One BKO on CO2 thread to rule them all...

[jmtilton]

There is alot of threads on "BKO on CO2?", so I thought I would post this. This was done and written by Tank from http://obdo.flipty.com/, so thank him.

"In this article I'm going to tackle Co2 vs Nitro and Compressed air because I get a lot of people asking me, "Hey Tank, what's up with the Co2?".

First of all I'm going to let you in on a secret gun manufacturers don't want you to know, you can run ANY paintball market on Co2 despite what it says in the manual of your gun. Gun manufacturers don't want you running Co2 because if you don't set it up right you can damage the gun and Co2 isn't the most stable gas on the planet so they don't want you blaming the gun for not being consistent. But with the proper setup you can run any gun on Co2 safely and pretty consistently.

What are the problems with Co2? AT a stable room temp, the tank is roughly 3/4 liquid which means the gas expands. Also under rapid fire, the faster the air moves the colder things get which can lead to feeding liquid Co2 through your gun (potentially damaging something). Another problem is that it's affected by outside temps especially really cold and really hot weather.

Co2's been around since the beginning of paintball. Back then before regulators and expansion chambers were invented for paintball use, you'd just feed the co2 directly into your gun. The velocity of the shot was adjusted through the bolt opening or spring tension on the ram in most cases. This ment you were constantly tweaking with adjustments throughout the day to stay at the FPS limit of your field. As the day goes on the temps affect the pressure coming out of the tank which affects the speed the ball goes meaning you have to tweak the bolt or ram to compensate. This was a royal pain and where co2 got most of it's bad rap.

Then along came expansion chambers. This made using co2 a little more reliable because the liquid co2 would warm up in the expansion chamber before the gun needed it to propel the ball. These worked pretty good, some even had liquid co2 filters built in but they still weren't as stable as Nitro/Ca. Anti-Siphon tubes also made using co2 a little more reliable. If you teamed an anti-siphon tank up with an expansion chamber you could get pretty good consistency.

With the introduction of Nitro/Compressed air we saw a gas that was very consistent, not affected by outside temps, didn't chill at high flow rates and was totally gas, no liquid to expand. This was an evolution in paintball propellant if you could afford it. Along with Nitro/Ca came regulators, a key in using co2.

The components for using co2 have improved greatly over the years. Today it is possible to get +/- 5fps with co2 believe it or not. The introduction of the regulator is probably the most significant step forward for using co2. Teaming up an anti-siphon co2 tank with a dual regulator delivery system not only keeps liquid out of your gun but it regulates the pressure spikes co2 is famous for. Also regulators allow you to lower the pressure demands of the tank meaning the gun won't chill as fast. An example of a proper reliable co2 setup today would be an anti-siphon tank setup correctly (the tube has to be bent the right way especially if you're running it horizontally on-gun), a palmer female stabilizer which you can mount bottom line and screw the tank into. You would set the output pressure of the stabilizer for a Bushmaster at 450 psi. Then you have your on-gun regulator typically in the vertical position. A male stabilizer here would be a good choice as would a sidewinder, gladiator or maxflow inline reg. The pressure output of this reg to the gun should be 250 and then you can tweak it from there over the chronograph.

Lets look at convenience. Since co2 has been around since the dawn of paintball, you will likely never have a problem finding a fill at any fields. Where as with nitro and ca fills are harder to find at the fields and if you do find them, they're usually expensive. This means players need to carry around their own scuba tanks and do their own fills. First of all do you really need to carry any more gear around with you? Secondly unless you're a certified diver, Scuba shops legally should NOT fill your tanks. However some bend the law and will fill your tank but these vendors are usually harder to find leaving your options to maybe 1 or 2 that may or may not be convenient for you to get to for a fill. Also have you tried getting a 4500psi fill? If you're doing your own scuba fills most people can't ever get a fill like that. The only places you can get 4500psi fills is if your local field or tourney shell out the coin for a booster to up the pressure of their fills. Look for those fills to cost some money. There are also 6000psi scuba systems but they're much harder to find and if you do find them, they cost a lot more than a standard 3000psi scuba fill.

Lets look at up front costs. For nitro you need a good tank. For the bushmaster it should be an adjustable, high flowing, fast recharging tank. Ones i recommend are MaxFlow, AIR, Maxx Attack and Conquest, all of which will run you about 400-500 bucks. A scuba tank will cost you about 120 and you should have 2 of them. One for your bulk fill and one as a top-off, so there's 240 in tanks. Not sure what a scuba fill costs so I'll guess about $5 bucks per tank. Now lets look at the up front cost of a proper co2 rig. You need a 20oz anti-siphon tank which run about $45 and a female stabilizer which runs $70. A fill at the field will cost you about $5 bucks and you'll get about 1200 rounds average out of a tank. If you want to, you can probably rent a 50 pound co2 tank from your local welding shop for a couple bucks a month and a fill will cost you about 30 bucks for a 50 pound fill. That'll fill a 20oz tank about 40 times or about 75 cents a fill.

Lets look at tanks and the size/# of shots of each. A 45ci nitro/ca tank is about the same size as a 20oz co2 tank. On a Bushmaster a 45ci tank is going to give you about 500 shots before it's empty. A 20oz co2 tank is going to give you about 1200 shots before it's empty. How long do you think it would take to dump 500 rounds with an electro-semi like the Bushmaster? That's 1 good firefight! Your next size tank is the 68ci which you'll get about 800 rounds out of. That's a little more reasonable but the tank is MUCH bigger than a 20oz co2 tank. To get the same number of shots with your nitro tank that you would get out of a 20oz co2 tank, you'd need to go to an 88ci tank which is a monster in comparison. The bigger your tank, the bigger your target and balls don't bounce off tanks. The one edge that nitro does have over co2 is that because co2 is liquid, it is heavier than nitro. A 20oz aluminum co2 tank probably weighs the same or more than an 88ci carbon fiber wrapped nitro tank.

Just a quick note about 68ci fiber wrapped tanks. I don't know why people are going to these other than maybe they look cool? There's a huge misconception that these tanks can hold way more than a 20oz tank. Well the fact of the matter is that these tanks shouldn't be filled to more than 24 ounces of co2 for safety reasons. Yes you can probably cram it full to 32oz but if that tank heats up it's going to blow no doubt about it. 24oz is the safe fill capacity so why the heck would you want to carry around such a huge heavy target for an extra 4 oz of air?

So why do I use Co2? I have the proper setup to keep it stable, it's cheaper for me since I have a 50 pound tank to fill off of, it's more convenient to get filled and the tank is a much smaller target. The question is why aren't you using co2 ? :>" (Tank, obdo.net)

Hope this helps. I did not write this.

[lucky7]

thats all fine and dandy.....but I still think it's a lot easier to screw a HPA tank on my gun and not worry about it.

[ShootPaint]

Originally posted by lucky7
thats all fine and dandy.....but I still think it's a lot easier to screw a HPA tank on my gun and not worry about it.

That might be great for you but some people are located in areas that HPA fills are not readily availible. For them this article is a great guide on how to setup their KO so it can run on CO2 without damage to the marker.

[RainTreeBoy]

Good job posting this up, it should help people out since many of them dont know about tanks site.

[gomster]

Title sounds kinda like Lord Of The Rings... And I like Lord Of The Rings !

[ImpYa]

Originally posted by gomster
Title sounds kinda like Lord Of The Rings... And I like Lord Of The Rings !

Same here.

[MicroB]

This should get stickied.

[07goober]

Its pretty simple to run co2 on my bko, and a lot cheaper than nitro would be. I already had a 16 oz co2 tank (say its 20 for a new one) , all I did was get a $4 anti siphon tube off ebay, had a guy I know install it for $5. I hooked a palmers inline stab up to my bottom line for $55, and for $64 I got everything I need. Its really consistent on my bko because the palmers turns down the pressure to 450psi and the stock hpr and lpr do there thing. This 3 reg setup I feel is cheaper and about as consistent as n2. My friends make fun of me for using co2 on a 2k4 bko, and I make fun of them for buying a $150 n2 tank, driving 40 minutes to the nearest field that fills n2, paying $4 to get it filled and driving back, only to run out before me.

[gomster]

You don't need to buy a $150 tank, you can buy a cheaper tank for like $80 and thats just as cheap as what you did for Co2.

[ImpYa]

Running anti-siphon co2 threw a female stab and another HPR will yield good consistency.

However, the only reason I would choose to do the dual reg setup is if HPA wasnt readily available.

If you have a shop near by, that fills HPA, get a nitro tank.

[gomster]

Most fields also have all day air so even if you have a small tank you can just keep getting it refilled.

[ImpYa]

Originally posted by gomster
Most fields also have all day air so even if you have a small tank you can just keep getting it refilled.

I agree with you totaly, but what about the guys that play rec and dont goto fields all the time?

[07goober]

true about the cheap n2 tank, but one of my friends have a nice 4500psi tank, I think it was around $150, and the other has a fiber wrapped 3000psi tank. I choose co2 and dual hpr regs because its a 40 minute drive to the nearest field that fills n2, and unless the weathers really nice (which its not at the moment, its winter) I don't even go to a field. There is enough woods around my house to play in. Besides, 40 minutes each way, you'd eventually save a ton of money on gasoline alone.

[ImpYa]

Originally posted by 07goober
true about the cheap n2 tank, but one of my friends have a nice 4500psi tank, I think it was around $150, and the other has a fiber wrapped 3000psi tank. I choose co2 and dual hpr regs because its a 40 minute drive to the nearest field that fills n2, and unless the weathers really nice (which its not at the moment, its winter) I don't even go to a field. There is enough woods around my house to play in. Besides, 40 minutes each way, you'd eventually save a ton of money on gasoline alone.

Im in the same situation as you.

Instead of running a dual setup like you, I just started buying scuba tanks and getting them filled. Now, I have 4 scuba tanks and fill all the HPA in my small town.

I have been doing it for 5-6months now and it has already paid for the tanks.

[07goober]

Im in the same situation as you. Instead of running a dual setup like you, I just started buying scuba tanks and getting them filled. Now, I have 4 scuba tanks and fill all the HPA in my small town. I have been doing it for 5-6months now and it has already paid for the tanks.

That to would be a good solution. I didn't think about doing that. But, out of the people that I know, only about 5 have guns worth using nitro on. Most people in my area ( about 8 of 10 actually) have either a tippman 98 or an old spyder. It wouldn't really be worth it in my area.

[ImpYa]

Originally posted by 07goober


That to would be a good solution. I didn't think about doing that. But, out of the people that I know, only about 5 have guns worth using nitro on. Most people in my area ( about 8 of 10 actually) have either a tippman 98 or an old spyder. It wouldn't really be worth it in my area.

Well, if other people ever move up to nitro, you can all share the costs of the tank. That way, when you play rec, you should have enough air to last you a day.

[MicroB]

Now, I've been the one in the past to tell people not to flame, but gomster, lately, you've been an ignoramus. Enough said.

[Calebd2]

Good Work! Stickied!

Note: If someone would like to contact me for threads to go into an ultimate sticky, that'd be great.

Gomster- Your posts were deleted as they did not have to do with the topic of this thread.

[Grubby]

The prices for that article are out of date and misleading. They should be corrected, and I hope this copy was posted with the author's permission.

Nobody fills N2 in our area at any fields. However, in most towns there are either SCUBA stores or factories. Any large machine shop uses high pressure air in one capacity or another, which is how we get our fills. Our club bought a few fill stations and getting a 3000psi fill tank costs under $3. Nitro systems, even adjustable ones have dropped in price since this article and are even cheaper used. Price wise, N2 costs me less to set up, less in repairs that CO2 would have led to, and less in paint since my marker is more consistant and accurate.

[polemos]

All of these run Co2

This one runs Co2



HPA

Used compressor $1000 and up.
Scuba tanks $80 and up used.
Hpa tanks LP style $170 and up.

CO2

Female stab $80
20 ounce tank $20
20lb bulk fill tank $11

For my bushmaster family Co2 is the economic choice.