I've got to admit, I LOVE to modify 'Rays! Well, I found this neat little doodad from LAPCO Paintball, called a "dual adapter". As soon as I saw it, I thought, "Dual CO2 cylinders!" It's got male CA threads, female CA threads, and a 1/8" NPT female outlet on the side. And, it's got a simple built-in expansion chamber, to boot!

I've had a few members ask about running two cylinders on a 'Ray at the same time. I knew that theoretically it was possible, but never really pursued it. Well, it turned out to be simpler than I thought! For this method to work, you must first have either a bottomline, a remote, or vertical mount on your 'Ray. Since my son's already had the vertical mount, that's what I'm picturing here. If you have a bottomline, you just need to run the line from the dual adapter to the bottomline. If you have a remote, just hook up the line from your remote tank to the dual adapter.

Some thoughts from Sugar Ray:

Installation of the dual adapter is very simple - just screw it into the donkey (CA adapter). Then attach the line to your second cylinder to the 1/8" NPT outlet on the side of the adapter. Be sure to wrap the 1/8" male threads with teflon tape before assembly.

That's all there is to it! (The hard work was done installing the vertical mount!) The fun begins when you want to screw the tanks in. Unless you have an on-off valve on one or both of your cylinders, or an inline check-valve in your line between the tanks, you'll have to have someone help you so you can screw them in at the same time. Otherwise, the gas will blow out the other adapter!

Left and right side views of the Dual 'Ray. That's a 7 oz. tank in the vertical mount and a 12 oz. in the donkey. I don't know how it will handle during play, but it'll sure give you a lot more gas!

A little dual cylinder theory:

Running two tanks at the same time will give you the total amount of CO2 contained in both. With the 12 oz. and 7 oz. pictured, you'll get a total of 19 oz. In other words, both tanks will run empty at the same time.

With an on-off valve on one or both of the tanks, you can keep one tank as a backup. For example, if you had a 3.5 oz. tank with on-off valve on the vertical mount, you could run the larger tank empty, and then open the valve on the smaller tank.

If you run an empty smaller tank on the vertical mount, and a larger tank on a bottomline, the small tank will act like an inexpensive expansion chamber. (An expansion chamber will tend to keep liquid out of your 'Ray.)

With my Forward Horizontal Mount and/or Bottomline Mount, you can create a Dual 'Ray in many different configurations. In addition to the one pictured here, you could have both tanks pointing forward, have the rear tank in the donkey instead of the bottomline, or even run three tanks! (That might be overkill, though!)

Be sure to also see Quake's Side by Side 'Ray!

Using a special "side by side" mount, you're able to mount two 7 oz. tanks in a side by side or over/under configuration.


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