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jlwilliams · Veteran Member

Looking around at CO2 guns. I can't help but notice how few factory made guns there are with paintball tanks. Why's that?

Do a search of 22xx customs and you'll see picture after picture of rifles and pistols with paintball tanks hanging off them. Small tanks under a barrel or a fat tank as a stock. Not just 22xx guns, I just named them because they are so proliffic. You see Drozd and virtually every CO2 gun imaginable plumbed up with a tank.

What can you get that takes a tank out of the box? You can get the Airforce guns with a CO2 tank. You can get the Chinese QB79, why not the 2260? Crosman is leaving money on the table (that the Chinese recognise with the QB79). Crosman kind of made a move in that direction with the 88g tanks, but the 88g tanks aren't what people are converting to. With the ready availabilty of paintball tanks and refills, why not offer a gun that uses it? Why not give the customers what they are obviously willing to pay for?

That brings up an interesting parallel. Look at the modern 1911 pistol market. 20 or 30 years ago you had basic factory made 45 pistols, and you had a whole industry in gunsmiths offering upgraded aftemarket guns and people DIYing the guns they wanted. Just like you have today in airguns. Now, you see factory made deluxe 1911 style pistols and they sell like hotcakes. The DIY crowd still does their thing, but there is a substantial industry in factory made guns that are just like you used to have handmade. Same idea here. People spend time and money putting tanks and steel breaches on Crosman guns. Why not just sell the people what they want?

justsayno · Member

Co2 is on the way out in paintball, High pressure air is what everybody is going to . Some say it's the green thing, CO2 into the air, but what they dont' know, is Co2 is pulled from the air. so their is nothing bad about taking it out, then putting it back.

jlwilliams · Veteran Member

The switchover from CO2 to HPA is happening now, but paintball and the tanks have been popular for a good twenty years. If they had been offering paintball tanked CO2 guns all along, we'd be switching over to HPA too.

donec · Senior Member

jlwilliams · Veteran Member

You may or may not be losing it, that I can't say Wink

. I, on the other hand, have been babbling incoherently at the keyboard.

Allow me to clarify.

My initial question is why aren't there more CO2 airguns powered from paintball tanks. Converting CO2 guns to tank fed is a common custom job, so why don't more manufacturers offer them that way out of the box. The first reply pointed out the CO2 is on it's way out as a power source for paintball. My follow up meant to coney that the change over to HPA from CO2 is happening now, but paintball is nothing new. The switchover doesn't explain why the airgun manufacturers haven't been offering guns fed from paintball tanks for years. If they had been doing so, then those of us who would have been using those guns would be switching over from CO2 to nitro and HPA, right along with the paintballers.

Did that make more sense?

donec · Senior Member

quickster47 · New Member

Some of the problem switching from CO2 to HPA is that in the past the filling of HPA tanks was problematic for lots of folks and tedious with a hand pump. But with new compressors coming out, like the ShoeBox, HPA is going to be the wave of the future.

Carl

justsayno · Member

From what I remember on the Paintball guns, is Co2 tends to be abrasive.
But I agree with making a interchangeable tank system. Airforce Condors, ect. (99% sure) are fully interchangeable.

Its amazing with how many paintballers out there, that the airgun market is slow to realize it.