Maintaing Co2/Gas Guns.
 

What do people mean by maintain your gun? I only know that you should clean inside the barrel with silicon lube every once and a while. Anything else I should pay attention to?
If a gun says it uses Green Gas can I still use Propane instead?

Green gas is just propane with oil in it, so you can just add oil to propane and use that. On blowback guns you need to keep moving parts that contact other parts lubicated. Only use 100% silicone oil, anything else can damage o-rings; you can get it from RC stores.

See this link for proper maintenance steps. http://www.airsoftcanada.com/showthread.php?t=95496



GBB pistols need regular maintenance for the pistol including lubing the slide, certain portions of the mag itself and cleaning the barrel and testing functionality before you play. They need maintenance just like a regular pistol in order to function correctly. An AEG requires less maintenance.

How often should I be lubricating my GBB pistol? After every game? Or after a certain amount of rounds fired?

I think you have to do it about once every month if you're not using it.

And if I am using it?

I clean after every use. propane is a fairly dirty gas so when you fire it, all the garbage that's left over sticks into the silicone oil you use to lube it. After a game, it's most important as you've introduced dust and junk from the game field into the lubricating oils.

I was diagnosing some issues with hopup and put about 12-15 magazines through my pistol, and by the end of it, the lube on the slide was bone dry, or contaminated with propane. So I had to lube more to continue else the slide would not cycle the gun properly. And this was indoors with no dust/dirt in the air... imagine the crap that gets into it from a game field.

That's probably the part that needs the most attention, on top of lubing the mags as green gas comes with silicon lube mixed in, where propane does not (already mentioned).

Make sure you use a non propelled silicone oil. Anything that comes out of an aerosol can likely has petroleum distillates in it, which can eat/damage rubber and plastic. Hobby shops carry some pretty decent stuff for RC cars.

Thanks for the advice!

Well you'll see. If you dissassemble your GBB and every thing still has a oil film on it, no need to add more. Or just wipe it off and put clean oil / grease in place.

Don't go crazy on lubrification, too much oil will just make things worse.