Priest Bullpup SAFETY WARNING

I Have been watching the progress of this new pup and was hoping the production model was going to be different to the prototype they showed us a few months ago.

While the design of this pup interests me there is one aspect about it that scares me and is a very real potential safety hazard to users and modders.
I felt it was important to share it here.

The potential hazard I speak of is related to the regulator. Other than the obvious hazard of the bottle taking a good knock and breaking at the reg, those paintball style bottle regs are not at all suitable for this application.
They had an original design intention for use with 1200psi of CO2 pressure and a built in engineering safety factor to suit that pressure rating.
The have been pushed past the normal operating safety factor in a few cases with HPA with modified pistons and washer stacks but structurally they are still only designed for 1200psi.
Anyone familiar with these regs will know what Im saying, some of the reg bodies are paper thin and not designed to hold HPA pressure so I caution anyone swapping the reg out with a cheaper chinese reg, they often quote on Ebay and Aliexpress etc that they are suitable for 4500psi carbon bottles but the burst disks they come with are still only Co2 rated pressures.
It looks to me that the Priest boys have made their reg body from stainless steel? can anyone confirm this for me?
While the body of that particular reg may be strong enough to hold the 200 bar the alloy bottle on the priest is rated for in the event of a reg O ring failure but the thread on the gun end is still the std sub par paint ball thread designed with a safety factor for use with 1200psi.

The only other HPA powered factory made PCP that I can think of that uses this bottle reg setup is the Spanish Cometa lynx and even in .25cal it is very low powered (25ftlbs) for a good reason. Its reg is set to 1800psi and its burst disks are also very low ratings (2200psi on the low pressure side) so if any reg O rings leak they will blow before a potentially very dangerous over pressure situation occurs.

Personally I think these regs should never be used on HPA PCPs, bottle PCPs should be fitted with a long straight thread like the RAW or BSA guns anfd the regs should be built into the guns frame.

For those of you tempted to fit this pup with a carbon fibre bottle and new reg to fit the bottles thread (normally 18×1.5 instead of the smaller 5/8″x18tpi alloy bottle std) be sure to spend the money on a decent regulator too, do some research and see if you can fit the priests Stainless steel(?) reg housing onto a new reg with the bigger metric thread and set up the burst disks within its safe operating pressures.
Those cheap chinese regs are being offered in 130 and 150 bar for HPA now but often the burst disks are not correct for either operation and they only have 3 to 4 threads on the section that attaches to the gun.
For the correct safety factor for use in HPA for that thread size and pitch it would need a minimum of 7 threads tightened fully in the guns housing. Often you will see these regs with only 3 to 4 threads and they dont tighten fully before the valve opens and locks them up from pressure. This allowed the CO2 gauges and foster fitting etc to be aligned on the gun. On HPA they need to be tight before any air pressure is introduced to the threaded section regardless of where that may align/misalign the gauges/ foster fitting.
Dont be tempted to ever put 4500psi into a carbon fiber bottle on this gun, even though the bottle is rated for it the reg housing, threads and probably gun are not. It would only take a worn o ring for a potentially very dangerous situation to arise.

Personally Id like to see the Priest manufacturers change the thread in the gun with something more suited to cope with a potential 4500psi overpressure situation which will also stop people unknowingly fitting sub par weaker thin reg bodies with that scary 1200psi rated paint ball thread on the back. They should aso build an internal bottle reg so the bottle can be fitted flush.
Fine tuning this stile of reg is a big PITA as it requires fitting different sized shim washers so you will never have the same scope of fine tuning as a reg that has an adjustable seat.

In short, If you want to fit a carbon bottle and reg to suit, look for a good quality, thick bodied, 150bar min, 6 to 7 threads on the back of the reg with modest burst disks that will blow and a pressure just above the reg setting when the reg o ring fails. burst disks are cheap so keep spares just as you would with o rings.

Please be warned and be safe.