3 years in the fixing...

It's not a totally tricked out milsim A-5, but I'm very happy with it. The basic story behind it is this: It was my first real paintball gun that I bought with my own money. I put a few things on it like the drop-forward, rear velocity adjuster, barrel, and e-grip with double trigger. Then I bought an autococker and found a kid who offered to buy it for $400 - an offer I couldn't pass up. About two years later I asked what happened to it since that kid had quit playing paintball. Apparently it ended up in the hands of some random guy who knew my friend. 

After much hassle, I retrieved the gun for free; it was broken and no one wanted it. Really old paint had gummed up on both the interior and exterior of the A-5. I was able to clean it off the interior, but the old paint had corroded the paint job on the exterior. It took me about 6 months of working on it on and off, but eventually I removed the entire paint job with sand paper and and various paint removers. I wanted to get it painted by the general contractor I worked for, but I never got around to it. I also stopped playing paintball while in college. Anyway, several internal parts to the A-5 were missing and the piston from drop forward on/off had been jammed down the powertube. The e-grip also didn't work because some of the connections were broken.

Anyway, I ended up replacing or upgrading almost every thing on the gun. I got the e-grip fixed by Tippmann, I bought a new adjustable, magnetic double trigger. I bought a new piston for the drop forward on/off. I bought a new powertube, a new delrin bolt, a new valve, a new rear-bolt, new sear, new cyclone feed internals, and new hopper. And yet, after all of this, the gun still had a problem. It would sputter, fire once, and not recock. I couldn't figure out why since every part on the gun was new, all the proper o-rings were in place, everything was lubed, etc. I checked forums, called Tippmann, read the manual, took it into paintball shops, etc. Finally I had only one more thing to try: replace the body. It finally dawned on me that maybe someone had polished the internals a little too much and thus, the gun wasn't able to seal. That would explain why it didn't have enough pressure to recock. So I bought a new body and... it worked!

Shoots like a dream.

Here's a video of my brother shooting it. Idk if anyone can watch it since it's a Facebook video, but feel free to try. He's not very good at walking the trigger, but still gives you an idea about how fast it shoots.