigger being depressed.
Now I'm totally confused. It appears neither the first two leaks were very significant (they were much smaller compared to the piston leak, and all my work was focused on the wrong spot. I don't know what to try next. I think the problem lies in the trigger valve, but i really dont know how to begin trouble-shooting that. This is where I need your help NF!
Okay, I realize that was a long post for a simple leak question, but I have another question about the "Assult Magstrike" mod (which isn't in the mod directory, but I stumbled upon while reading the 15 pages of Magstrike search results).
Banding the piston and adding the external piston enlargement do essentially the same thing, they increase the amount (either by volume, or pressure) of air needed to actuate the piston, and fire a dart, right?
As far as I can find (and I read 15 pages of Magstrike search resulsts), nobody has posted about doing both, or even doing a larger piston enlargement than the original. My question is if anybody has done both of these, and what kinda performance he's gotten. I was wondering if there is a point where adding a bigger piston enlargement doesn't add any significant range because of weight etc.
If I'm understanding it correctly, theoretically, if you built a super large piston enlargment, you'd get a very slow RoF (because it would take a while to fill the new piston), resulting in an almost semi-auto like magstrike with (presumably) incredible ranges. I.E I'd much rather have a Magstrike that could only fire 5 or 6 shots 100' than 10 shots at 50'. These are just guesses obviously, but the original Assult Magstrike mod was getting a full clip of 10 darts to go 70'-105', surely 5 or 6 shots at 100' consistently is plausible.
I realize the above paragraph is a 'conceptual' sentiment that might be received unfavorably here, but i was just wondering if anybody has documented this, and if i'm missing something fundamental that would limit the piston enlargment's benefits.
tl;dr - 1) how do you trouble shoot a leaky trigger valve?
2) what are the limits of the "Assult Magstrike" mod?
Edited by nostyleguy, 17 January 2010 - 05:14 PM.
