M60VN A&K is out...

[Sleeper001]

To use the quick spring change feature without removeing the gearbox requires a little dremelling and taking off the stock. This will work on both the M60vn & the mk43. On the Mk43, the stock is held by just a U shaped wedge that drops in from the top, once removed the stock will slide right off the back. If you look down the square hole at the rear of the body, you'll see the round spring guide plug, and four little screw ends poking out. That's the route the spring will use, so it has to be cleaned up and rounded out a bit. After thread locking the four small screws in place, I started with a course sanding drum on my dremel and ground them flush. I cleaned up the spring guide plug a bit by rounding off the ends to help it slide within the channel (btw, now is a good time to upgrade that spring guide to a ball bearing, just remove the allen bolt in back and replace with a ver 2/3, but you might have to reshape the tabs a bit). Then using the plug to test fit, slowly started to dremel down the center of each side within the channel till the plug passed all the way through. Once cleaned up and reassembled, you'll be able to swap out springs in under a minute. The only tool you'll need is a long screwdriver or dowel to push the plug through and compress the spring.

 

A&K have since had a press release that they have relocated and set up shop in Hong Kong, and are up and running on their M60s and SVD. So hopfully spares will be available. I still haven't figured out what kind of tappet plate it uses, and had to cut down a Pomethius SOPMOD air nozzle to get something that worked. I also have to find a better hop-up unit for it.

 

The gearbox is massive and very robust, but required a lot of work to upgrade. The 8mm ball bearing bushings were press from the outside to fit snugly against the gears, in leu of properly shimming it, hard to explain, but after I had fully reseated them, I had up to 1.5mm of gap to re-shim. The motor cage area needed extensive sanding and polishing to be able to fit a Systema Magnum Motor in. Additionally, I had to polish out a lot of burrs and mold lines that were rubbing against the gears and tappet plate. However, all that work has paid off (and a host of other upgrades), because I now run a M150 spring in it and am not afraid of holding the trigger for proper surpression fire. The gearbox is an excellent design, and very user friendly for maintenace and inspection.

 

There were a few intial issues with the box mag. First off being the poor placement of the on-off switch, everytime I ran with the gun, my battery would shift in the pouch and switch the winder off. This was easily solve with a piece of duct tape. Second, if you don't use a full size 10.8v battery in the pouch, it tends to sag, and when it does , the metal lip of the pouch holder can work it's way into the feed tube coil and stop the flow of BBs. I solved this by centering the clear plastic tube over the lip then heat shrink covered the whole tube. I love the fact that the mag draws its power from the gun and only winds when the trigger is pulled.

 

Overall, I am very pleased with my A&K mk43. With a bit of elbow grease and a few choice upgrade parts, she has become a very reliable AEG, that can do what her real steel counterpart was designed to do, that is, lay down massive amounts of supression fire. My biggest gripe has been that there was not one tight screw on it, every one of them took minimal effort to loosen, some even were only finger tight, invest in some threadlock, and be sure to inspect them thoroughly before you spend too much time on the field.

[Ming]

Anyone know if there are any UK or European retailers with this in stock at the moment?

[hayabusa46]

About one or two months ago A&K took pre-orders for them both M60 and Vn, so soon those should be back in stock.

[hayabusa46]

Told ya' http://arniesairsoft.co.uk/news2/15836

[Ming]

Told ya' http://arniesairsoft.co.uk/news2/15836

 

Great news, thanks!

[hymer]

Anyone know any retailer who has it instock?