Building a Low Pressure 98 Custom

After installing the E-Bolt and Palmer Stabilizer couple of months ago and finding that the system could then be run at 300 psi we have been looking to further reduce pressures to make my son's marker really as quiet as possible.

I found part of a LPK on Ebay. It contained no hammer but we didn't really need one. The useful parts were the "volumizer" chamber and a modified valve. The valve has a MUCH softer spring than the standard valve. You can depress the pin with your unprotected finger. Also, the valve pin itself is larger diameter to completely fill the back plate hole. This obviously is to reduce the amount of gas blow by that would cock the hammer. And the cut away channels in the sides of the valve that allows the gas to flow forward to the power tube are much wider than stock.

Today we added these parts to Robin's 98C (these parts were supposed to be for me) It required some interesting plumbing. Another time I'll post some pictures in the Marker Gallery.

Tonight, also with his new 88/4500 HPA tank, he found he had to drop the air pressure from the Palmer to less than 200 psi to get the ball velocity below 310 fps. Besides lowering the pressure from the Stabilizer he had to lower the pressure to the E-Bolt ram. After a lot of trial he finally got the velocity into the 270 fps box.

Standing 8 feet away from from a DM5 I commented that his marker is now as quiet as that one is. He disagrees. Some place in my junk I have a db meter. Sunday we'll find out for sure.

One other little thing. When he first got the marker reassembled it was dead. Discovered that the wires to the battery and switch had been pinched again and this time the wires were broken. Replaced the wires with some old military surplus wire that is an inch and a half longer than the original wires. Now it is a lot easier to open and close the marker. That surplus military wire is silver plated Teflon insulated stuff that if really nice. Bought it 20 years ago for 50 cents for a 300 ft roll. Really good wire, tins easily and shows much lower resistance than standard wire (the silver plating). Marker purred like a kitten tonight.

He's now running HPA with all the bells and whistles and tonight I froze my CO2 tank to the point I had no pressure in the final game...I could have thrown the paint farther.

PyROphantasie wrote: well for one thing i can see you are an insomniac just as I am...  I have been really thinking about getting a lpk for a while now... I am pretty set on getting an ebolt and I'll be doing that soon, but i know that if you have the ebolt the lighter rear bolt of the lpk is useless, so a wast of money, how much did you pay for just the volumizer and the valve? and I don't know if you've done extensive testing with it or not but if you do let me know if you notice more shots per tank, and if it's a significant amount.

Though it was late last night when I was writing that post, the time stamp must be Eastern Daylight time rather than Pacific Daylight time where I am located.

I found two kits on Ebay with no hammer (vertical adapter,volumizer tank and valve). First one, I stopped bidding at $45 and it went for $46 (screw up on my part, missed the end time). The second one I got for $60. That was really too expensive in my book, but since Tippmann will not sell me just the parts I wanted I went with the Ebay bid. Now that I see those parts I will make the next set myself.

As for the amount of gas used, it is hard to get a handle on it yet. One factor is that our field cannot fill a 4500 psi cylinder any higher than about 3700 psi. And since we really are new to the HPA system, Robin got a refill when there was still over 1000 psi left in the cylinder...just to be on the safe side (OK for Dad to run out of CO2 and get bunkered in the last game) I keep you posted as to how things are working.

If you are going after that E-Bolt kit, better make it fast. The last few around are geting scarfed up pretty quickly.