LP classic body questions

[Sharkytrav]

Tank 550 output
Reg 400 output

Tornado Valve, Lightning Bolt, MiteyMax LPC, Spring kit, sanded and polished striker to shiny. Haven't polished inside of body.

Ball shoots with some reasonable velocity, marker won't recock. Seems like it doesn't really come close to recocking.

Started with soft springs front and back. Switched the front spring to medium. After thinking it over, I should have switched the main spring to medium and maybe left the valve spring as soft.

Three topics of questions:

Should I be trying to find a high flow vertical adapter or modify my Taso adapter to have higher air flow? Are v/a usually high flow enough to properly feed air to the system?

Is there a best practice when setting up the springs? Does one find oneself mixing soft and medium springs or do you usually have the same front and back? Is using the soft springs the ultimate goal or can you get really low pressure operation with the medium springs?

Barrel/ paint: I usually like to overbore my paint but it seems like we need to create more back pressure with LP in mind, no? I got a freak back in the mail recently. Is this a step in the right direction?

Discussing this thing:

[gabe]

A tighter bore barrel can help a lot. I've had it take a marginal recocking gun and make it function by dropping down to a .685" barrel from a .690. One way to tell is to create some back pressure with a squeegee in the barrel and see if that makes it cock.

Springs aren't normally fully balanced. Best results for me have been with a valve spring that is lighter than the hammer by a fair amount. By feel you can pull the bolt back and tell when the hammer spring is no longer assisting and it's just hammer spring. At rest with no air the hammer will push the valve open.

[Sharkytrav]

Awesome. I’ll give that a shot. Thank you!

[nak81783]

At what pressure will it function reliably?

It’s been over 20 years since I converted my Spyder SE to “lower” pressure, and no longer have the marker, but here’s my best recollection. I’m fairly certain I hit 450psi to function reliably at lower/mechanical rates of fire (maybe up to 8 bps), but I needed 525psi to keep up with the e-frame I put on it (12 bps). This doesn’t answer your questions but gives you a comparison.

From memory: ~850psi input, Palmer Male Stabilizer, Bob Long Vertical ASA and LPC (I think), Bandit LP Valve, Bandit Bolt, Maddman Spring Kit (lightest for valve, medium for striker), and polished striker.

Lapco Bigshot vs. Smart Parts All American (both 12”, I think) didn’t seem to make much of a difference, but both were .689” (I think). Lapco just had far less porting, making it louder.

Did you Teflon tape the valve retaining screw? Not sure it does anything, but it made me feel better that no air was escaping there.

Also for comparison, my mechanical Azodin KDII needs 320psi to hit 280-300fps. That’s a 20ish year newer marker, and it’s only about 130psi less than what I had achieved with the Spyder SE.

Good luck, and have fun. By the way, your marker looks great!

[Sharkytrav]

This is an almost entirely new to me marker, put together from parts. I pulled the classic Automag move and swapped parts until I was able to put my original gun back together in its original form.

So working pressure… not sure.

I have not taped the valve retaining screw. I’ll give that a shot!

Thank you!

[Sharkytrav]

I put in the medium striker spring and soft valve spring and with a swab in the barrel (didn't think to try without) got 95% normal firing at 350 psi.

Woo!

Pretty much out of air now so will be a while before I can fiddle any more.

Thanks amigos.