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This is a gallery of broken paintball equipment items that I have gathered over the years, also including pictures I've found on the internet (or ones people have sent me). I find a lot of these items to be pretty interesting since one end of the spectrum is a design defect, whereas the other end of the spectrum is user carelessness (and anything in between).
Do you have a worthy picture you think should be displayed here? If so then send it to me!

These are both Smartvalve items, and are both stripped. The first pic is of a male "inline" smartvalve which was crossthreaded and damaged. The second pic was a stripped female ASA (picture from jogernot).

Fire piston housing from a Shocker Sport. Sheared apart just from regular use....an uncommon but not totally unheard-of occurance. Picture taken by blinkt.

Impulse bolts from a junk parts lot. The bolt on the left somehow lost the front of its o-ring groove (it looks as if it was removed on purpose). The bolt now has an extremely sharp edge instead of the regular flat surface like the normal bolt on the right. If a ball were to get caught in there, it would get sliced straight through. Turn your Impulse into a vegematic with one of these.

Examples of snapped Shocker bolts (Evolve v2, Freeflow, Ndz v3). I've heard of this happening with all types of bolts except those made by SP, which are extremely dense. I didn't take any of these pictures.

Examples of snapped Ion bolts. This damage occurs when air traveling throughteh bolt tip pushes backward on the bolt's middle section (which happens every time you fire the marker). Pictured are a Lucky polymer bolt (S1 v1), Orange bolt v2, Warrior v1 (pic from pbgunner), Firebolt, and an L7.

Ion bolt mods that didn't go as well as expected.

Broken Goldmember bolt from a Quest (picture from handsomrob).

ASA threaded portion of a Shocker/Nerve vertical Max-Flo. This type of damage occurs when you screw the macroline fitting in too far. This will put a bad series of scratches into the side of the component, but in this extreme case it was actually broken in half..

I've seen this a few times. SP used to use an epoxy coat on their boards to prevent them from being reprogrammed (invovles covering the microcontroller with the epoxy). In these pictures, the epoxy had dripped down onto the dwell DN button, and gummed it up. To repair it I had to chisel through the goo, remove the gummy dwell button, and install a new one in its place. It's a hassle, but easily functional again.

I bought this Morlock board secondhand off pbnation for $10 (plus $2 shipping). The owner had not only menaged to rip off the microchip, tournament lock, and first solenoid resistor but also had removed the 12-point connector and in the process destroyed the solder via's (the pinholes that attach components). I replaced the missing components and installed my own connector onto the board, but had to attach wires from most of the connector to the various parts of the board separately. Repaired, reflashed, and good as new again (in fact this is the board I use in my Adrenalin Impulse).

The owner of this gun attempted a homebrew repair. The solenoid spacer screws had broken off and stuck inside the solenoid manifold (stainless version). His solution was to superglue the solenoid down to the manifold. This obviously didn't work, and ended up having to replace the manifold, screws, and o-rings with new ones (the manifold was actually for a Nerve).

Broken 1999 Shocker frame. I don't know how this happened nor where the picture came from.

This stuff came from some Nerve owner's hammer piston. Enough said.

Adjustment endcap to a Shocker/Nerve vertical Max-Flo. This damage was caused due to the lock screw not being removed before adjusting it. This can cause metal shavings from the endcap to make their wat into the reg internals. The lock screw was later removed from the reg due to being useless.

Stripped spring platform hex nut in this NXT regulator (same as Ion reg). I was unable to remove the spring platform due to it being overtightened by the previous owner. Ultimately I ended up cutting the reg body apart so I could at least salvage the piston and spring from within. The rest is trash.

Blown macroline hose, due to a regulator spike (likely over 1000-psi).

Ego barrel difficulties (pictures courtesy x420psykoticx).

Stiffi damaged during transit (pictures courtesy x420psykoticx).

Ultralite damaged during transit. The damaged part was removed and the barrel shortened a bit, to maintain functionality (pictures courtesy x420psykoticx).

Shattered Ego feedneck.

Shamshed Ego. Rumor has it the person responsible didn't own the gun.

Adrenalin Impulse for repair. In this picture, one of the metal "legs" that surrounds the bolt in the top bore has bent inward and prevents the bolt from being removed through the back. I've heard of this happening before but only have seen it once (in the pic).

It's one of my finernails after falling off. Paintball-related, and that's all I want to say.

The front of the trigger guard on thie Invert Mini has been bent rearward, preventing the foregrip from linking up with the body (the two should be parallel). The user stated he didn't know how this happened. Picture from smalltalknoob.

Bamboo barrel on a Shocker Sport. This isn't really a busted part per-se, but it was so odd that I wanted to include it here. The barrel is simply a tube of plastic-coated bamboo which was press fitted into the marker's barrel threads (measuring 0.700" internal diameter). The tube couldn't even be removed, so when I asked the owner about it he quickly instructed that I remove it if possible and that he couldn't get it out himself. I happily complied!

The same marker as the one with the bamboo barrel (above) also had this special brass pressure release valve installed on his regulator. The release valve was special in this case because it had been welded shut, presumably because it was bleeding air; the regulator was missing some internals...so at this point it wasn't even regulating at all. I repaired the reg and swapped out the release valve for a nice used one.

Falling Damage / Twisted Frames:
This typically occurs when a player falls forward, driving the barrel into the ground, while at the same time smashing their full bodyweight onto the back of the tank. Reportably this can not only cause damage to the marker (as shown in the pics), but it has also been known to break clavicles and other chest bones in the player as well.

Twisted Strange Shocker. As the story goes, the frame's circuit board was snapped but otherwise the marker was in working condition. It looks like the feedneck broke off in the process though, so there may have been other damage not immeditely visible in these pictures.

Twisted Ego.

Another Ego. Pictures courtesy of Toll.

Twisted Ultralite frame on a Dye DM.

Another UL frame.

Bent freak barrel on a Nerve, caused by the same falling situation. The player stated that he was later able to bend the barrel back to straightness and continued to use it.

Busted Collections:
Only an idiot keeps this stuff lying around.

Stripped Shocker/Nerve solenoid manifolds. And yes, there are two stainless manifolds in this pile....proof that there's no such thing as "unstrippable", if you really try your hardest.

Broken Shocker eye ribbons beyond repair (note: most of the time the owners request the ribbons be returned even though they're broken. The ones in this picture are the ones I've kept).

Broken Parker K-series solenoid pilots (damaged seals, missing pieces, etc).

Broken Parker K4H03 solenoid coils (solder terminals separated from the copper coil inside the housing). This is approximately the number of solenoids I've replaced due to this problem at the time the pic was taken, and is the sole reason why I don't use them in my personal guns when available. The coil in the top-left was literary ripped apart using a butterknife and my fingernails (tells you how easy these are to destroy).

Leaky solenoid spools I pulled from guns. I've got a couple more that fit other valve makes (MAC; Humphrey) but I use them for spares in my own stuff.

Other assorted junk. Popular items include Ion solenoids with broken barbs, damaged gauges, and scratched valve housings. I tend to toss stripped screws into this box as well, but most of the time I just throw them across the room in anger so they don't make it to the pile here.

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