Another new A5 breaking paint

Got a 3 month old A5, Vortex, Egrip/WAS, Lightening rod, QEPH, insides polished, cyclone bottom cover screws shortened (to prevent poking the balls in the cyclone), chrono'd at around 280-290, co2 with remote, everything else is stock.  Turned the WAS down to 10 BPS, 3 shot.  Tried this with my Flatline and a 12" and 14" edge with both .691 and .693 backs.  Used Big Balls and Rainbow.  80 degree day, low humidity, playing in the shade.  No matter what I do, the thing breaks paint.  With the flatty it's either in the breech or in the barrel, with the Edge it's mainly in the barrel.  I might get one or two good balls then some flyers and then a bunch of soup...lather, rinse, repeat.  I've called Tippmann and they said it's probably the paint, yet 3 other guys shooting the same paint with 98Cs had zero issues with the same barrels.  I've checked the inside for burrs, the barrels and adapter and everything is smooooooth.  New battery in the egrip, gun has less than a case of paint through it.

I'm considering a Palmer's stabilizer, but this thing should shoot better than this with the mods I've listed, no?

I've shot competitively for 20 years (high power, IDPA, NYSPPA, etc) and do all my own smithing so I have some experience around firearms, but this has me pretty frustrated at this point....

Edited by Biggziff - 13 August 2007 at 1:23pm

robocop is right there dosent seem to be any other reason right  now

Never heard anything about cutting the cyclone screws. I wouldn't see how that would affect anything.

Check to make syre the breach is clean of anything that might bust a few balls.

what does polishing do for a gun? just wondering

jesseat956 wrote: what does polishing do for a gun? just wondering

You use something like 00 steel wool or 1800 grit silicon carbide wet/dry sandpaper.  I use 1600 grit SC and soapy water to smooth and actually polish any surface that touches another surface or has something rubbing against it.  While it's true you remove the overspray, which is rough, you're also creating surfaces that have much less friction even when unlubricated. Less friction means faster cycling, less effort to cycle and less heat...all very good things.  If you get too crazy and actually use something like a polishing wheel and polishing compound, you could actually make things worse as you begin to close up the tiny holes, pits and craters in the metal that will act as little pools to hold the lubricant causing the lube to wash off the metal easier.  This is why when you rebuild an engine, you always cross hatch the cylinder walls both to help seat the rings and hold more oil during startup when lubricity is low.