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The Ultimate Gearbox is a Lonex rebrand, very nice part but no QD spring sadly. Orion probably best bet but quite high with the shipping from EU etc. Delta Armoury looks good enough and decent price.

I wanted to test the theory of barrel scratches, I took 3 barrels, brass, aluminium and stainless steel. Did a borescope video before on all 3, then used a nylon cleaner brush 15 passes on each one, then cleaned with tissue and isopropanol, then another borescope video. I was expecting perhaps some scratch on the brass but nothing on any of them. Just be 2 cents worth. @Yashy Have a watch on YT at how to remove and clean an inner barrel, it will also explain to you about how to clean and remove the hop chamber and hop rubber. If you plan on playing quite a lot this information will really help you get the most out of your AEG.

wellllll hi

With the 6.01 you're likely to get a better grouping, and slightly higher power. However it's very dependent on having the nozzle, hop rubber, hop chamber setup correctly. Also some AEG's just play differently. 6.03 is a little more less prone to jamming. I did receive some 6.05 x 128mm testers as well and I got amazing results even with 0.2g. I was very surprised so I might even arrange for some of those to be made. I'm hoping production will start mid-Jan with a small run. For the price of a spring it's definitely worth grabbing a new one of the XT, you might only need a M100. The factory did the actual RA surface test with a Profilometer gauge. For a decent one they're kinda expensive. They take sample barrels during production, cut them open and measure etc. You can actually measure a fair amount yourself with a good borescope and then compare against a chart. I'm also looking into polishing as well for some projects, a factory has said they could build me a custom machine to do the work, just waiting on a price 🙂

yeah man, just get a basic brushed short motor. basically 2 types, one with cheap magnets (around £15), one with decent magnets (around £30). have a look on aliexpress

The quality of ZCI has taken a little nose dive recently so I really don't want to stock them anymore. On the few remaining ones I have left I have to do a number of tests on them before I let them out the door. On a couple I've even noticed some bits of metal sticking out down the bore, here's one I found, this one actually broke my mirror on my new bore scope 😞 I've got my own coming out under the XT brand, much higher polishing quality, slightly bigger hop window. Just waiting for the factory to make the 6.03mm version. They sent over some 6.01mm samples. I might even have a 380mm somewhere

What's the brand?

Whilst the safest bet is to replace like for like you won't necessarily lose any power, lot of factors in play, kinda one of those things you need to experiment with.

@cojkor get some pictures up of the AEG's and let us all have a look 🙂 You'd be surprised at what can be salvaged.

I've got a feeling that JG never did engraved trades, who really knows though! I was going to buy a used one of these back in 2005, but the CASV handguard was quite the chonk weight-wise. @screwfix is it full metal?

At this point I recommend taking the build back to stock gears and see what happens.

128, 200, 229, 260, 285, 300, 363, 380, 407, 430, 450, 470 and 500

@Lozart I'll be doing a special next couple of days for anyone who wants to try this 1st batch. Here's a video of the internal polishing: https://youtu.be/gn1D-U8tJzM The bore size is comparable to ZCI but with a much higher polishing finish on the inside.

Factory says finished on the 12th but (A) Never trust a factory on dates and (B) If ready will take UPS forever to courier to the UK... 🙂 The inner barrels have arrived, just some final testing etc

You've got a double o-ring piston head (don't use them if you can), and a X ring piston seal o ring - check that both can slide easily. Check piston head vents don't have too much grease on them. AB shouldn't affect it, don't run an AB, will only heat up your motor and reduce life. How long is your nozzle?

Easy to get them them rethreaded? Tools should cost about £20. Do you know the size?

No real need to spend £1K, just get yourself a reasonable mid-priced AEG (electric) M4 to start off (£200 - £300), pistol if you really want but it's not essential, it's more of a "fun" purchase. No need for all the gucci gear either. Far better to dip your toe and then slowly build up over time. Have fun.

@Pseudotectonic I like Audacity (very handy), one small caveat with rof though, if your bb's aren't feeding it will still measure them so can throw off results.

@Leo Greer have you noticed any PME with that build? I'm just about to test a very similar build with one of my new 34k brushless motors with a M110, fully stock no SS

Yes SHS get around the issue by using copper for a certain size. I've never had any issues with the copper shims in a gearbox so that's when I thought of using aluminium shims since they can be annodized pretty cheaply. I have come across alum shims before but never used them. Only real way to tell is get some made up and then run in a gearbox for a 500,000 pews

tried it, sadly can pick it off super easily but something like that is ideal, just dip each spring in a different colour and then hang up to dry, very quick process and cheap to do.

Yep batches of course but still expensive, even in China! I've noticed a real hike in laser etching cost recently. I asked one factory to do 500 nozzles and the cost was around 40p each, that's a huge addon to the end price and hard to justify.

Yep I can imagine the ball-ache that would cause, I imagine they have their own machine and some poor guy has to align them all, haha good fun I'll have some video on it very soon, it's quite impressive 🙂

I'm due to test the new brushless motor this weekend and that will push my XT M110 test spring to around 1.5 million cycles. It's not lost any power / size yet so interesting to see what the results are.

@Colin Allen from talking to the factory and my own test the zinc coating they put on those springs affected the performance of the spring in terms of power and reliability over time. Another reason why some brands use zinc plating is to help mask the poor quality of the steel underneath. Believe me when I say I would gladly have a zinc coating on these as packing them into bags you get covered in grease. I did try colour coding the piston end of my springs but could never find a paint which wouldn't flake off. I imagine some sort of powder coating would work fairly well but have to keep costs low otherwise before you know it paying £14 for a spring. If anyone has any ideas I'm open to suggestions ?