FOM
05-09-2002, 10:24 PM
First a little history…
A couple of months ago, we started getting some very odd problems. On first look the symptoms we were seeing SEEMED to be “board problems” some of the thinks we saw included… Solenoid would not fire but manual button would fire. Dwell would have no effect on velocity—that is I might get 300 fps regardless of the dwell setting (at a given pressure). Gun would work perfectly, shut it off, and suddenly the gun would not work at all. Wide swings in velocity—maybe 50 fps from high to low-even thought everything else appeared to work just fine. Now all of these scream “Bad Board” to me, but we would swap boards out—in some cases overnight new boards to customers at our cost ( so they could use the gun for the weekend) —only to have the board switch NOT cure the problem.
At some point, we finally found that replacing the solenoid “cured” the problems. Frankly we send a lot of new solenoids to customers to cure the problem—many of which we never got the “bad” solenoid back for. Of course we spent a LOT of time on the phone with Smart Parts about this. We found that replacing the ram (and its spring) was the “cure”. At some point shortly after, we found that simply clipping the spring was a very easy “work around” to cure the symptoms.
A couple of important points—first this was BEFORE the first cricket board hit the market. Second this was something that happened suddenly to guns that had been working perfectly. In fact we had to replace the ram in 3 of the TEAM GUNS at Skyball (between games). And I will assure your that the team guns were tested and tuned by some of the best techs in the country before and during Skyball.
At Skyball, between Johnny, Walt, and myself, we replaced at least 15 ram/spring assemblies. Almost all of these were guns sold by other dealers- but because of our very visible “Smart Parts” presence, folks came to use to look for help. In fact Tony, who was doing the Smart Parts teching at Skyball, got to the point that he just reached into his box and pulled out another ram every time we saw Walt walk toward him!
Since then we have continued to replace assembly, but have found a “work around”(clipping the spring) that is simple enough for most to do on their own.
We continue to gets calls and e-mails on this every day. This is not a problem isolated to a few guns, or one type of gun. We have many “stock” Impulses we have repaired this on, many of our own customs, and customs made by other dealers. ( yes we fix ANY Impulse brought to us under warranty- it does not matter if it was purchased from us or not- we feel Warranty is warranty-no matter who sold the original gun.
When we get a call…
As you might guess, we get a LOT of calls asking us to “tech” guns over the phone. After the normal questions are out of the way (did you try a NEW battery…) and our “best guess” is that there is a solenoid problem, We offer several options. Of course the gun can be sent to us, and we will fix it for free. The only costs to the customer will be the shipping.
OR…
If the customer is comfortable dissembling their gun, we are happy to talk them thru the “work around’ of clipping the spring. This has nothing to do with our not having time to do the repair, frankly we can do the repair much faster then we can teach someone over the phone how to do it, But it has everything to do with giving the customers with a little bit more experience the option of spending 15 minuets to fix the problem and avoiding having to send the gun back (and be without it!)
OR…
If the customer is NOT comfortable disassembling the Solenoid, but is comfortable with simply replacing it with a new one. We give the option of our sending out a new solenoid for the customer to install, and then will credit the customer (for the full amount) of the solenoid when they return the “bad” solenoid to us.
The key here is that at some point we need to have the “bad” solenoid so we can rebuild it (or have Smart Parts replace it)
There are some very important points to remember here. This problem simply doesn’t show up in testing most of the time. An outside supplier makes these solenoids. They go thru that supplier’s testing before shipping to Smart Parts. Smart Parts installs them in guns, and test fires the gun a large number of times. If it one of our guns (Rat or normal Impulse), We also set up and test the gun. The gun that leaves out store will normally have in the neighborhood of 500 shots (about 100 with paint), above the Smart Parts testing, before we ship it. Because of the recent history with this problem, we even go one step further. Because this problem often seems to happen to a gun that is working perfectly, gets turned off, and when turned back on doesn’t work, we have added a “final step to our process. Basically after the gun has been setup and tested by the tech, we let it “rest” until the next morning and another person will test fire it more before packing and shipping.
If the customer returns the gun for service, of course we fix it for free and return it to the customer as quickly as possible. If the customer requests we send them a new solenoid, we will pull a brand new solenoid , charge it out (the solenoid is a $80 item) and as soon as the bad solenoid is returned to us, we run a credit for the full amount of the solenoid. If the customer wants to try to save some time and do it himself, we will “talk them thru it”. If something gets screwed up, or if it doesn’t cure the problem, we simply have them send the gun with all the parts back to us, and we repair the problem at no charge.
But please realize that “warranty” is not the same as “insurance”. Lets say you had one of our rats. After using it for a game you decided the freak barrel had something wrong with it. Of course we would fix or replace that barrel under the warranty. But if you sent the barrel back to us, and somehow that barrel got lost in shipping, we would not send you another barrel for free. We can only fix or replace something if we get it back.
I have recently had a problem just like this. The Customer sent a defective part back to us for repair/replacement. The only thing we got was a normal #10 paper envelope with a wire from the solenoid in it and a letter asking us to send out a new/rebuilt solenoid. I would not consider a normal #10 envelope a suitable method of sending parts for repair/replacement. Unfoutaintly there was no insurance on the package (If the customer had tried to insure it, I’m sure the post office would have insisted the customer use a more suitable packaging) The only option I could offer was to send a new solenoid at dealer cost ($50) instead of the retail price of $80.
FOM
A couple of months ago, we started getting some very odd problems. On first look the symptoms we were seeing SEEMED to be “board problems” some of the thinks we saw included… Solenoid would not fire but manual button would fire. Dwell would have no effect on velocity—that is I might get 300 fps regardless of the dwell setting (at a given pressure). Gun would work perfectly, shut it off, and suddenly the gun would not work at all. Wide swings in velocity—maybe 50 fps from high to low-even thought everything else appeared to work just fine. Now all of these scream “Bad Board” to me, but we would swap boards out—in some cases overnight new boards to customers at our cost ( so they could use the gun for the weekend) —only to have the board switch NOT cure the problem.
At some point, we finally found that replacing the solenoid “cured” the problems. Frankly we send a lot of new solenoids to customers to cure the problem—many of which we never got the “bad” solenoid back for. Of course we spent a LOT of time on the phone with Smart Parts about this. We found that replacing the ram (and its spring) was the “cure”. At some point shortly after, we found that simply clipping the spring was a very easy “work around” to cure the symptoms.
A couple of important points—first this was BEFORE the first cricket board hit the market. Second this was something that happened suddenly to guns that had been working perfectly. In fact we had to replace the ram in 3 of the TEAM GUNS at Skyball (between games). And I will assure your that the team guns were tested and tuned by some of the best techs in the country before and during Skyball.
At Skyball, between Johnny, Walt, and myself, we replaced at least 15 ram/spring assemblies. Almost all of these were guns sold by other dealers- but because of our very visible “Smart Parts” presence, folks came to use to look for help. In fact Tony, who was doing the Smart Parts teching at Skyball, got to the point that he just reached into his box and pulled out another ram every time we saw Walt walk toward him!
Since then we have continued to replace assembly, but have found a “work around”(clipping the spring) that is simple enough for most to do on their own.
We continue to gets calls and e-mails on this every day. This is not a problem isolated to a few guns, or one type of gun. We have many “stock” Impulses we have repaired this on, many of our own customs, and customs made by other dealers. ( yes we fix ANY Impulse brought to us under warranty- it does not matter if it was purchased from us or not- we feel Warranty is warranty-no matter who sold the original gun.
When we get a call…
As you might guess, we get a LOT of calls asking us to “tech” guns over the phone. After the normal questions are out of the way (did you try a NEW battery…) and our “best guess” is that there is a solenoid problem, We offer several options. Of course the gun can be sent to us, and we will fix it for free. The only costs to the customer will be the shipping.
OR…
If the customer is comfortable dissembling their gun, we are happy to talk them thru the “work around’ of clipping the spring. This has nothing to do with our not having time to do the repair, frankly we can do the repair much faster then we can teach someone over the phone how to do it, But it has everything to do with giving the customers with a little bit more experience the option of spending 15 minuets to fix the problem and avoiding having to send the gun back (and be without it!)
OR…
If the customer is NOT comfortable disassembling the Solenoid, but is comfortable with simply replacing it with a new one. We give the option of our sending out a new solenoid for the customer to install, and then will credit the customer (for the full amount) of the solenoid when they return the “bad” solenoid to us.
The key here is that at some point we need to have the “bad” solenoid so we can rebuild it (or have Smart Parts replace it)
There are some very important points to remember here. This problem simply doesn’t show up in testing most of the time. An outside supplier makes these solenoids. They go thru that supplier’s testing before shipping to Smart Parts. Smart Parts installs them in guns, and test fires the gun a large number of times. If it one of our guns (Rat or normal Impulse), We also set up and test the gun. The gun that leaves out store will normally have in the neighborhood of 500 shots (about 100 with paint), above the Smart Parts testing, before we ship it. Because of the recent history with this problem, we even go one step further. Because this problem often seems to happen to a gun that is working perfectly, gets turned off, and when turned back on doesn’t work, we have added a “final step to our process. Basically after the gun has been setup and tested by the tech, we let it “rest” until the next morning and another person will test fire it more before packing and shipping.
If the customer returns the gun for service, of course we fix it for free and return it to the customer as quickly as possible. If the customer requests we send them a new solenoid, we will pull a brand new solenoid , charge it out (the solenoid is a $80 item) and as soon as the bad solenoid is returned to us, we run a credit for the full amount of the solenoid. If the customer wants to try to save some time and do it himself, we will “talk them thru it”. If something gets screwed up, or if it doesn’t cure the problem, we simply have them send the gun with all the parts back to us, and we repair the problem at no charge.
But please realize that “warranty” is not the same as “insurance”. Lets say you had one of our rats. After using it for a game you decided the freak barrel had something wrong with it. Of course we would fix or replace that barrel under the warranty. But if you sent the barrel back to us, and somehow that barrel got lost in shipping, we would not send you another barrel for free. We can only fix or replace something if we get it back.
I have recently had a problem just like this. The Customer sent a defective part back to us for repair/replacement. The only thing we got was a normal #10 paper envelope with a wire from the solenoid in it and a letter asking us to send out a new/rebuilt solenoid. I would not consider a normal #10 envelope a suitable method of sending parts for repair/replacement. Unfoutaintly there was no insurance on the package (If the customer had tried to insure it, I’m sure the post office would have insisted the customer use a more suitable packaging) The only option I could offer was to send a new solenoid at dealer cost ($50) instead of the retail price of $80.
FOM