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Blind bolt for the Impulse From the Web site:
Comments
The Blind Bolt was designed to have a flexible tip so that in the event that a paintball is not completely fed into the breach of the marker the bolt will "give" or flex to prevent a ball chop. The base of the bolt is some form of plastic, not delrin, that is injection molded. The tip is also injection molded out of a rubber like substance. The bolt face is open for maximum air flow. Both sides of the bolt face have indents for the ball detents. This is a great feature that can help reduce the wear and tear on your ball detents. A poorly designed bolt will not seal the breach properly. A key to the performance of the Blind bolt is the ridge at the top of the bolt face. This extra rubber allows the bolt to seal extremely well in the breach. It's the seal that allows most other bolt manufacturers to maintain a high level of efficiency. The seal controls the air flow and prevents blow back. I used the blind bolt for three different days of play. On the first day, once setup correctly I found it to be very consistent over the chrono. Initially the bolt caused some unexpected FSDO but this was quickly countered by adjusting the LPR. From an efficiency point of view, this bolt is on par with my New DeSignz Equalizer bolt (In my opinion the best bolt out there). So from the start I thought that this bolt was great. Even if it did nothing for the chops it is a very efficient bolt and will obviously perform very well when I do the next bolt chrono test. Remember that ridge that helped seal the bolt. Well, unfortunately I believe its also the ridge that was preventing the Blind bolt from living up to its name in my testing. The first day out I was using some Severe Cyclone that had made the journey home with me from the PSP Orlando open. Most of the team was shooting this paint as we all had some leftover. No one was having issues but me. I was chopping paint like crazy and I do mean chopping. I had several HALO's with paint on the inside that I went through before giving up, changing bolts and continuing on. I had shot this paint for the entire PSP event and did not have a single issue. The only difference in my setup was the OTB Blind bolt. So, I thought maybe it was somehow the HALO's so on the next outing I setup using my EVO II with Z board. This time I would also have some fresh blaze. Unfortunately the results were the same. When I shot slow and consistent I did not have any issues but if I started to get fast on the trigger, I'd get a chop. Again I could only think that the ridge was the issue. Back home that night I started to really look at how the Blind bolt works and found what appears to be the issue. Interestingly enough within the next day or two I saw that DasBaldDog had posted a review on Impulse Owners Group and stated much of what I had believed the issue was. While we had all seen the video released by OTB I believe the production bolt is different from the prototype. With the bolt I have, the rubber material is not very flexible and is even less flexible once inside the breach. Holding the bolt in your hand it will flex some, but if you TRULY look at what happens, when you push on just the top, it does not flex, it just gives way and the side protrude out. While in your hand this is all well and good, but in your marker the breach does not allow the rubber to flex out on the sides, so the top is not able to move at all. I also found that whatever method was used to "glue" the bolt face to the bolt body was failing. The tip of my OTB bolt was only held to the body by about 50% of the contacted material on the bottom. What this caused is that the top of the bolt would move inside the breach ( I observed this when moving the bolt manually ) which is probably why I had such bad results. Did I get a lemon.....maybe, maybe not. I know several people have posted online that they have the OTB Blind bolt and that it works great. I know that FOM from www.e-paintballoutlet.com did some great testing and his results looked like the OTB bolt helped. I personally can not say that I feel the same. From what I have read, the guys at OTB are working on a V2 Blind bolt as others have brought this issue to them. While I am not one to bash a product as most Impulse upgrades have some degree of benefits over the stock product, I am not convinced that the Blind bolt is there yet.
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