Gutting the reg is an option, but a poor band-aid for a fixable problem. (Assuming it was just a bad seal, and not mechanical damage.)
As for the trigger valve, yeah, I looked at mine dozens of ways back when I first bought it (*cough* in '95) and many times since then.
The primary drawback is that Sheridan "modified" the original design to have that idiot external trigger valve. It was origianlly set up with a vertcial internal valve very much like that of the Automag, but, according to the EQ's inventor, Sheridan's "old boys" crew both suffered from the "didn't design it here" syndrome (meaning if they didn't think of it, then it wasn't worth doing) and worried there might be evential design or patent issues with the Automag.
And it's that selfsame valve that so badly crippled the gun- the passages are just too damned long and convoluted to get any decent flow, and that limited the ROF to an absolute max of maybe six per second. Which, in '95, was actually decent, if not respectable. You had to have a finely-tuned 'Cocker to get much better than maybe eight. Well, that or an Autoresponse on a 'Mag.
And no matter what you do to the rest of the system- electric solenoids, drilling out the valve, shortening the throw, etc.- nothing solves that inherent, internal problem of those passages.
Years ago, I had visions of making a new body back half with the switch mounted vertically, internally (mount the spool valve guts in the body directly) but it was never a high priority for my limited time.
I still have the gun, and it still works great, at least for what it is. It could have been a contender, as they say, but Sheridan crippled it thinking they knew better than both the designer and the people who wanted to use it.
