I've been getting so many questions about tuning the Vapor that I've decided to make an official thread that I can point people to. I'll keep this as up to date as possible.
99% of problems that I've encountered are caused by silly mistakes and/or user error. That being said, Maintenance should be the largest concern for any owner. Take care of your marker and it'll take care of you.
I've put almost 71 cases of paint through my vapor so far. I shot about 5 cases for testing different lubricants alone. Here are my findings:
Any lube that's thinner than Marmalade, but thicker than Eclipse oil will work just fine. DOW55 isn't my favorite because this marker will perform just fine without having to swell the orings. I prefer to use a thin coat of Monkeypoo, a medium coat of DOW33, or a medium-heavy coat of Hater. GunSav, while silky smooth, gets flung off too quickly. Feel free to use it, but be aware most of it will end up in your barrel after a single round and the increase in friction could cause your marker to act up.
Now, on to maintenance.
After every weekend of play: Pull out the drivetrain; unscrew the front can and remove the bolt. Wipe down all orings with a microfiber and then relube with whatever floats your boat. Personally, I take each oring out and clean each oring groove as well as each oring. That way, I know the same amount of pressure is being applied to each part of the oring (IE no globs of lube are deforming the oring, which can cause orings to wear unevenly). Be sure to also clean the 017s that are inside the body. The rear feedneck is the main culprit for breech leaks because it is exposed to dirt and debris that enters your breech through your hopper. Breech orings as well as the can oring are all 017s. I also stretch 017 orings around the outside of the drivetrain to seal against the body, however sometimes 018s seal better. The bolt guide should use two 013 orings. The bolt sail should be an 016, with an 015/90 bumper in front of it and the rear bumper should be a 2x14.
If you break paint: Do the maintenance procedure for every weekend, and then remove the eye covers. Clean the eyes with a q-tip or microfiber, and be sure to clean out the detents to make sure they don't stick. I recommend popping each detent out by pushing the spring/piston out via the access/vent hole. An oring pick fits in there nicely... Also be sure to get all of the paint out of the eye housing area, because your eye covers may not lock fully if there are flakes of shell in there.
Once per month: In addition to regular cleaning, I suggest taking apart the efficiency valve inside the bolt guide so you can clean the gunk out of it. It acts much like a dirt/debris trap and that can cause it to wear down or stick in place if you don't clean and lube it once in a while.
Refer to my breakdown guide for more info.
Every other month (at least once per season): Unscrew your HPR. Disassemble and check orings and reg seat for wear. Relube and reassemble.
Refer to my breakdown guide or watch my disassembly video
HERE if you're confused about what goes where. BE SURE TO USE A PADDED VICE to remove the top part of the reg (or alternatively, a correctly-sized allen key). If your marker starts acting up after rebuilding the reg, it's most likely because there's a leak within the HPR, see the Troubleshooting Section for more info on where to look.
Part 2: Tuning Guide
This is that part of the guide that I should REALLY charge for next time...
If you like the guide or found it useful, PLEASE feel free to shoot me a donation to help me make my car payments
Anyway, Machine has come out with one major revision of the drivetrain. There's the V1/2 system (stock gold can, cupped or flat-faced bolt), and then there's the V3 parts (reduced-flow red can, voltage regulator)
So, keep this in mind: The V3 firing can (the big red can) has a reduced airflow compared to the V1 can. This is done on purpose to slow down the bolt speed. By slowing down the bolt speed, you need to INCREASE all of the timings. I'll write out the tuning guide, and put
V1 timings in orange,
V3 timings in red.
Before you being tuning, clean and lube your marker. Every inch of it. I suggest you use an old toothbrush to scrub out the hard-to-reach places.
Now that that's done, chrono your marker. I find that 285-290 seems ideal. Make sure your FT screw at the back of the marker is set so that it's only covering 1/3 of the vent port.
~Run tune assist. This will help give you an idea of where you'd like your dwell to be. Hypothetically speaking, let's say that at 9ms, I can see the bolt cycling, but I don't feel a puff of air down the barrel yet. Obviously, that's too short of a timing. Let's say that at 10ms, I can start to hear the marker fire, but it sounds weak. That's normal. By 11ms, the marker should be making a nice thump down the barrel and 12ms should sound exactly the same as 11ms. YOUR NUMBERS MIGHT BE DIFFERENT, THAT'S FINE! So in the example above, I found that 11ms made a nice shot signature. I would then get out of tune assist, and manually set my dwell to 11+1 for good measure (12)ms. Basically, take whatever dwell you first heard that nice thump at and add 1ms. That will account for when your marker starts to run dry, or it gets humid out, or when it's cold out. Most markers tend to like
12ms for V1 cans,
14ms for V3 cans.
~Once your dwell is dialed in, we need to dial in your bolt return delay. SUPER IMPORTANT PART: Some of the APE boards have a slightly reduced range on them (and this is fine, you don't need to return your board or anything crazy like that). The original boards have an adjustable range between 1 and 40ms of bolt return delay. At some point, I noticed that a few boards only had an adjustable range of 1-20ms of bolt return. I found that these 'reduced range' boards already had 18-20ms of delay dialed in. So, here's what this means:
-If your board goes up to 40ms, dial in
28ms for V1 cans,
35ms for V3 cans.
-If your board goes up to 20ms, dial in
10ms for V1 cans,
17ms for V3 cans.
~For breech delay, I got best results at
6-8ms for V1 cans,
10-12ms for V3 cans.
When in doubt, set it to 15.
~Dwell (check). Bolt Return (check). Breech Delay (check). Now it's time for the generic settings:
Marker Setpoints:
Lead Edge DB: 4
Trail Edge DB: 4
Trig Filter: 0
ABS Dwell: 2ms
ABS Reset Time: 2minutes
Eye Mode: STD
Eye Process: STD (or ADV)
Firing Setpoints:
Capped Firing: ON (I've said it once, and I'll say it again; spoolies aren't meant to fire 30+ bps. If you're trying to fire over 15-18bps, you're wasting your time)
Ramp Mode: BRST
2014 Rough Tuning (Will be updated as I work on more 2014s)
Same procedure as the original/2012 vapor, however because of the new eye system and bolt system, some of the numbers are radically different.
Eye Mode: 2 (Standard)
Eye Process: 2 (Advanced)
Breech Load Delay: 8-10ms
ABS Dwell: 2ms
ABS Reset Time: 10 seconds
Solenoid Dwell: 8-10ms
Bolt Return: 22-28ms (run higher if you're running the FT screw farther in)
FT screw setting: Anywhere between 1/3 covered and 1/2 covered seems to work magic on Dan's vapor. Again, I'll edit and refine this as I work on more 2014s.
Promod's advanced tuning corner.
DISCLAIMER!
I am not suggesting you do any of the following. These are just some ideas I've been toying around with and I've received amazing results so far. Should you choose to follow the path I took, you'll be voiding a few warranties, which will cost you time, money, and effort. Fair Warning.
I'm not going into much depth here as I REALLY don't want any of you trying this, but for my fellow techs, there are two little tricks I like to do that'll make vapors really shine.
First off, I feel as if the solenoid is operating at it's upper operating pressure levels when chrono'ing near 300. I found that I was able to get more efficiency by altering the solenoid's return spring. My theory is that this helps the valve close faster, which makes the dwell timing more consistent. I took the stock spring and stretched it out to 9.85mm and I found that to be around ideal. I also tried 10.5 and 11mms on other springs but found the results to be detrimental to the forward cycle of the marker. Additionally, I found it HIGHLY beneficial to scrub out the factory lube and apply a thin coat of monkeypoo all over the solenoid spool and inside the housing with the help of a q-tip.
My second mod also has to do with a return spring, but this one is for the 'efficiency valve'. Long story short, the stock spring is around 49.50mm, I brought mine up to around 55.25mm
It should be noted that all of my mods are done on a yellow can and cupped bolt (V1 vapor).