The male Palmer's stabilizer, what a great regulator to invest into. It can handle both C02 and compressed air, is relatively inexpensive, needs very little maintenance, has stood the test of time, is very high flowing and has Glen Palmer's lifetime warranty to back it up. What more could you ask for from a regulator? No sorry, it doesn't have call waiting but it is a very popular regulator in the paintball community for good reason. I will show you how to break it down, lubricate it and give you some tips on how to set it up and tune it when installing one of these regs to your marker.

Maintaining Your Palmer's Stabilizer

I seriously doubt that you'll have to ever break it down to fix it if you maintain it in the correct manner and it's really quite simple to maintain compared to some of the other regs on the market. I've taken mine apart a few times but not out of necessity but curiosity because sometimes I just can't bear to not know what makes things tick.

The only complaints that I've ever heard people mention about the Palmer's stabe is that there is pressure coming from the small exhaust port near the bottom of the stabe. This is normally due to being over pressurized or a lack of oiling the stabe occasionally as you're supposed to. A lack of lubrication will leave the o-ring on the internal piston dry and may cause it to stick in the inner body of the stabe. This can be easily evaded by simply putting a few drops of paintball marker oil such as Gold Cup in the air supply adapter of your marker, screwing the tank on and running it through the stabe taking about 25 - 30 shots. Do not use oils such as sprays or oils with petroleum distillates in them because they will eat o-rings and turn them to mush eventually. Use a good grade paintball oil or you can even use a decent grade air tool oil to lubricate the stabe. This is a very simple process compared to other less and more costly regs that require a regular maintenance schedule which includes completely breaking them down and using a special oil or grease such as Dow33 to lubricate them with.

Disassembling The Male Palmer's Stabilizer

As I stated earlier you'll probably not have to break your stabe down if you maintain it properly but if you ever do it's quite a simple process. Let me just say before you start, if you do disassemble it and mess something up, you're voiding the Palmer's lifetime warranty in doing so. You will then need to pay to have it fixed by Palmer's Pursuit if you cannot resolve an existing issue on your own.

Disassembly: When disassembling the stabe you may think about laying the parts on a towel or similar so not to forget the order in which you removed them.

• You can begin by removing the adjuster at the bottom of the reg.
• Once you have the adjuster removed, using a quarter in the slot, remove the bottom threaded cap turning it to the left(CCW).
• After removing the bottom cap, a round metal disk and spring will fall out.
• Looking in the body of the stabe you'll see a round aluminum piston inside that has a short cylindrical boss protruding from the center. Remove the piston by grabbing on to the protruding boss with a pair of needle nose pliers and pulling it out. Be careful not to mar the piston as the aluminum is a very soft metal.
• When looking in the body now you'll see a brass hexagon piece with a very thin pin valve looking piece protruding from the center of it. You must be especially careful not to deform the thin pin as it's very easily bent. Using a 3/8" nut driver unscrew the brass hex nut from the body being careful not to bend the thin valve pin. Pay close attention to the order in which the valve pin assembly is assembled when removing it so you don't reinstall it improperly.

At this point you have removed all of the internal components of the stabe. You can take a piece of paper toweling and clean the parts and inside diameter of the body. Check the o-ring on the piston to make sure there are no gashes in it or it is excessively worn. If so, replace it with the exact same size o-ring. You may want to remove it anyways and clean all of the old oils or grease from it and clean the o-ring groove as well. I use Dow33 and coat the valve pin, valve pin seal, brass valve body o-ring and the area where the pin seal rests on the brass valve body. With the o-ring installed, coat the o-ring and whole side of the piston. You really don't need to put a ton of the Dow33 on all of this, just enough for a decent coat. Put some Dow33 on your pinky and coat the inside of the reg body as far as you can.

Reassembling The Male Palmer's Stabilizer

Reassembly: Everything should be ready to reinstall at this point. Reassembly is a bit tricky when installing the valve but just be patient and don't force anything.

• Put the valve assembly back together in the correct order.
• If you put the brass valve body in your 3/8" nut driver you'll probably notice that the threads won't stay above the top surface of the end of the nut driver. If it doesn't, you can't screw it back into the stabe body. This can be resolved by just putting a small piece of paper toweling in the nut driver to take up some room so the threads will stay above the surface long enough to get it threaded into the stabe body.
• Put the brass valve body in the end of the nut driver then put the pin, seal and spring assembly into the valve body. You will have to hold this in an upward position, then more less blindly screw it into the stabe body with the body in a vertical position. If you try to do it in a horizontal position the pin assembly will most likely fall out.
• Put the valve body in the nut driver in the bottom portion of the stabe body. You'll have to sense when the spring has entered the threaded hole at the top of the stabe body. Once you think it has entered the hole start slowly screwing it in. DO NOT FORCE IT OR YOU CAN EASILY CROSS THREAD THE VALVE BODY ASSEMBLY AND THE STABE BODY!
• Once you think it has started to thread it's way in a turn or two, remove the nut driver and look in the stabe body to be sure that it has. If it looks OK you can now remove the small piece of paper toweling from the end of the nut driver and screw the brass valve assembly into the stabe body the rest of the way and torque it a little once it's seated.
• Before putting the piston back in, make sure that the pin that protrudes from the brass valve is perfectly centered. If not, use an object such as a pin punch and center it. It needs to be centered because it needs to fit exactly in the center of the long protruding boss on the piston. It will rest in the cupped portion of that boss.
• Push the piston slowly into the stabe body until you feel it spring back. Once it's done this you know that the pin and end of the boss are aligned properly.
• Put the thick spring back in now and put the metal disk in as well.
• Screw the end cap back onto the stabe body and tighten it down with the quarter.
• Screw the adjuster back into the end cap and you're done.

The reassembly is a bit tricky but if you're patient and a bit cautious, everything should go together just fine. The only really tough part is getting the valve assembly back in the threaded hole, making sure that you don't cross thread it or bend the pin in any way. Now you can test it to be sure everything is in the proper working order. If you don't think that you can handle this procedure, you may consider having a professional air smith do it for you. 

Tuning The Palmer's Stabilizer

Once you add a reg to your marker, weather it be high or low pressure you should be using the velocity adjuster less and using the reg as the primary source of velocity adjustment. I would suggest leaving the velocity adjuster about 1/3 to 1/2 way from completely turned in and reserve it for quick tuning on the field when you may not have a lot of time to fool with the pressure. Letting the reg control the velocity/pressure is the whole idea behind having one in the first place. You may wonder why the stabe's pressure is jumping all over the place when you first attach it. This is normal because it needs a short break in period to seat the seals. It should be stabilized after around 1500-2000 shots. You can simply dry fire the marker for that amount of shots to break it in if you prefer to. Using something like a barrel condom to create some back pressure will make the propellant last a bit longer. A gauge is an option but a chronograph is necessary for the proper tuning of the stabe or any other reg for that matter.

Starting with the stabe's adjuster turned in, adjust the velocity a bit past 300fps with the marker's velocity adjuster and lock it in that position. Now using the stabe's adjuster over a chronograph, adjust the velocity down to the left(CCW) in 1/4 turn increments taking about 5 shots between turns to let the reg stabilize. I would suggest keeping your markers velocity between 280 - 290fps even if your field allows a higher velocity as you will attain better accuracy and consistency within this range. Shooting at higher velocities may make the balls shoot further but can make the shots less accurate because of undue spin on the ball and can even cause paintballs to break in some instances. Once you have the stabe broken in and the velocity adjusted, there shouldn't be a need to adjust it much more unless you are playing at a field such as an inside field that requires a lesser velocity or if you're using C02 and are playing in an environment with a drastic temperature difference from when you initially tuned it. Using a fixed or adjustable N2 tank as a primary regulator and the stabe as a secondary will make your shots and consistency even better yet. If using C02 you may consider adding an anti-siphon to the tank to keep indue liquid C02 from your marker to enhance consistency.

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