A&K m249 MKII discussion

bullets

Drool, I just paid Shiva for mine yesterday.
Just wondering for a novice like myself without any experiance
of modifying do you reckon its OK out of the box?

Was worried when I saw pics elsewhere of non greased gears that had
corrosion already on them out of the box.

~B

Spetzcong

bullets wrote: »

Drool, I just paid Shiva for mine yesterday.
Just wondering for a novice like myself without any experiance
of modifying do you reckon its OK out of the box?

Was worried when I saw pics elsewhere of non greased gears that had
corrosion already on them out of the box.

~B

I'd say it'd be fine right out of the box, the hopup would probably be the easiest thing to fix, just get a new rubber for it, the barrel is quick release so you can just pop it off and access the inner barrel and hopup chamber. The gearbox itself is also amazingly easy to get at, but if you've no experience tinkering around in gearboxes I wouldn't bother, there's nothing that really needs doing in there that would make it unskirmishable, the gears in mine did have some grease on them, they weren't dry and corroded like some of the photos I've seen, but I have seen greasier gears too. I'd be confident enough that you'd be able to use it more or less straight out of the box.

Masada

*not supposed to be discussion in this thread but here goes, upload them to www.imageshack.us
then copy the first hotlink (the one under the thumbnail of the image you uploaded) into your post but press the little button above the txt boxt that has a pic of a mountain kinda thing on it, a pop up will come up and copy that hotlink from imageshack into there.,
the image should be the in the post then.,

Spetzcong

Cheers mate,

and as for the no discussion, I'm sure one of the mods will be in here soon enough to clean up the mess we've made

Or else they'll leave it just to show us who's boss...

bullets

Sorry for replying. I thought since it was not a photos only thread on its
own it was open for discussion or a discussion thread.
My first reply was Mistake on my behalf.


~B

o1s1n

Posts moved to new thread.

Cheeky monkey

Hmm you think I could get away with sniping with one of those?

I need a way to justify getting one

Masada

course ya could, in fact it would be better because you would have to plan your attack a lot more carefully since it would nearly kill ya to keep carrying it around.,

Cheeky monkey

vtec wrote: »

course ya could, in fact it would be better because you would have to plan your attack a lot more carefully since it would nearly kill ya to keep carrying it around.,

Lol fair point chances are if I were to get one of those we'd need some real medics :P

Stercus Accidit

bullets wrote: »

Drool, I just paid Shiva for mine yesterday.
Just wondering for a novice like myself without any experiance
of modifying do you reckon its OK out of the box?

Was worried when I saw pics elsewhere of non greased gears that had
corrosion already on them out of the box.

~B

Its supposed to be one of the easiest gearboxes to work on, the spring can be removed without opening the box so it wont pop open all over the place.

I remember the first time I opened a gearbox, just did a bit of research, then did it, its not that hard really, and well worth it.
I have researched the a&k a good bit, the main problem in the box was the grease, and a misfit cylinder, a type 0 or something.
The gears may have corroded but aparently they are extra tough so it doesnt matter once they are greased.

Spezcong did yours have the right sized cylinder for the gearbox?

TheFlatulator

I am considering getting one in July, seeing that rsov have them on there for £104.99 + what ever customs want to shaft you for, how much is shiva selling them for as I couldn't see them up on Eirsoft anywhere

Stercus Accidit

299 I think, but it may just be another tip-ex jobbed m4 and some plumbing parts, hes known to do that.

m249 squad support awesomeness gat authentically etched* (tip-exed) onto the side....


Seriously, you would get hit by customs on an order of that value, and shipping would be high for a parcel of that weight, so you would have to price accordingly.

kdouglas

Motosam wrote: »

Its supposed to be one of the easiest gearboxes to work on, the spring can be removed without opening the box so it wont pop open all over the place.

I remember the first time I opened a gearbox, just did a bit of research, then did it, its not that hard really, and well worth it.
I have researched the a&k a good bit, the main problem in the box was the grease, and a misfit cylinder, a type 0 or something.
The gears may have corroded but aparently they are extra tough so it doesnt matter once they are greased.

Spezcong did yours have the right sized cylinder for the gearbox?

the problem i had with the cylinder in mine was that it was about 1mm shorter than it needed to be to sit correctly in the gearbox shell, but also 2mm shorter than a standard cylinder (i ordered a new one to replace it), so when i got a new cylinder i had to grind a bit off the end of it to make it fit, the other option is to dremel out the gearbox shell a bit, but i decided ruining a cylinder is a lot more difficult to do and cheaper to correct

TheFlatulator

is it just me or are the A&K M249 a shot in the dark purchase as in you may get a good one or you might get a crap one...

kdouglas

nah, they're pretty consistent with what's wrong with them


simplest things that need to be done is the hopup fix, other than that you could, in theory leave it alone and it would serve you quite well

bit of grease on the gearbox wouldnt go amiss though, you could even grease the gearbox without removing it from the body (drop the trigger section away) but it might not be the best grease-job

Puding

is it just me or are the A&K M249 a shot in the dark purchase as in you may get a good one or you might get a crap one...

Kinda a risk you have with any clone, well any aeg to be honest, your chance of a lemon does vary greatly depending on maket, with the ak m249 you have some thing which will normaly need looking at with ever unit (i would say anyone who is looking to get one have a read thought of fareast's review and the following post, goes thought everything you would need to know http://www.arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=126293 )

Stercus Accidit

At the end of the day, clone manufacturers do pay attention to feedback, maybe not very quickly and most certainly there wont be a callback!

But things that are easy to fix before manufacture, grease a gearbox, resize the cylinder, they'll do that. So maybe the latest batch are good, the grease is new, maybe the cylinder is now correct, spetzcong didnt mention it wasnt, I'm sure he would have noticed.

A&k are new enough, they have a limited range of gear, thats why id say they opened with a niche model. They do an m16, most clone companies do, develop a half decent type2 gearbox and hop unit, and there is a massive market for armalites, with many common parts so its worth making them.

The m249 will tide them over for now but there arent enough variations to trade on them completely, they will probably move towards easier to make aegs once they get the manufacturing of common parts right, though they would continue the m249 range having set up the manufacturing line. Maybe they will continue the niche support guns, as even with terrible early reviews and general iffy build, they have sold well.

Maybe a clone m60 would be a possibility....

Spetzcong

There were a few things in Far East's review that I didn't find at all on my M249, for example my new motor fitted into the A&K Gearbox shell perfectly, also the Cylinder on mine seemed to be a perfect fit, there was no movement that I could see at all, mind you I made sure to try to seat it towards the front of the gearbox all the same, as per Far East's advice, but to be honest I couldn't see any problem with it to begin with. The hopup chamber on mine looked to be of a much higher quality than the one in Far east's review too, I might post up a few photos of the parts I removed later so you can get an idea of their quality.

As KD says, you could easily grease the gears without opening the gearbox, with the gearbox still intact you can access each of the gears from the underside, put a little bit of grease on each gear and then either cycle the gears by hand to spread the grease or hook up battery and shoot it once or twice.

TheFlatulator

I assume that the model that shiva is selling is downgraded as RSOV were advertising the FPS as about 410 to 460... but they look damn good

Stercus Accidit

TheFlatulator wrote: »

I assume that the model that shiva is selling is downgraded as RSOV were advertising the FPS as about 410 to 460... but they look damn good

They are, the spring is handy to swap out.


And @ Spetzcong, thats very good news, an indicator that a&k got the act together, I may get one now myself.

Puding

yes shiva's are downgraded a source (i would presume ) so that there legal

Spetzcong

Yeah, I had to get mine downgraded before shipping too, I got a Prometheus MS90 spring put in, which according to the spring chart on mechbox.com should put its fps in the 300 - 312 range, I've yet to have it Chronoed though, once I do I'll figure out if I can get a slightly stronger spring in there to bring it up to bang on the Joule, changing the spring is so easy it's rediculous.

kdouglas

Spetzcong wrote: »

There were a few things in Far East's review that I didn't find at all on my M249, for example my new motor fitted into the A&K Gearbox shell perfectly, also the Cylinder on mine seemed to be a perfect fit, there was no movement that I could see at all, mind you I made sure to try to seat it towards the front of the gearbox all the same, as per Far East's advice, but to be honest I couldn't see any problem with it to begin with. The hopup chamber on mine looked to be of a much higher quality than the one in Far east's review too, I might post up a few photos of the parts I removed later so you can get an idea of their quality.

As KD says, you could easily grease the gears without opening the gearbox, with the gearbox still intact you can access each of the gears from the underside, put a little bit of grease on each gear and then either cycle the gears by hand to spread the grease or hook up battery and shoot it once or twice.

that's interesting alright, i didnt have to do anything to put in a different motor either, but i did notice there was a gap between the cylinder and the gearbox shell on mine, once i took a tiny bit off a new cylinder it fit perfectly though.

did you not have to mod the hopup on yours at all? (as per fareast's review)
I did the hopup mod and also polished the opening to make the bbs feed smoother, it was quite rough beforehand.

Spetzcong

kdouglas wrote: »

did you not have to mod the hopup on yours at all? (as per fareast's review)
I did the hopup mod and also polished the opening to make the bbs feed smoother, it was quite rough beforehand.

I got a full CA Hopup Chamber along with the rest of the internals I ordered as I expected the hop up chamber to be dodgy, I installed the CA one, but I compaired to the two chambers before I put the CA one on and they were one for one copies. I'll post pictures of the A&K chamber later as it's currently sitting in my bits box, there was none of the roughness in the opening that I expected from seeing Fareast's review.

The cylinder on mine seemed to be a perfect fit too, one of the things I did do before putting the gearbox back together was grease around the edges of where the cylinder was going to sit, I was worried that I hadn't fixed the badly fitting cylinder problem because I just couldn't see it. My theory was that if it didn't fit properly a little bit of grease might at least give it a better seal as a short term solution.

Did your cylinder visibly not fit without opening the gearbox or is it something that you only notice when it's all been taken apart?

kdouglas

it was hard to tell from the outside, but if you looked at where the cylinder sat into the gearbox shell you could see it was a tiny bit too short

Spetzcong

Then no, mine didn't look like it was too short at all, I got myself a CA Gearbox shell too, which I didn't bother installing, and I checked the cylinder out in that and it seemed to fit perfectly too, which I thought was odd at the time because Fareast mentioned that the cylinder being too short was a problem with CA models too in his review, I might pop the whole thing apart later and take some pictures of the fit of the cylinder on the gearbox.

In fact I thought the hardest part of the whole process is getting the handguard off to slide the charging handle off. The little screws that hold the handguard on are difficult to access and the ones on mine were getting pretty chewed up, it might be a good opportunity to replace them with new screws before they get completely wrecked.

zero19

Old painless was a minigun dammit! lol

Spetzcong

Lol, Old Painless was indeed a minigun, but I don't have that kind of money, if a decent clone one comes out or I win the Euromillions, I'll rename my M249

kdouglas

screws to take the handguard off? it just pulls off? no screws necessary?

Spetzcong

Not on mine, it took a while pulling at it to figure that out, there's two screws on each side under the foregrip which have to be removed, I watched a youtube video of the takedown in which the guy just pulled the handguard off, not so in mine though, I thought it was just because the battery for mine is held in the stock rather than the foregrip, and that perhaps on other models, like the para, the foregrip pops off.

Spetzcong

Ok, some pictures of the A&K internals for those who are interested

A&K Motor, Spring Guide, Piston


CA Hopup Chamber which I've installed

A&K Hopup Chamber,

another shot of the A&K Hopup Chamber

The screws holding the handguard on

The cylinder, no gaps!

The gearbox, shown with a CA Gearbox shell above for comparisons