Parts to Keep on Hand for Common AEG Failures
 

I am planning on ordering some spare parts and keeping them on had to fix common AEG failures (my buddies and I have a bunch of M4 guns with version 2 gear boxes, ICS, King Arms, G&G, Aftermath). So far, I figure I should get:

• Hop-up Bucking
• Piston
• Piston head
• Nozzle
• Cylinder head
• Spring Guide
• Little clips to connect the wires to the motor (I've had them snap apart)

Is there anything else that I should get?

It wouldn't be a bad idea to have an extra tappet plate and some gears and shims on hand.

You're probably be better off just getting a complete drop in mechbox. This way you can either raid it for parts or have it handy in case a gun goes down in the middle of a game.

It's usually just pistons that go, you don't have to change anything else often.
In 4 years I've only had to change the piston on my M249 but that was due to operator error lol

Hop-up rubber, spare mechbox screws, handgrip screws (3mm), small files(cleaning trigger contacts), allens keys. Like Kozzie said, a spare complete box in hand is not a bad idea. Just remember to replace what you salvage from the box.

I had listed these parts because of recent failures in our guns:

• Hop-up Bucking - My friend's new King Arm M4 lost fps (dropped to 100 fps) after only shooting about 300 BBs. Fixed by replacing with a Guarder clear hop-up bucking that I had on hand.
• Piston - I shredded the teeth on an Aftermath M4 - which I had upgraded with a M120 spring (yes, I know I was asking for it!)
• Piston head - Aftermath M4 had poor compression
• Nozzle
• Cylinder head - Poor seal - again this was on an Aftermath that I was trying to upgrade
• Spring Guide -Stripped the back nut on a metal spring guide, bearing spring guide broke apart
• Little clips to connect the wires to the motor (I've had them snap apart)

Now that I think about it, it seems that most of the failures were related to me playing around with the Aftermath (just a learning experience).

So, maybe the hop-up bucking (rubber?) is all that I need, and a piston. I can always strip other parts out of the Aftermath for a temporary fix.

Awesome post.. Stuff like this should grow into a sticky post.

I am functioning as team mechanic for about a dozen guns these days and pretty much agree with your list.

I also like to have:

• Teflon tape for sealing cylinder heads that lack double o-ring setups, and for doing bucking seals ("the teflon tape mod").
• Dental floss for sealing buckings ("the dental floss mod")
• Bag of M3 machine screws from home hardware to screw pistol grips to mechboxes. These come in so handy with lower end beater guns.
• lots of heat shrink
• lots of wire
• lots of XT60 and Deans connectors, male and female
• lots of solder
• for your workspace, converters to and from XT60 <-> Deans <-> Tamiya in both male and female ends for both. Sometimes a new gun comes in that hasn't been rewired yet and you need to test it before doing so
• super lube in 3oz squeeze tube format. Get these on ebay, they ship from the US and are cheap and have Teflon and are airsoft safe. This is what you want: http://www.super-lube.com/images/syn...e-3oz-tube.jpg
• those MASK o-rings that airsoftparts sells. They seal way better than a lot of stock ones.
• spacers/washers for minor AoE adjustments on pistons
• sorbothane pads: http://clandestineairsoft.com/index....x&cPath=1_6_18
• As Kozzie said, shims. TONS OF SHIMS of all sizes :) Get the Modify advanced ones that are super small diameter and never accidentally bind or interfere with anything.
• The "small springs" of the gearbox, the set that Modify sells is what you want.
• A few packs of Modify's anti-reversal latches with the nice flathead groove cut into them. I have destroyed a couple XYT ARLs and replacing them with "luxury" ARLs is nice.
• Spare gear sets for your friends who buy G&P guns.
• Spare 6mm and 7mm bushings to replace the junky/wiggle-prone ball bearing ones that come with some ACM guns like DBoys, or to replace nylon bushings on beater-for-upgrading guns like JGs, low end CAs, etc. Any gun that comes with 8mm anything usually has something half-decent stock, so you rarely need extras of those.
• Spare pistol grips... One time Frank at Toronto Airsoft had a bargain bin full of King Arms pistol grips for 3 bucks a pop. These have been insanely useful.
• Hobby King's LiPo voltage meter: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...l_checker.html If you have LiPos and your team runs on LiPos and you don't have one of these, getting one of these is like Christmas 2.0.

I could go on but I'd be getting into tools and such which may be outside of the scope of this post.

Great post ^

For most people, the main parts to keep handy seem to be a piston and spare hop up rubbers. But its always good to have some spares. I guess its a balance between keeping some spare parts and not sinking money into stuff you may not use. For most people (not everyone I realize this) they could probably due without the spare screws and anti reversal latches.

With that said everyone should have a tube of superlue handy. That stuff it the bomb.

LOL.

A complete spare Gearbox and assembly. If the one in your gun goes down during a game, just swap them out, and keep on playing.

That and the O-rings on the piston heads can be changed periodically.


I would add digital calipers so you can figure out what size your loose shims are

My gearbox is pretty much bullet proof.. full titanium tooth piston, etc.. but i keep a tappet, nozzle, shims, bearings and selector plates on hand.

Piston head orings and trigger mechs.

+1 doing that for Rino with the RPK, it's like having a spare barrel.

A second gun.

The most common failures for me have been pistons and tappet plates. Keep one of each on hand for spares and you should be fine for the most common breaks.

And as Tankdude said, keep a second gun on hand for when your main breaks down in game.

+1 no spare parts, just a ready to use second gun with battery fully charged:)

a second gun is better but yup that works for on field/game day failures. Happens all too often and those are the times you do not want to open a gear box a fidget with parts.

also, field test the backup gearbox. don't just buy one and hold it for that catastrophic failure. put it in the gun and actually run it in a game. nothing worse than swapping it out to find that it doesn't work or you stripped a piston because it was assembled poorly.

Whats so funny???

There's nothing funny about G&P's gears.

Here are a few samples of the G&P internals I've run into in the last few months:

Soft pinion gears:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1149620/airs...on_closeup.jpg

Snapped shaft:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1149620/airs...%2023%20PM.jpg

Bent shaft:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1149620/airs...%2018%20PM.jpg

Bent shaft:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1149620/airs...%2038%20PM.jpg

Each of the gear failures happened in less than a mag into the very first usage of a stock G&P rifle.

If you have G&P rifles in your armoury, have actually good gears on standby when the G&P ones explode.

For fun I went and searched around for other pictures of broken G&P gears. wøøT!

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/o...126091720a.jpg
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o...e6fdfff1fa.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...gear_shaft.jpg
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5212/...7996864419.jpg
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5297/...76e8d27020.jpg
http://s3.mmoguildsites.com/s3/galle...png?1324654401

Let's get YouTube in on the action!

G&P gears... sigh - YouTube

I got a whole box full of busted g&p gears. What a POS.

In another life where we had time for this shit, we could start a collection, in the form of perhaps a tumblr blog or something of that nature. Photograph and catalog every single G&P broken gear we can find. Put out a call to gun docs to contribute. Shame those bastards to stop being penny-pinching dicks who insist on farming out metallurgy to their shifty cousins who in turn farm it out to their even more shifty cousins.

How the hell can they create such nice receivers but such terrible gears?

This week I opened up my mate's G&P C8 MRE and exclaimed (upon seeing that the sector gear shaft was black) "oh cool looks like they reinforced the shaft finally". I opened my broken parts box to inspect the previously-exploded G&P gears.. Sure enough, a black shaft on one of them. Maybe they decided to start faking heat-treatment at some point to appease an angry buyer.

What I've notice is, it's just the axle that's bad. The gears them self are fine. I plan on punching out the POS axle and replace them with better ones. I did it to one sector gear and I haven't heard back from that customer. Guess that worked.

Hey, nice save to bring us back on topic. Where do you get spare shafts and how do you punch them out of the gears?

I just use a punch and hammer. It's only pressed in so it's not hard to come out. Just be sure to know which way to punch it out, or you'll just be hammering for nothing.

Also, I never throw away parts if they can be salvaged for other thing. So now I have a box full of gears that could be used again one day.