Just finished testing the three guns I got when I bought HMS Dreadnaught last fall.
It came with 1 (obviously newer) coil magazine gun and 2 (older) straight magazine ones.
The newer coil gun fired pretty good right away, and with some cleaning is firing sweet
and hard.
The two older guns refused to fire for me initially despite much tweaking (read twisting)
of the cap holding the piston selector.
Cleaned both cannon with carburetor cleaner and q-tips to remove mucho old built-up
gunk and then sprayed with wd-40 and wiped clean.
Still refused to fire after the cleaning so I removed the pistons to verify basic operation and
both worked fine as spurt-guns, so the barrel o-rings and the rest was fine.
Then I noticed that the tiny 1/16" airline tubes on the bottom cap of the selector valve were
mostly crushed flat inside the cap, preventing good airflow. I drilled out the lines on both
selector valves and then drilled out the lines on the ammo magazines too, just in case.
(airflow at the cannon barrel improved noticably)
Cannon still did not want to fire. Oie Vey!
Next step was to sand and buff the piston valve and polish/deburr the inside of the T-fitting
where the piston slides up and down. A bt of oil and piston was moving smooth as silk.
Screwed the bottom back on so I could see the top of the piston in line with the hole when
I peeked in thru the magazine port and then test-fired the cannon. Finally firing pretty good
with occasional 2-3 round spurts, possibly due to piston spring.
Will have to overhaul the last gun the same way tomorrow and see if I can tweak them to
stop the stray spurting.
So, right now I have:
1 excellent coil gun
1 decent straight gun
1 straight gun requiring overhaul.
Besides the guys at the show last weekend, has anyone else cleaned and tested their guns
prior to start of season yet? "Dread" is anxious to have her stern gun and her two sidemounts
installed. :-)
Mack