Cyclone Maintenance Summary Thread

[quarky42]

PURPOSE:
This thread is here to provide a summary of maintenance, mods, installation instructions, part numbers and other reference material pertaining to your Cyclone feed system. If you see something that is related to the Cyclone that is useful info & isn't on here, then please let me know. I'll get it added.

The other reason I created this was I didn't like having to dig for some of the most common and useful information. I couldn't always remember all the search terms to find everything so I throw links on here to try and organize some of this information. Hope it is helpful.


IS YOUR CYCLONE A PAINT BLENDER?
Common: The top screw that holds the paddles down can be screwed in too tight...so don't do it! m'kay?
Common: The bottom 4 screws that hold the bottom plate on can be screwed in too tight... use a file and grind off the "points" of the screws...maybe a couple millimeters. Also, don't put them in too tight...snug them up but don't try and bury them as far as they will go... finger tight is good. (as opposed to hand tight)
Common: Don't forget regular maintenance. Read on McDuff!

MAINTENANCE:
1. Remove Sharp Edges, Sharp Corners, and General Smoothing (feeder knuckle & paddle edges)
2. Stock Ratchet Care: Remove sharp corners for smooth operation
3. Air Flow: Making sure your banjo bolt is lined up to allow proper air flow
4. Lubing the Cyclone
5. Cyclone Spring Tip
6. Trim the sharp points off the screws & hand warmer on cyclone on cold days
7. Full Auto Chopping in Semi Auto Egrip Mode...might be a 'double trigger' trigger issue
8. Fixing the Chop
9. HowTo: Put the R5 Ricochet Hopper Together
10. Line Up the Banjo Fittings
11. Video: Cyclone Feeding System Tips by the fine folks at FEARPaintball.net
12. Video: Cyclone Maintenance by F.E.A.R.
13. Video: Cyclone Maintenance by JackRock
14. Video: Installing a Vortex Mod by Irish Paintball

Also, Something to Watch out for.


MOD MAINTENANCE:
1. Vortex Ratchet: Some wear is normal, but keep this part well greased anyway!
2. Hoppers: All the hoppers available for the A5.
3. DIY Ratchet Mod

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Installing a Stabilizer Behind the Cyclone
2. How to make a QEPH (drilling)
3. Make your own QEPH-like System (QEV & X7 Tube Combo)

TECHT:
1. Vortex Mod (Ratchet Mod)
2. Lightning Rod
3. QEPH

JCS:
1. JetClick (Ratchet Mod)

TRINITY:
1. Trinity A5 Ratchet System (link pending)


A5 CYCLONE UPGRADE to X7 CYCLONE:
(partly from my own research and found in Ultimate A-5 Mod/Upgrade Thread)

X7 Parts or PDF (lists all parts and numbers)
A5 Parts (for comparison's sake)

Lower Sprocket # TA10035
Upper Sprocket # TA10036
Feeder Cylinder # TA10034 (Or QEPH depending on price and desire.)
Valve Complete # 02-V (Does this really affect the cyclone very much?)
Bottom Plate Screws # TA10023 (I don't know why the X7 uses different screws and the same plate / housing)

$5 each for the upper and lower sprockets is pretty good. They are softer, but people that have bought them couldn't tell how much softer. Let me make a supposition here: A little more softness/give/flex adds up quickly at 20+ bps.


A5 Cyclone 1/8" Air Flow (upgrade from 1/16" Air Flow):
(Some people swear by this mod and others don't. I'm not sure when is the best time to do this one... it's cheap though: $11 or less if you can find a better deal.)
2 each 1/8" Swivel Elbow Banjo Fitting # 20-20
1 each 1/8" ID Hose 3-1/4" Long # TA05018-BK (2 each if you have the ResponseTrigger, might as well get the long ones, same price as short.)

(As I come across other articles, I'll add them here. If you see a "howto" regarding Cyclone maintenance, PM me the link and I'll add it to the list. Perhaps the mods will sticky this? Or use this to create their own sticky thread. I don't care about credit...I didn't come up with this information, just organized it.)

INFORMATION:
1. The basic physics behind your Cyclone and FVA adjustment.

[quarky42]

Too bad I can't tell how many views are mine from editing ;?) lol... 41 total views now...probably 40 of them mine... heheh

Oh well, I'll keep adding things that I find here... it sure would be nice if each section had a "sticky" summary... I see that some sections do! Very handy!

[JackRock]

Quarky, thanks for including my Youtube vid on the list.

[quarky42]

A picture is worth a thousand words...so at 15 frames per second (estimate) gotta imagine videos are worth a TON!

in other words: no... Thank YOU for making a video... I'm sure it's very helpful to lots of people...hope I gave you credit appropriately (not that I asked permission...nor am I asking permission... lol).

[SemperFi]

It seems that the links to the various threads are broken.

There is an extra "../" before the showthread.php page. Once I manually removed that, it took me to the proper page!

[quarky42]

Odd. Every link was broken earlier today...but I fixed them. They all work for me.

Edit: Ya I just opened up every local (a5og.net) link up in Firefox and IE 7 both. Can you make sure you refresh the page? Maybe even clear your cache (or close the browser and re-open it) to help verify this?

If I can reproduce the problem, then I can fix it.

[SemperFi]

Now it seems to work just fine!

[quarky42]

I'm glad it works. Maybe it was a corrupted/old cached copy. I've had to clear my cache a few times while on this site.

The only change I made at 7:47pm was to add this:
"(Some people swear by this mod and others don't. I'm not sure when is the best time to do this one... it's cheap though: $11 or less if you can find a better deal.)"

Before this recent edit, I didn't change it for a couple hours...

[thebowtwo]

Nice job putting that all together Quarky

[JackRock]

Originally Posted by quarky42

A picture is worth a thousand words...so at 15 frames per second (estimate) gotta imagine videos are worth a TON!

in other words: no... Thank YOU for making a video... I'm sure it's very helpful to lots of people...hope I gave you credit appropriately (not that I asked permission...nor am I asking permission... lol).

Yup. All my Youtube vids come with a public showing "license". It's the DVD project that will be different (if I can ever find all my source material).