A couple days ago I was looking at some Southern California craigslist ads and an Autococker caught my eye. From the thumbnail I immediate I though it was a Kapp Razorback!
I have always loved Kapp’s / Pacific Paintball’s Autocockers not only since they were my local paintball shop in Northern California but also because their Autococker are in my opinion some of the best shooting cockers I’ve come across.
For example the Kapp Lava Autococker in the video linked below has one of the nicest pulls I’ve shot:
https://paintballhistory.com/paintgun-sale-today-2413-and-video-santas-source-for-classic-paintball-parts-and-memorabilia-baccipaintball-com
And this Razorback Tim is shooting in the video below has an amazingly smooth pull:
https://paintballhistory.com/paintball-tek-shoots-kapp-razorback-autococker
After I loaded the ad I could tell the cocker definitely wasn’t a Razorback but it did have a few similarities.
I emailed the seller to see if it was still available. For $200 it was a decent deal with the extras it included and I thought one of the many other Southern California Autococker enthusiasts would have grabbed it.
The seller, Josh Inouye, called me several hours later, it was still available and it had been on craigslist for a while with no bites. I asked a few questions about it and Josh told me how he was the original owner and custom ordered the cocker through Kick Ass Paintball Products in late 1999 or early 2000 when he was living and playing in Minnesota. That’s all I needed to know, I was hooked!
Pacific Paintball built it’s reputation around custom Autocockers in the early 90s, being one of the lead innovators in customizing cockers in the early days. Tony Menos, the Store Manager at Pacific Paintball (1991 to late 1994) has told me many tricks they used and about tons of the cockers he modified while there. After Tony left a few of the recognized airsmiths to come out of Kapp include Billy Wing and Brian Duffy.
But the thing that made this Autococker special to me is that it wasn’t one of Kapp’s more well known cuts. I wanted to add this pre Razorback to my collection so I could document it and use the body cut and features to identify other cockers from before Kapp was cutting Razorbacks, their signature vert feed style and the later Flame Autocockers.
So today I drove about 3 hour round trip (most of it was at a slow crawl in So Cal gridlock traffic ) to meet Josh in Long Beach.
Unique features of this pre 2k cocker are body cuts continued into the back block, slant on the top front of the back block, vent hole in feedneck, bolt cutouts through the top tube (similar to the razorback) and holes in the sight rail. I know I’ve definitely seen these cuts in other unknown cockers and hopefully these photos will help shed some light on some cockers for fellow enthusiasts.
I’ll have more info on Josh in a few weeks when I edit his quick video where he talks about ordering the cocker from Kapp and playing on several teams in Minnesota.