Gdidy Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 i think the end factor for me will be the price tag on the new clone, if the new m249 gets decent review and the price isnt 500 bucks then ill get that, if it gets a terrible review and its still cheap then i get this, if it gets a great review and is cheap then ill get the 249, its all based on proformance to me, i love both guns, but its reliability to me, i dont want stuff that will jam Link to post Share on other sites
trowa Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Based on your impressions, is the vertical grip of the E4 sturdy enough to be used? I've heard a story where a player broke off his TOP M60 E3's vertical grip after some abuse. Link to post Share on other sites
PlasticMag Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 I love the Engrish with the trades. It's supposed to be SACO Defense. Given that I used to live in the city these beasts were made in... Link to post Share on other sites
DWells55 Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 I love the Engrish with the trades. It's supposed to be SACO Defense. Given that I used to live in the city these beasts were made in... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Seriously, can't they just hire one of us to check the trades for them via email or something? Sheesh. Link to post Share on other sites
Hillslam Posted June 21, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 The trades were done that way on purpose. I'll let you figure out why. Â As for the foregrip - its one thing to snap off a rail-mounted grip, its another to snap a grip thats one piece to the heatshield. Having said that, if someone could snap a TOP, they'll snap a STAR. Â As for if its sturdy enough to be used, yeah I've held the gun up by it alone, no wobbles or such. But given that the heatshield its attached to is a U shaped channel and not a full enclosing unit (with the structural benefit that provides) I am not sure how much abuse it could take. Â Define abuse. Link to post Share on other sites
barnezilla Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Define abuse. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> sexual abuse n. The forcing of unwanted sexual activity by one person on another, as by the use of threats or coercion. Link to post Share on other sites
Shao14 Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Hey, Hillslam, great job. Keep it coming. Have you had a chance to pour some plastic down range yet? Link to post Share on other sites
Hillslam Posted June 21, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Still have not fired it. Â But I have begun disassembling it - yes I know my priorities are upside down. Â The front grip and heatshield in fact do come off with two bolts. I was pleasantly surprised here because the bolts don't actually locate the position of the handle, it is positioned by the molded channel itself and how it wraps around the bipod swivel up front and the reeceiver at the back. Two allen bolts, be careful not to overtighten. I have no pics of that because well its boring. Â Taking off the quick detach outer barrel. It is just as advertised: you push the latch and off it pops. Here's a pic of it off the gun (note in the pic I've already removed the heatshield and foregrip) Unlike the SAW which slides the outer barrel off leaving the inner barrel and hopup chamber on the receiver, this all comes out as one unit. No idea yet how to get at the inner barrel or the inards of the hopup chamber. Â Unpleasant surprise #1 - the hopup is off center! Looking down the barrel and adjusting the hop i can see the bucking coming down into barrel as I add hop, but its off center abit to the right. The barrel is aligned in its mounting, so I've no idea how to attack this. Guess I'll be shooting hook shots to the right... Â The hopup chamber itself is... funny looking. I'll haveta be returning to this I suppose. Guess I better shoot the thing soon.... Â In order to prepare for left handed fire domination I needed to get that damn sling mount off the wrong-hand-side and over to the cool-hand-side. Here's the bipod assembly and sling attach ring off of the gun. It all slides off the gas tube once you detach the outer barrel and foregrip. Note the obstacle to my switching it over: the ring that goes around the gas tube has a little tab on it. It doesn't mount back on the gun with that tab on it in any position other than right-hand. Â So I cut off the tab with metal shears. Problem solved. Lefthand world domination countdown T-one more second. Â --------------- Â Just an overall impression as I've begun tearing down the gun, its put together nicer than I expected. The foregrip, outerbarrel, and bipod assemblies were all nice surprises. The hopup chamber bucking was not. Nor was the tab on the sling ring. Still 3 positives and 2 negatives, call it a good day. Â One more thing - the charging handle unscrews right off. Its a nice piece, but its screwed right into a hole in the side of the receiver. And when you unscrew it off, the slide falls off. So if you're thinking you're going to "quick mod up" a moving charge handle, think again. Still, it looks the tits and it feels great. It just don't move and its not a quickie thing rig up a mover. Â More later, the baby is waking up... Link to post Share on other sites
Insanejoe Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 What version gearbox does it use? Link to post Share on other sites
Ubeswardog Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 It uses the same type as the star m249 Â aka the plastic one: Â http://www.planetairsoft.net/archives/Pict...249-mechbox.jpg Link to post Share on other sites
Foukus Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 It doesn't use same as M249.. At least upper of gearbox is different. Link to post Share on other sites
Ubeswardog Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 ###### Â my bad....well...it's plastic..we know that Link to post Share on other sites
thatfatmacdude Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Hay Hillslam, do you think that these would be compatible with other company's feed tray's? I like the E4 but it needs optics. Link to post Share on other sites
Hillslam Posted June 21, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Good question - I haven't measured it but I plan to and then start comparing to TOP feedtray covers. But I don't have high hopes, Star tends to be casual with their dimensions. Â But, I'm not going to start transplanting high end parts onto this gun. One because that'll add weight and two because its my "secondary" support gun and I only bought it because, well, I wanted a 60 and I don't want to sink alot of cash into it. Thats my plan at least. Link to post Share on other sites
MarsdenH Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Nice review so far, but for gods sake, SHOOT IT BEFORE YOU TAKE IT APART. Â I hate reviews where people take the gun apart before ever firing a shot, and then say "well it doesn't work soo good after I put it back together, it must be a bad piece." Â For all we know the "bad" hop-up might have been just fine, but we will never now know until another review. If you are going to do a review, do a complete review, not a c*ck tease. Link to post Share on other sites
Gdidy Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 yea but he could just have easily not been so complete in his apraisal Link to post Share on other sites
Gigueand Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Ouch, MarsdenH, ouch... Â I for one am incredibly impressed by this "review" (the OP stated that it wasn't really a true review, but rather a commentary). Â Give the guy some slack. He is excited about his new toy! Â Anyway, back on to topic... tell us how it shoots... and soon. Link to post Share on other sites
Hillslam Posted June 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Correct - its not a review. Â All I did was remove the quick detach outerbarrel. Quick release barrel. Click button, pull barrel. In order to move the sling loop to the left side. I noticed the bucking misalignment then. The hopup chamber is integral to the barrel assembly and underwent *no torsional load* to move it radially around its axis when the quick release barrel assembly was detached *longitudinally*. The whole assembly is located radially by the gas tube and *cannot* be rotated until the whole thing is well clear of the receiver. The bucking arrived that way. Â I'll be firing it soon. If only to establish the baseline. YouTube video coming. Â BTW - the hopup thing may phase the mechanically challenged, but its really no big thing. Already I can see this gun is several orders of magnitude easier to dissassemble and reassemble than my TM M14. Which I like about it alot. Â I can also promise that after I actually do truly disassemble and reassemble the gun, it will shoot better than it came from the factory. And I'll detail what I did to improve it from the baseline and post it here. (I make no promises on timelines on that though) Â Anyway, if you think pulling a QD barrel straight out affects a bucking's placement radially, dont bother reading the upcoming technical bits. Link to post Share on other sites
Insanejoe Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 So, i didnt really get an answer, is the gearbox in the M-60 the same one as in their M249? or is it a V2, V3 etc. I'm very curious on its gearbox type ;-) Link to post Share on other sites
Hillslam Posted June 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 I can't answer that - I don't own a Star M249 Link to post Share on other sites
Hillslam Posted June 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Got around to firing it.  First thing first - you load the boxmag's batteries in the bottom by taking off 4 screws. 3 AA batteries. The ammo you load in the top by lifting the door and pouring them in.  NOTE: You CANNOT, I repeat CANNOT load 4000 rounds in this boxmag. I tried with a brand spanking new bag of 4000 bbs. Well you can, you can pour em in there, but you're going to lose the top inch of ammo the moment you tip the gun. The reason is, when you load 4000 rounds into the boxmag, the bottom door (the "door" is a top door and a bottom door hooked together, see my previous pics) the bottom door submerges down into the bbs.  That leaves the top inch of ammo stranded above it. Since the upper door never actually closes (see previous pics of the boxmag attached to the gun) that means that top layer of bbs will fall out. They certainly won't load, because the bottom door has sealed them out.  So call it a max of 3000 bbs.  I fill the ammo, attach the mag to the gun, wind the mag, and prepare to fire. Safety off, pull the trigger. Immediately several rounds fly, nothing special there, no angels visited me or demons pounced, but then.... dry fire. I check the gun, no problems there, no jams. I take the boxmag off. Its not feeding. I pour out the bbs and get it to unjam. Try it a second time, this time with 1/2 the bbs in the box. Same result. About a dozen shots and dry fire.  I unjam it again and then just let it feed, unmounted from the gun, freely into my ammo bin box. It jams again, all on its own, unattached to anything. I unjam it again and take a pause.  Giving the boxmag the benefit of the doubt, I set it in my ammo bin and decide to just run a full and complete boxmag's worth of ammo thru it. Not mounted to the gun, just running its motor and letting it's feed dump back into the ammo bin. It spits and sputters but gets thru it, leaving maybe a hundred or so roudns bouncing around the bottom. Then I run a second boxmag's worth.  I take note of the feed speed. It sounds slow, so I get out my CA boxmag (well used and probably with a couple hundred thousand rounds thru it, rusting feed tube and all) and let them feed side by side. The CA boxmag feeds much smoother and probably 3x the speed. Now to be fair I've rebuilt and oiled my CA boxmag several times and its well broken in. But the Star boxmag is definitely feeding slower. It is also burping, hiccuping, and skip-feeding.  So those of you looking to do a highspeed ROF setup with this gun, forget it. Unless you add another cell to the boxmag motor or something. Out of the box, it is sloooow and sloppy.  I run another boxmag's worth of ammo thru the bin and figure that at least somewhat sort of kind of broke it in. 12,000 rounds thru the box mag at this point. HA! - I said 12,000 rounds and HA!, I didn't mean the gun, so nanner nanner  It still spits and sputters and feeds slow but it seems to be feeding. I stop the feed with my finger several times (just like if it was attached to the gun and not continually firing) and it seemed to pick back up ok.  One note - there is no spring in this boxmag mechanism. Its all motor. You cannot prewind up an amount of spring tension. You turn the motor "on" and the motor winds until it is resisted (ergo the bbs reach the gun), and then it stops. No resistence on the bbs, it starts. Block the bbs, it stops. So there's how it actually works. Clever, simple, elegant, but ZERO redundancy or contingency like with a spring augmented system.  I mount it back to the gun and squeeze off some rounds thru my chrono.  Results: 310-320 on .2g bbs. Oh, the spring guide was "position 1" or whatever the f&*k that means among M249 owners... Actually I know what it means, just being a clown. I just left the spring guide where its supposed to sit. If I want more fps I'll put in one of my higher fps springs.  I uploaded a YouTube.com video so you can listen to the ROF. Its nothing spectacular and you can hear the misfeeds.  I'll be tearing down this boxmag and oiling her up nice and removing any casting burs and such.  The video: M60E4 firing clip  So, my opinion now is that the gun is quite nice. The boxmag is not so. Its a great design, I still like the boxmag design, but mediocre manufacturing QA. My only suggestion on the design would be to have incorporated a spring into the mechanism. For those of you who are looking to do high ROF - you will definitely need to introduce another AA cell battery into the circuit for more voltage. The good news is there's room.   Conclusion - before I skirmish this weapon I'll be tearing down and greasing up the boxmag, because the amount it is misfeeding is doing the gun a disservice. And *yes* its the boxmag, not the gun, as I tested it out of the gun (see above).  Next steps - I'll put in some springs with known fps values as measured in my CA M249 and then run them in the M60 and compare fps. Then we'll see if this mechbox is "down on compression" as is allegedly the case with Star's 249 series.  Questions?  Oh and for those of you who don't like the angle my helmet cam was at when I filmed the clip - blow me. You're welcome to do better. Use your ears, the sound is what matters anyway. Because watching an AEG fire is so f%*king interesting... Link to post Share on other sites
barnezilla Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 your comrehensive technical review did a huge disservice to the entire airsoft community. I HATE YOU. Â oh btw i didnt like the camera angle. see ya next sat cutie... Â /sarcasm Link to post Share on other sites
Hillslam Posted June 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Indeed. My apologies. By way of reparation, I give you version two of my Star M60E4 impressions posting: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Â Link to post Share on other sites
[BS]_MARS Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Well, I just dropped the hammer on one. Link to post Share on other sites
Hillslam Posted June 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Did you break it? Link to post Share on other sites
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