Jammed BB results

OK I figured out what happened to my gun.

BB jammed in dirty tightbore
nozzle couldn't move
gears got jammed on tappet (guessing)
middle gear broke multiple teeth off while trying to spin top gear
bearing bushing busted in two from stress
piston has some wear

total to replace broken parts
middle gear-$20
bearing bushings-$35
possibly replace piston-$20

cost of cheap BBs-$20

lesson-stop firing gun when you hear something go wrong. Don't use cheap BBs with a tightbore.

insert Daes comments on cheap BBs here

you can see some of the teeth that busted off, the exploded bushing (bearing type) and the culprit BB. Looks like a dirty barrel was to blame for the jam. I am really bad for sticking my barrel in the ground..

Daes snide comment not needed. Unfortunately I was in the same boat as yourself before. Luckily only my tappet snapped, guess the reinforced parts paid off. Now that I have a polycarb tappet, might be a different story...

But yeah, on the note of BB's... Darn hard to find any brand that is perfect... Always going to be a flawed one somewhere... Part of the risk of use a tightbore but I think the pro's truly outweigh the cons.

-Doug

What kind of BB's where you using when you jammed? That was for sure the cause of your tappet break? You had mentioned it being to wide too.

I am still trying to figure out why my fuse didn't go off.

Same issue as in the air nozzle got jammed in my hop-up. BB's usually got jammed further down the barrel. What happened with me was that the hopup became mis-aligned jamming the nozzle.

Nozzle gets stuck, usually due to something with the hopup, tappet plate encounters huge resistance, then it becomes a fight between the gears turning and the tappet pushing against the hopup. In my case, the gears were stronger than the tappet.

The other issue when I swapped to the metal body was the selector plate was too fat, but that was easily fixed. Some nice shaving and it is all good

As for jams, Flying Colors seems to be the worst. I have not had any problems with the .28g's but I have only used 2000 of them. I get a jam every 5000-6000 BB's with most other brands.

-Doug

A good test to see if a BB is suitable for use is to squish one in a set of pliers. If you get flaking from a surface coating or is the BB splinters into dust, don't use it in a tighbore. The coating will come off and foul the barrel.

If you squish and it simply deforms but remains intact, then it's fine as long as you use a brand guaranteed to be a specific diameter.

BBs to avoid with tightbores:

KSC Perfect .2 and .25
Excel (all of them)
Hurricane/Leaper's
and any other no-name brand

The only BBs I've used with tighbores that have given me zero jamming has been Airsoft Elite and Metal Tech (same factory for both). They are supposedly guaranteed to be 5.98mm and are ground, rather than cast and/or coated.

But it still makes good practice to swab out your barrel and hop-up a few times per year if you use a tighbore.

I agree MacGuyver, our in-country brands are usually to the highest standard and generally double polished for maximum tolerance and quality.

Do you have a favorite supplier for BB's? Best bang for the buck?

Thanks,
-Doug

I'm far more concerned with quality than price. If you save $10 per bag by buying cheap BBs, but end up with the result Dave had, it's so NOT worth it.

There are other benefits as well. Quality BBs mean less cleaning and PM or your gun. They also mean more consistant shot-to-shot placement and velocity, less stress on the hop rubber, less jamming and better feeding with high-caps and double-stacked mags.

I pay $20 or a bit less for Metal Tech BBs, which I believe FVA Dirtbag sells. They are by far the best of the easily available BBs. The world's best are Systema, as they can withstand 25 rounds per second at well over 500 fps with steel nozzles. Most other BBs are turned to powder in the hop chamber, with the exception of AE/MT.

I am switching to AE/MT straight away. It was more than just BB flake and powder that jammed me up. I was lying on the side of that gravel hill and am sure that some sand snuck down there.

We have 2 suppliers for AEMT in PG right now.

Those systema stats always blows my mind,