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WE Gas Blow Back M4A1 Carbine


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The first time I saw that pic it was posted by Jin-Roh (who lives in Taiwan) on the Minnesota Airsoft Association board. I have confirmed that it is indeed a WE M4 charging handle.

 

I will admit that as nice as the body, barrel, flashider, buffer tube, magazine, etc. seem to be made the charging handle does feel really thin and flimsy. So I really wouldn't be surprised if the charging handle does break at some point. Based on the pics I've seen of real steel charging handles they look to be the same design and shape so they might fit, but I wouldn't be able to tell unless I had a RS charging handle around (which unfortunately I don't).

 

Perhaps Wupjak can tell us about this if he has gotten his WE M4 in the mail?

 

 

 

On a different note, I did have a chance to put anothr 600 rounds or so through my WE M4 this afternoon (I just can't stop shooting it, even without the bolt catch it's sooooo much fun to shoot! :D ) and I have some accuracy info to report.

 

The most range I have indoors to test the gun is 40 feet, so that's what all my shooting tests are done at...

 

At 40 feet, using 0.2g BBs and propane with the CQB length inner barrel installed, on semi-auto this gun can hit a cigarette butt 8 times out of 10. Mind you I am using my C-More red dot for precision shooting to assure that I'm aiming at the exact same spot every time.

But with the aid of optics being able to hit a cigarette butt 8 times out of 10 at 40 feet is very very good... right on par with my old Marui VSR-10 G-Spec heavily upgraded with full Laylax internals.

 

So accuracy on semi-auto is fantastic! I can certainly see this gun being a viable sniper platform if converted to semi-auto only. The 10 shots I made were in rapid succession too, just allowing enough time to re-align my red dot to the target after every shot. So not much in the way of cool down to affect accuracy.

 

 

Full auto on the other hand is a whole different matter. When you switch to full auto and fire in bursts of 5 to 6 shots you end up with a hit pattern spread about the size of a soft ball at 40 feet. When firing in 5 to 6 round bursts you also get 3 to 4 inches of muzzle climb (depending on how tightly you are gripping the gun) at 40 feet.

So due to the tremendous recoil the groupings on full auto are pretty large and shots drift up a bit, but you should still have no problems taking out man sized targets at longer ranges since the close range groupings aren't too huge.

 

 

Still waiting to get my hands on a chronograph, but in the meantime I have also figured out what's going on with the magazine's fill valve not holding gas sometimes. Maybe once every 10 fills or so you'll try to fill the magazine with gas and all the gas will just spew back out the fill valve as soon as you remove the nozzle of the gas can from the valve.

What is happening here is that the stem inside the valve that allows gas in but prevents it from going out gets stuck in the open position so the valve effectively becomes a 2 way valve instead of a 1 way like it should.

 

To remedy this just take a tiny screw driver (eye glass sized) and poke bottom of the valve in the area surrounding the center fill point to un-stick the valve stem. Or alternately if you don't have a tiny screw driver around just give the mag a few good whacks against the side of your boot and that should do the trick as well.

 

In my whole afternoon of shooting (about 600 rounds, 20 mags worth of BBs or 10 gas fills if you rather) I only had the valve stem get stuck once, so it wasn't too common of a problem and was easily fixed.

 

 

 

All in all it was a great afternoon of shooting and I think once I get a steel bolt catch I will be 100% happy with my WE M4. I've said it a dozen times already but...

 

"Man is this thing ever fun to shoot!" :D

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Got my hands on a chronograph this evening, sooo...

It's chrono time! :D

 

 

 

For the chronograph report I'm chronoing using the CQB length inner barrel and KSC 0.2g BBs, and propane.

 

I filled the mag with gas, allowed 15 minutes for it to come to room temperature (76°F), and then shot 2 full mags of BBs through the gun allowing roughly 5 to 7 seconds between shots with the exception of the time when I stopped to refill the magazine with another 30 BBs, which was about a 15 second break.

 

With propane the high FPS was 436 and the low was 395, the low being the last 2 shots fired at the end of the second mag. The first mag worth of BBs (30 shots) were all between 425 and 435. A deviation of 10 FPS, which isn't is quite good for a gas gun firing 30 rounds in relatively rapid succession. The last half of the test (the second mag fill of BBs) gradually dropped down by a few FPS every couple of shots until it reached it's low point of 395 FPS for the last two shots.

So on propane, even with the short CQB length inner barrel, it's still too hot for local outdoor skirmish site rules by a tiny margin.

 

 

I tried chronoing with 134a gas too but unfortunately 134a gas does not provide enough power to push the bolt back far enough to chamber the next round, so between not being able to fire more than 1 shot without having to manually cock the gun to chamber the next round and some issues I was having with the chrono I borrowed (lots of error messages, not reading shots) I decided not to chrono with 134a. No point anyway since 134a wouldn't move the bolt back far enough to chamber the next round.

 

Perhaps with a weaker recoil spring and a lighter bolt set 134a would work, but in stock form I think this gun is suitable only for use with green gas / propane.

 

 

But for now I still need to find a way to make it shoot under the local FPS limits with propane, which if nothing else I'm sure I'll be able to do by shortening the inner barrel at some point. I'll wait to see if WE offers 350 fps conversion kits to convert the Airsoft Buddy version into the lower powered WGC shop version before I go cutting up an inner barrel.

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I am DEFINITELY picking one of these up as soon as I can afford to.

 

I think its time to thin the proverbial "herd" to make room for one of these, just for fun of course, since we have a very small window of playable gas gun weather up here in Western New York......

 

I would love to be able to skirmish one of these for most of the year. I have been following this thread since the beginning and after playing with a teammates WA M4 CQBR I just have to have a GBB rifle. The flimsy plastic and the plaque of problems with the WA had turned me off though. My teammate's WA had a plethora or issues from the beginning. I really hope the WE is a solid and durable performer for the price.....

 

I'm gonna keep my eyes glued to this thread for the next few weeks and see if any new information comes out about the WE's performance and durability before I make up my mind.

 

Time to sell off some of the babies to make room......

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So it is indeed confirmed that this thing kicks harder than a WA?

 

According to Jin the kick is not harder than a WA.

 

5) When it comes to actually shooting, this gun is a blast to shoot! The recoil is a wee bit less than that of the Western Arms M4, but such is to be expected due to it's solid full metal construction and steel bolt that likely dampens the recoil somewhat. Still though, the recoil is darn powerful and shakes the bejesus out of your arms when shooting. I highly doubt you could use airsoft grade optics on this gun for very long without them going haywire or just breaking completely. The recoil is strong enough that I'd say only real steel grade optics will be usable on this gun!

 

I'm inclined to take him at his word due to the fact that he has previously owned a WA and is currently one of the few to own the WE.

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still waiting for range tests (100+ foot distances).

 

the barrel seems pretty easy to cut with a dremmel. i may stick in my DBC from my M1014 (450mms after customization). i hope it dont go over 500 too much. i also hope i dont have to install the barrel at all cause this thing is hovering around my field limit for DMs.

 

man i cant wait to get my hands on this thing!

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What I can tell, the bolt stop seems to be the only part that absolutely needs better quality replacement. Other one might be the charging handle, but this one might last for a while. It really seems flimsy and I doubt it will last for years to come. Otherwise this gun really seems one sturdy piece of machinery. The actual bolt and nozzle system seems really professional stuff. Nothing "toyish" about it, like plastic parts. It's the closest thing you get to real firearms without actually owning one. A combination of gas system and a real gun. And shooting this thing is a pure joy. It seems to operate smoothly round after round. Not a single jam or double feed. I've disabled the bolt stop so that shouldn't break with my gun. I'll enable it when I get the steel version.

 

I think we need at least couple of different power restriction sets (for green gas / top gas / propane). One for about 400fps, one for 350 and one for 330. These seems to be quite common power levels, eh? I would love it to work 400fps with CQB barrel and green gas.

 

With the 134a available here in Finland, this gun seems to operate fine (in 21 degree temperature). No problems loading bb's and even the bolt stop works if I enable it. So it definitely has power to push the bolt all the way back. I had no problems taking chrono shots. And firing bursts was fine, although sluggish compared to APS3 gas.

 

So, picture time! Here's some images from last night when I changed the CQB barrel.

 

Hopup Unit

we_m4_disassembly_01.jpg

 

Brass Nozzle

we_m4_disassembly_02.jpg

 

Upper Receiver

we_m4_disassembly_03.jpg

 

Taking out the hopup pins.

we_m4_disassembly_04.jpg

 

That green gel-looking thing is the hopup rubber.

we_m4_disassembly_05.jpg

 

Barrels, side by side.

we_m4_disassembly_06.jpg

 

The hopup unit lined up correctly into the body.

we_m4_disassembly_07.jpg

 

My hammer and bolt stop, still fine and pretty.

we_m4_disassembly_08.jpg

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Does anybody know if G&P even might be coming out with external mods for the future. If it looks like G&P will make M16 conversion parts for this, I'm ordering one. (Bugger it, it's not even legal for me to own one yet. I'll have to send it to somebody else in my club and ask them to enjoy the gun for me for a while :D )

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I'll be watching http://www.gp-web.com for updates on new G&P products but so far there's no indication that they'll be supporting the WE M4. It's really a bit early to tell though, the WE M4 just came out last week. Maybe we'll know more about after market support in a month or so.

 

 

And Lupus, so far I completely agree with you about the only internal parts that could use replacements are the bolt catch and maybe the charging handle. I've had no problems with my charging handle but it is the only part of the gun (and I mean the only part) that feels thin and flimsy.

 

What's really interesting though is that on your WE M4, Lupus, the big round disk that goes around the hopup unit and is secured by a pin to center the barrel system in the upper receiver is black. On mine is a big shiny gold unpainted chunk of solid brass!

Did that big disk on yours feel brass or some other metal?

 

So far all your other internals look just the same as mine though ^_^

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Did that big disk on yours feel brass or some other metal?

Hmmm... It was a rather sturdy feeling piece, so I didn't examine it more closely. Not brass though and that you can see from the scratches. I might guess steel. It was rather heavy and didn't feel like pot metal. But it could be.

Edited by Lupus78
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Okeydokey...

 

I've changed the inner barrel into the CQB barrel. The process was (as Jin told) very easy. The hopup mechanism is incredibly simple and the adjustment seems really precise. There's practically no change it will turn by itself in use. Finally opening the whole thing I got it moving. It had just been screwed too tight. The ring moves on threads back and forth on the brass tube. It was stuck on back position in my case (minimum hop). Turning clockwise it will go forward and increase the hopup. I also added some teflon tape around the inner barrel so it would stay tight inside the outer barrel. It seems rather solid now. I also took some detailed pictures of the whole process of disassembly (and hopup rubber). After that I also took pictures of it in CQB setup. I'll upload all of them tomorrow (now I'm going to sleep...).

 

The results were (with .20g BB):

 

HFC 134a: 113, 103, 110, 108, 107, 105 and 103 m/s

APS3 Gas: 141, 142, 140, 140, 139, 140, 140, 139, 140 m/s OUCH!

 

So only about a 10m/s drop when I changed the CQB barrel (from 2,25 joules to 2 joules). Still WAY too powerful when using the Cybergun APS3 gas. Which is about equal to Green Gas. Good thing is that with the APS3 the results were EXTREMELY consistent. With 134a there was that one drop to 103. Otherwise it was really consistent too. But they were the first shots I fired after assembling the weapon back together.

 

Airsoft Buddy: We REALLY need some ways/parts to drop the velocity (I would need a further 15m/s drop). Maybe a tighter nozzle?

 

Good to see that the production model had a much more stable fps then the "video reviewed" ones from Taiwan. Does anyone have a rate of fire count and how they are effected by different gasses?

 

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Good to see that the production model had a much more stable fps then the "video reviewed" ones from Taiwan. Does anyone have a rate of fire count and how they are effected by different gasses?

I don't have the actual count, but I would estimate that with APS3 mine has been around 750-800rpm and with HFC around 600rpm (more like M60).

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I may have missed something but are AEG barrels compatable with the WE m4A1?

No, they're not. As you should be able to see from the pictures (on this very same page), the barrel end and hopup hole is closer to typical gas gun barrels. Not that it would matter to me, since the barrels that came with the gun seem really good quality. And 6.03mm in my opinion is just perfect for an assault rifle. I'm sure there will be longer aftermarket barrels for people wanting to build up a sniper rifle out of this.

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hey Lupus... can you test fire and chrono your rifle using it outside in the cold with green gas if its not too much trouble... i am curious how it performs then

I've been having the same thought. I could put the gun to our balcony for a while and let it cool down there. Then I'll fire some shots through chrono there and try if full auto works too (and neighbours possibly calling the police). It's about +4 degrees now and it might be even colder when I get to test it.

Edited by Lupus78
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