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Period of
Product Use: |
| Less than a month | 10 of 10 people found this review helpful.
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Paintball
Experience: |
4 years |
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Similar
Products Used: |
Just about any other pump you can think of. The KP has the closest feel to this, while the mechanism is similar to most Nelson-clones. |
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| Marker Setup: |
Too many pumps to list.
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Recommended
Upgrades: |
A couple important mods to the breech area are necessary. Nail polish detents and a check of the transition from breech to barrel. |
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| Strengths: |
Weaver rails
Feels/Shoots/Looks great.
Unique mechanism |
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| Weaknesses: |
Not designed for beginners, stripping is a chore. Plastic parts. Stock sights bad. |
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| Review: |
First of all, I bought this gun with the knowledge that it might be a real task. I have heard many people complain of barrel breaks, bad feeding, leaks and so on. After seeing three firsthand, I decided to take the risk.
The gun is a terrific simulation tool. It reloads the same way a pump shotgun does, and the pump stroke is as long as a 12ga. However, it is obviously not designed to be a competitive paintball gun. Reloading is slow, it is unwieldy and heavy.
When I first gassed it up and shot, it did in fact break balls. I was using Xball Bronze and field grade Procaps.
The solution was a simple one. I undid the sling mount at the front of the gun and unscrewed my barrel. Looking at the barrel lip where it connects to the breech, I could see a slight deformation. This would not have any impact on a normal pump, but the RAM68 is a unique platform.
Pay close attention to this! The ball sits about a quarter inch back from the barrel when the gun is cocked and ready to fire. That means that when you shoot the gun, the ball flies forward and must make its way past the barrel's entrance without breaking. If you have a tightbored barrel, a glued in detent ring or the slightest deformity at this transition point you will have barrel breaks.
Smooth down the transition by beveling the barrel's lip. While you are at it, paint some nail polish just in front of the bolt in the breech to stop rollouts. (By the way, keep bolt release ON. It can be a pain in the ass using bolt lock.)
The gun is now shooting fairly hard and accurately. I'm quite happy with it overall.
[edit] - I've made an excellent modification to my bolt. I took it out and milled a starfire pattern into its face in order to better disperse the gas jet upon firing. At high velocities, the gun occasionally blew up balls at the bolt because of the concentrated burst, and the starfire cuts have eliminated this problem entirely.
[edit x2] - I've now made a more complicated mod to the body, trigger linkage and feed system to bring the bolt forward about a quarter inch. Balls are now no longer seated in the pre-barrel breech. This has also enabled me (after some barrel modification) to use CCI detent rings. This mod (#7) is detailed in the following link. I highly recommend it if you can handle the work.
Link to Shotgun mod page: http://rap4.com/paintball/forum/index.php/topic,10732.0.html
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| Conclusion: |
With some precautionary modification to the breech area, the RAM68 is a great and unique gun. I take points away for some construction aspects such as the field stripping and plastic components. Also, the initial quality wasn't the best and resulted in the dented barrel lip that caused breakage. I am quite happy with the gun now and I highly recommend it to anyone with a decent working knowledge of pump action markers. I would never in a million years suggest that a new player (with no capability to modify the gun) buy it. Stay away if you can't handle basic mods.
Rating out of the box: 7
The rating goes up, the more mods are done to the gun. At this point after completely reworking the bolt and trigger linkage I am very content. If the gun came this way I would rate it a 9.
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| Rating: |
| 7 out of 10 | Last edited on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 2:11 am PST |
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