Fires, recocks, and doesn't shoot

Hi guys, new here. I have a Tippmann 98 custom that I bought probably 6 years ago. I used it for a summer, put it away, and brought it out of retirement today. I opened it, cleaned it, oiled the o-ring areas, and re-assembled. The problem I am having is that the marker shoots once, recocks, and then does not shoot again. I pull back on the lever as if I were cocking it, and then it shoots one more. After staring at the marker for awhile, my guess is that I either the long spring needs to be replaced, or there's something wrong with the pin that fires the bolt back into place to shoot again. If that's the case,, I have no idea what to do. Anyone?

Great, I think I figured it out, I believe it was the rear bolt and power tube, they were not sliding nicely together. I cleaned it really good, replaced the o-ring and gave it some extra oil. Thanks for the help!

Enos Shenk wrote: Mack wrote: My theory has always been that the rear hammer was coming back and engaging the sear before the sear has a chance to reset on the trigger return slide. Cant be that. Try holding the trigger back sometime, as soon as you release it you hear/feel a click as the sear slides back on top of the trigger slider. Does the rear bolt get "stuck" farther rearward than normal? If so its probably just friction at the end of the action from some of the annoyingly common oversprayed paint.

Actually, on one of the 98s I had, you could get that same click on the field if you pulled the charging handle back after it malfunctioned.  It would then work for a while until it repeated the problem.  At which point I would repeat the immediate action of tugging back on the charging handle.  One of the things I cleaned/fixed on that one when I finally took it apart was the little spring under the slide (which was full of rust and gunk) and the problem did not return after that.  I did a bunch of other stuff at the same time so I can't honestly swear that the spring was definitely the problem. 

I did replicate the behavior with the innards setting in the right half-shell on my desk though.  To be more specific, since I couldn't fire in this condition, I manually set the rear-hammer on the sear without the sear engaging the slide.  The behavior was similar enough in regards to not releasing the rear hammer and the slide resetting when I pulled the charging handle back that I felt it supported my theory.


Edited by Mack - 21 September 2009 at 3:14pm