A-5 Paint blender

Like usual, my A-5 isn't doing well. I never liked it since early on when I got it, but for reason. The first time I went out and played with it, it worked great and was a lot of fun. That was however the only time that it has ever worked properly.

After that the cyclone either started blending up my paintballs, or my bolt would cut them all to pieces.

After testing it out the other day, it seemed to be working alright and I decided to try it out again, and not use my 98.

Well, who woulda guessed, about 3/4 through the day it started chopping paint like no other. I figured the cyclone was grinding them up. So I emptied the paint and looked in the cyclone. It was perfectly clean, but you could seen into the hole where the bolt is. It was bright pink. So it WAS chopping.

I thought the cyclone was supposed to eliminate them?

I'm just wondering what I can do.

Thanks,
           K Hop


Edited by K Hop - 12 April 2009 at 10:47am

Everything on the checklist i have done. The velocity was only 255 average.
Detent was in correctly.
Front bolt is free of anything that would damage the paint. It still could pass as new.
Paint was excellent quality bought at a proshop.
And the cyclone itself is sound.

Also it has been in the cyclone before as well. With paint all inside the paddles. But this time it was not.

hmm... so you could be chopping paint in the barrel.  your barrel might be to small or has scratches in it. check that too.

GOMEZ15 wrote: hmm... so you could be chopping paint in the barrel.  your barrel might be to small or has scratches in it. check that too.

It's not the barrel.

oldpbnoob wrote: Where from on the powertube? Sounds like you might need to look at replacing the o-rings in the valve. Check the o-ring that fits in where the tombstone fits into the PT.

Those are my thoughts. Just seemed like there was too much air coming out for just some bad o-rings. It was leaking from the front where it goes to the barrel, the blowback, and out of the tombstone.


Edited by K Hop - 14 April 2009 at 6:42am

This has probably been mentioned before, but what propellant are you using?

K Hop, I was recently having a problem with my A5 chopping paint.  I had just upgraded to an A5 egrip with a selector switch and a cyclone upgrade with all the bells and whistles.  After I did the upgrade, the A5 started chopping paint.  I couldn't figure out if it was the bolt or the cyclone.  I took it completely apart a couple of times and couldn't figure it out.  Then I noticed the "squishy" paddles (for the cyclone) did not have the capability to interlock.  My squishy paddles were becoming unaligned during the firing process which was causing the paintball to feed halfway between the barrel and the cyclone.  The bolt was then busting the paint like crazy.  I ordered a new set of squishy paddles that interlock and haven't had the same problem since.

Thanks for all the help guys. Oldpbnoob actually led me to find the problem. He said a few things about the o-rings. Turns out most of the internals in the valve were rusted. The washer was rusted and didn't form a seal with the o-ring- Turns out when I lent it to a friend a few weeks back he soaked EVERYTHING in warm water to get it clean and get the paint off. I'm trying to get all the rust off, hopefully I won't have to buy new valve parts.

I was thinking of just buying new valve parts, but found a bottle of rust b-gone.

The body was fine, but yeah the coil and washer were rusted to heck. Found a bottle of rust remover and soaked them in it for an hour. The rust is completely gone, it was just the surface, and it holds air again. I am going to pull apart my 98 too to see if its in trouble or not.

I do need to get some new o-rings though. It still leaks a small fraction of what it did before. The washer may also e slightly damaged but it won't be hard to replace if needed.