|
I’ve now had some time with Jom’s Merlin bodied; Racegun Frame equipped “Autococker”, and wanted to post my thoughts, and ramblings. Many, MANY thanks to Jom and Compulsive Paintball for allowing me the time to play with it. The Race frame is extremely well made and finished, it looks nice, feels nice, and feels like it is in the same package as a standard .45 frame Installation was easy, although the first time it is probably going to take someone 30 - 40min to get everything right. The biggest problem is setting the sear lug correct once the frame is mounted, although after doing it once, you get the hang of it. The front-end piece is a 5-way valve with a mounting bracket. Honestly, it looks better in person then in the pictures. The bracket covers the outer side of the valve, and mounts to the front block with the hole that the pneumatic 4-way would normally mount. I would have preferred a bracket that would cover 3 sides, the outside, inside and tip, just to be on the safe side, but I’m funny that way. A shroud (which should fit with the valve mounted) could also be used. The other issue that I had with the 5-way is the 2 additional exhausts on the top. One of these can be used as an air assist, if you so desire, but they are open holes (so that they can vent). I could foresee that being a good place for dirt and paint to get into and gum up the works… the easy fix for this would be to purchase 2 additional nipples to screw in the vent holes. This would allow it to still vent, but cover up most of the holes, and if you wanted an air assist, you could run a hose from one of them to your hopper. The gripframe is pretty impressive with the amount of stuff they managed to fit into it, but doesn’t seem bulky at all, it feels like your standard .45 frame. Inside are the electronics, and the rechargeable battery. This means, just like your angel, you need to recharge it the night before the game, and as a plus, one less 9v battery to use in your paintball equipment. The trigger is completely adjustable, although at super-short settings (i.e. dangerously short) the trigger did have a tendency to stick, and it would actually fire 2 or 3 more shots after my fingers were completely off the trigger. I don’t feel this is an issue, as even at a little longer, the trigger is plenty fast! Three buttons on the back of the grip allow you to turn it on and off, put it into safety, and start/end the game timer. An indicator light, and computer plug receptacle are also present. The setup on this gun was a Merlin body, stock tornado valve, and Shocktech Heavy hammer. While I think this is normally a great setup, allowing the gun to run at lower pressures, therefore making it quieter, and allowing a light Mainspring so that it won’t chop, this made it a little harder to set the gun up correctly. Problem was, that the gun cycled so fast, so consistently that the valve wasn’t closing fast enough. This causes the gun to “fart”, firing the first shot, but every consequent shot in a string doesn’t fire. Another problem that was showing up was immense blowback under high rates of fire. This was a combination of the valve being open too long while the bolt was coming back faster than normal. Increasing the valve spring cleared all of this up. Of course increasing the valve spring means an increase in Mainspring as well, which means increasing the inline pressure. After much experimenting, and a ton of springs, I have found that this particular gun like about 300psi - still low enough to avoid chopping, but higher than normal on this type of body/valve combination. I mention this as an FYI for anyone with a super low pressure cocker that may be looking into a Race Frame. The fact of the matter is that you need to be able to close that valve very quickly for reliability, and may need to re-spring the gun to achieve high ROF with the electronic frame. The software that comes with the frame is easy to understand, and a breeze to tweak. It has several features that are worth mentioning… it allows you to see your shot count, set your timer to the max time, view the library of settings, choose firing mode, and change the timing of the gun. The library is probably the best feature - it allows you to save different timing settings, with comments. For example, once you figure out the best settings for a 70deg day, shooting Marbs, you can save that setting. The next time you have the same conditions, you can just download it into your gun, and go… no spending time on figuring out the optimal settings. There are 2 ways to change the timing of your gun - in basic mode, you can change the amount of time the breech is open, leaving all other settings alone. In advanced mode, you can change the timing of the sear solenoid, dwell, time it takes the bolt to open, time it takes the bolt to close, and time the breech is open. For most applications, leaving it in basic mode is enough, as changing the other times may make the gun cycle faster, but lead to problems with feeding balls correctly. Firing modes (currently) are Semi-auto (each pull fires a ball and loads a ball), Classic (holding the trigger keeps the breech open) and full auto.
Speaking of feeding this thing… a standard Revolution is just not enough. Anything over 10/11 BPS, and it was having problems with skipped shots. My reasoning here is 2-fold - not fresh batteries, and that the rev isn’t really made to keep up with 10bps for 20 ball strings. I cannot stress how easy it is to run long strings of shots with this frame. I know Jom has a turbo rev just waiting for it, and I believe that the results will be different, and allow him to keep up longer strings without a problem. I STRONGLY recommend a warp feed. Once a warp was hooded up to it, the gun at 12BPS, full auto never missed a shot. (Video link -
Bottom line is I’m impressed. I’ve been shooting cockers for a long time, and although it feels a bit weird, I think this is a great upgrade. My wife who shoots Bushmasters, and has NEVER been able to shoot a cocker, thinks the Race is awesome. I know I’ll be getting one after the winter holidays.
Thanks again Jom!! I wouldn’t have touched an electro cocker without you :-)
niteHawk
Lee S Szolusha
|
