Pro-arms 72rd hand grenade

[zeaken]

Well recently i had to buy some replacement parts for my ghk kit to get her online so i picked up a few of these grenades from ehobby since they were back in stock.

 

Proarms is known for there plastic m203 shells but no review or feedback seems to exists for there hand grenades. Feeling lucky i picked up a 3 pack for $80 + hk ship.

 

 

initial impressions: upon checking them out they were really need looking, easy to hold and didnt rattle or do weird things. The outside is made out what appears to be an abs plastic. The spoon is made from a plastic nylon for increased durability. As you can see they are slightly taller then the tornado hand grenades.

 

how they work: They are checkered with holes that hold one bb each, at a total of 72 holes this quickly degenerates into a mundane and time consuming task. I do not for see many on field reloads for these puppies. The plunger on the top has a twist top you turn to adjust fps. adjustable fps scares me as no grenade i have ever thrown has been consistant. They are propane powered but i have seen people using c02 on them.

 

Initial test: So being The overzealous person i am i proceeded to try and cram them full of propane and test them right out of the box. None of them worked! They all just filled with gas and then proceeded to hemorage it out in varying degrees of fun. this of course i kinda expected on a grenade that was $30 a piece but it did not mean i was not very sad having three broken grenades out of the box which were not nearly as broken as i feared.

 

 

Kaboom: figuring i needed to know where it was leaking from i took the shell off this is what is underneath that silly plastic shell. The machining work doesn't look bad. Not thinking about the fact that the grenade had nothing holding the firing pin in from making it live i threw more propane in and dropped the innards into a water filled glass. About two seconds later the grenade decided it was done holding back and proceeded to go off inside the glass of water. The result was that my kitchen now had a nice splatter of water all over the ceiling. I took apart the remaining grenades and put them back together and this "unstuck" them and they began to detonate as well but still leaked propane. (sorry kids, no pictures of my water splattered ceiling)

 

The leak: The good news about the leaks is they are all from the same spot. if you can see the metal seal at the top of the cylinder part of the grenade thats where all the propane leaks from. some one didnt think it was needed or got lazy and no o-rings are in place. I plan on locktite for mine if i cant find an o-ring that fits. Its consistent problem and its fixable so the leak issue is not major in my book.

 

Assembly: Here are some pictures of the assembly of the grenade. all of this was taken apart involving no tools other then my hands. this grenade is really easy to rip down.

 

 

 

 

 

external parts: these are the external parts of that reciever all the throwing abuse.

 

The shell free floats when assembled i am not sure why this is but i generally approve

 

base plate

 

sorry its blurry, the spoon needs a metal replacement. i fear its a matter of time before i break it.

 

more to come....

 

[zeaken]

These grenades basically work like an m203 with the variant that they have a timer. The timer appears to work by venting gas out and is not resistance based. When you pull the pin and let the spoon fly the plunger instantly shoots up and will begin hissing gas from the top. The gas let out appears to taper off and then kaboom. I am not great with these things but that leads me to speculate its based on the pressure of the gas which makes for a more consistent timer.

 

Noise level: The detonation of these grenades is clearly audible unlike the tornado grenades which tend to just hiss. In terms of noise i would say it is about on par with an m203 shell. Unless your really lost in the moment you should know when it goes off next to you if you didnt see it land.

 

Consistency: This is the fear and dread of all grenade users. The testing of this is preliminary as the grenades still leak and i am not keeping track with a stop watch. I have not played with the adjust ability of the timers but rather have been more concerned with them working so different grenades have different lengths on them. The good news is that these grenades appear to be very consistent thus far. I have one grenade that is constantly detonating in about 2 seconds and another that is consistently at about 5. If i played with the timers i am sure i can adjust these so they both have an identical fuse length but so far they have succeeded where tornado grenades failed miserably

 

The spread: This is not a stellar part of these grenades. Having bb's on all sides makes sure even if your grenade is have lodged in mud it will still throw some bb's. The bad news is propane is just not powerful enough. With propane only about 50% of the bb's fly out of the casing and they dont have much power to them. I suspect that in the heat of a moment anyone wearing loose clothing or gear would not feel a single bb. The good news is we have grenade radius kills where we are and it is not dependant on the actual bb's. if your looking for a grenade that will leave everyone cringing in a 20ft radius this is not going to be it.

 

customize?: Since these have a future as noise makers more then bb dispensers i became curious as to how much of these you need to operate. the answer is you dont need the external tube at all to make it work. This could possibly lead to new cases which are more durable and better noise makers if you are skilled with tools.

 

 

conclusions: These grenades are not plug and play items. They need work out of the box to function properly. At a cost of $30 per grenade roughly after shipping they are the cheapest reusable grenade on the market but not without its costs. If you can sink the time into fixing the link and want more noise maker then bb dispenser then these grenades can be a wise choice.

 

more to come: I am going to update this once i get some field testing in. its currently below freezing in these parts but i might get some indoor access in the next couple of weeks. I am also going to try and fit some real steel spoons onto it and see what other mods turn out to be helpful for this grenade.

 

 

please post up comments and questions

[Kalifornia]

I have 6 of these. First thing I did after the first one leaked on me.. I took all of them apart and lubed up the O-rings. They now all work fine.

 

After tossing them around a bit in CQB two of them have broken slightly in various places but are still functional.

 

These could be terrific grenades, especially for the cost, so far they are just OK. Timing is a bit tricky (basically you unscrew the top feeder almost all the way to get it to between 2-5s). Spread is better than deep fires but that isnt saying a lot.

 

Reliability has been pretty good so far. Basically this is a jack of all trades, master of none grenade. If the field is playing radius rules instead of having to be hit by the BB then they go up a couple of notches.

 

 

[zeaken]

I have done some more tinkering with these grenades. 2 of them are totally leak free, the third has a ripped o ring and the valve appears to be fubared.

 

for the ones that do work adjusting the timer is tricky because either i get about 2 seconds or i get about 10 seconds. personally i enjoy keeping the fuses low so no one has a chance to get away from these things.

 

when the leaking stopped i am happy to report that all of the bb's fly out except those pressed against the ground.

 

I have not broken anything from tossing them but they are going to be doing some rough concrete tossing this weekend so i will update how they survive the battle. it would be awesome if they made a few more parts from this grenade out of metal like the spoon!

[andy_mace]

0.12g bbs would give a better spread? just an idea