Specna Arms Edge Sa-e02 M933 Carbine

[Rogerborg]

Freshly purchased in a rather nice grey to use as the basis for a DMR.

 

 

The stock, grip and handguard are plastic, but everything else is alloy or steel.  Buffer tube, receiver, outer barrel, delta ring, sights, sling mounts, trigger, fire selector, charging handle, forward assist, rear sight and its adjusters are all metal.

 

The receiver is a really good tight closure with no wobble there or in the barrel or grip, and there's not much in the stock.  I've not had the gearbox apart yet, but there's blue goo lube in there, it's not too loud, and with a little squirt of silicone lube down the nozzle it's shooting at a respectable and consistent 1.07J / 340fps @ 0.2g on the M90 spring, so the air seal seems fine, as it should be with double-o-ring piston and cylinder heads and an o-ring nozzle.

 

It's got the advertised rotary hop which seems very similar to the ZCI plastic rotary which works well, although the adjustment wheel isn't as secure.  The hop rubber is generic, but it's got a style of hop nub that I've never seen before, semi-circular on top, but flat on the bottom and extended front-and-back to fill more of the length of the hop window. That seems to make sense and was a pleasant little surprise - it should work well with the s-hop that I'm going to inflict on it.

 

The "enter and convert" QC gearbox is as described, the spring can be changed without taking the gearbox out, just get the buffer tube off.  That's a bit of a chore to get off and back on, mind, and I'm just off to buy a properly long screwdriver.  The wiring cable is stiff and doesn't want to coil up inside the buffer tube either, making shortening the stock rather difficult.

 

Being wired to Deans via a basic Gate X-ASR mosfet is a great idea, and it's practically begging to have a Gate Warfet or MERF dropped in for 3 round bursts.

 

The 275mm barrel is heavy brass and has no obvious internal blemishes, although it's not the neatest on the outside.  It was well oiled internally and needed a thorough clean out using the supplied and usefully long cleaning rod.

 

It's not all great though.  The handguard is very disappointing, being a hard, cheap feeling plastic that's wobblier than a politician's promise. It's slightly bananad and the halves don't want to close up tightly - you can see that even on PatrolBase's advertising pictures.  The wobble is down to the halves not gripping the delta star ring securely. I've bodged it all tight with electrical tape around the barrel, between the guard and the star ring, and whipped around to hold the guard tightly together. It's fixable, but shouldn't need to be.

 

The tight interface at the rear of the receiver halves also made it a sod to get apart, I was looking for a pin that I thought I must have missed, but it's just the standard front pin. When it eventually did part company, I was using so much force that I managed to stretch the charging handle spring to an unusable length and snap the plastic part of the mechanism in half.  My bad, fixable, and not a big deal.  The secret is to lift the front of the upper receiver a faction, both during disassembly and reassembly.  I can't really blame them for having achieved a secure fit.

 

The no-screws latch mechanism on the bottom of the pistol grip is nice in principle but in practice the pinned latch just gets in the way, and it's not an area that really needs quick access anyway - I might replace the grip with something less clever.

 

The Specna Arms "advanced" motor isn't that strong and the wiring is disappointingly thin. The motor height adjuster doesn't have a separate E-Z-Looze disk, which is a nice change. It's a good fit for the Specna Arms motor, but I had to do quite a bit of filing to get a slightly longer Big Dragon M140 to fit instead, and the bottom plate mechanism is unforgiving there, it either closes, or it doesn't.

 

On balance, it seems decent enough out of the box, just clean the barrel and hop, plug in a Deans battery and go.

 

I do have to flag up the poor handguard though, it's fixable, but that's no excuse.

 

Would I recommend it?  Provisionally, yes, pending playing with it.  I don't expect it to be either poor or magical.  Puff is consistent, the hop mechanism looks decent, the barrel is probably OK, although I'll be replacing both of those anyway.  At £140 for a metal body and a set of decent air seal parts that sharply reduced the size and cost of my followup AK2M4 order, the value proposition is what sold it to me.

[Speedbird_666]

Whilst I'm not a fan of the Edge series, I think this blaster represents pretty decent value at £140. 

 

If there are no gearbox issues (check the cylinder around the air port for burrs and the tappet/piston rails for smoothness), then I reckon it could be a good base for upgrading.

 

I'm not convinced by the longevity of the Gate X-asr (I have already nuked one) but that's a quick change.

 

I reckon a good re-shimming, re-grease, hop rubber, an SHS Hi-torque and one of the new Perun hybrid units will make this a cool little death cannon.

 

I'm not so sure the Gearbox shell will cope at DMR power. The Edge GB shell I have in front of me right now is thinner and lighter than other V2s I have knocking around.

 

My Sons Edge now sports an E&C Gearbox and it added a good few ounces to the overall weight of the gun.

 

 

[Rogerborg]

6 hours ago, Speedbird_666 said:

Whilst I'm not a fan of the Edge series, I think this blaster represents pretty decent value at £140. 

 

That was what swung it for me.  Compared to a more basic plastic toy plus upgrades, I think it's a fair deal for an all metal outer and reasonable internals.

 

 

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If there are no gearbox issues (check the cylinder around the air port for burrs and the tappet/piston rails for smoothness), then I reckon it could be a good base for upgrading.

 

I've been in there now and it all seems good.  The shimming wasn't quite spot on, and it needed quite a lot of it - there were some 0.7mm shims in there.  Although I guess they get credit for actually putting 8 shims into the thing.

 

 

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I'm not convinced by the longevity of the Gate X-asr (I have already nuked one) but that's a quick change.

 

Indeed, and I'm viewing it as a freebie until it dies.  I'll only be using it on semi auto and I've got a diode across the motor as well.

 

 

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I reckon a good re-shimming, re-grease, hop rubber, an SHS Hi-torque and one of the new Perun hybrid units will make this a cool little death cannon.

 

The grease was interesting.  It's that nasty waxy snot, but it was carefully applied to the gears, and the piston rails rather than just randomly spooged in there or missing.

 

Oh, one correction, the piston head is single o-ring, not double, and isn't on a bearing. That's a shame, I'd seen a review to the contrary. The air seal also isn't as good as I'd hoped either, even after stretching and greasing, on either the stock 3/4 cylinder or a ZCI full cylinder.  Not bad, just not quite complete, my plastic fantastic CYMA does better with less.

 

 

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I'm not so sure the Gearbox shell will cope at DMR power. The Edge GB shell I have in front of me right now is thinner and lighter than other V2s I have knocking around.

 

Only one way to find out.  It's well radiused, at least, I didn't touch that.  It's got an M130 now, as there seem to be no M140s to be had West of China.  The s-hop is still curing so I don't know yet what it's going to produce.

 

 

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My Sons Edge now sports an E&C Gearbox and it added a good few ounces to the overall weight of the gun.

 

Thanks, I'll bear that in mind if it grenades.

 

[Speedbird_666]

@Rogerborg If you have any problems with the GB shell, I have barely-used spare if you need it just for the cost of postage - I wont ever use it myself.

 

The Edge I have came with a dual O-Ring piston with bearing. I don't rate it though - the second O-ring means that there's quite a bit more friction on the piston's rearward-stroke compared to something simpler (such as the GearParts POM Head from AK2M4). I'm not a fan of metal piston heads in general though TBH. Perfect airseal with a change of Piston and Cylinder O-Rings though.

 

My (or I should say my Son's) gun had no grease nor shims, burred cylinder, rough GB casting (which I polished-out) and a collapsed bearing after a few hundred rounds.

 

I was chasing issues since with the GB (inconsistent Semi, dodgy Mosfet) and in the end it was easier and more cost effective to replace the GB completely. But this gun was purchased a good 18mths ago and was one of those 'cursed' batches with little to no QC. I keep being reassured that the issues have largely been rectified with subsequent batches and the gun is 'safe' to purchase, but I still struggle to recommend the Edge Series as a first gun for anyone at the moment.

 

I saw the £140 model and have been tempted to get one to try out, but I've become a bit of an ICS fanboi so I'm saving my pennies for another one of those instead

[Rogerborg]

Thanks, that's very decent of you.  It's quite reassuring that I have a different piston head, that suggests that something has changed.  I couldn't find any problems with the casting, and somebody (or some robot) did make a half decent attempt at greasing and shimming it.

 

In more good news, the M130 spring that I popped in is producing 1.8J on 0.32g with the hop off (up to 1.9J on 0.2g), which is spot on what I wanted in order to to come in comfortably under the 1.88J site limit, so no need for an M140.  Given that these things come with an M120 (although mine had the M90 in) I'm going to pin my hopes that the shell is slightly over-engineered.

[ak2m4]

those double o-ring piston heads are just another thing to go wrong and don't give any real performance issue. Same with having a thrust bearing on the piston head and on the spring guide.  My guess SA are trying to improve reliability and that's what you want on a £140 gun, returns eat into profit so badly with AEG's

[Rogerborg]

On 05/06/2021 at 12:24, Rogerborg said:

Being wired to Deans via a basic Gate X-ASR mosfet is a great idea

 

... if it works.

 

It failed before chrono. Well, the mosfet, trigger or wiring failed. Or conceivably the motor.  Electrical, anyway, and there's no blinkenlight on the mosfet. I should have followed my instinct and just replaced the whole wiring with a basic circuit.  I'd rather have something that works at 90% efficiency, 100% of the time.

 

[UPDATE]

Huh, it was the trigger.  It got hung up on something (still haven't figured out what) and wasn't quite making contact.  That's a new one.  It's freed up and seems fine, I can't replicate the issue.  Back to happy again.

 

[FURTHER UPDATE]

Yup, that was fine today.  I'd messed up the s-hop that I'd done to it and had to tear it out at lunch.  With the AOLS 455mm, stock hop unit and nub, and a pretty mucky maple leaf macaron 60 that I had in the bits-box, it was pleasantly consistent.  Quite twangy with an M130 spring in it, but it doesn't have a bearing piston head.  I'm happy with that, for now.