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KJ KP-08 and WE XDM


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KP08_XDM.jpg

 

Review: KJ KP-08 and WE XDM

 

Externals, KJ KP-08:

 

KP08_left.jpg

 

KP08_right.jpg

 

Quality and finish looks and feels very KJ. Meaning, shiny black paint and lack of sharply defined details. All corners and edges are sort of rounded. I must say the casting quality seems to have improved over the years. No casting flaws or pits in the surface, everything looks very smooth.

 

I got the less expensive version with no markings on the slide, because I'm cheap like that.

 

Racking the slide feels and sounds bloody amazing. Crisp and smooth metallic action. Again, very KJ-ish, reminds me a lot of the KJ P14.45 I had once.

 

There is some play between slide and frame, but nothing criminal.

 

The sights are metal, front sight is adjustable. By hand. Needs glue or something.

 

The once piece plastic frame/grip has a rough, stippled texture all over and feels great when gripped.

 

Marui Hi-Capa magazines do fit in this, sort of. At least on mine, if I just inserted a Marui mag without having cocked the hammer or anything, it'd start releasing gas, and the mag didn't lock into place securely. When using Marui mags, it seems the way forward is to lock the slide back, insert mag carefully to make sure it locks into place, then release slide. It then works correctly.

 

KP08_chamber.jpg

 

Nice, deep markings on the chamber.

 

KP08_hammer.jpg

 

Steel hammer. Plastic grip safety.

 

KP08_BAN.jpg

 

My future on Arnie's? Heheh! Heh. :(

 

 

Externals, WE XDM:

 

XDM_left.jpg

 

XDM_right.jpg

 

Sooo, the XDM. When I first learned of the airsoft version, I dismissed it as a palette-swapped Marui Glock. But it grew on me, so here we are.

 

The slide fits very well on the frame, hardly any play at all.

 

XDM_line_vert.jpg

 

Funny vertical mold line on the slide here.

 

XDM_line_under.jpg

 

And a horizontal one crossing it here on the underside. But otherwise the slide and frame look great.

 

XDM_serial_safety.jpg

 

I've always hated the Marui Glock serial plate safety. The XDM has it too, but it's not nearly as ugly as on the Glocks. Also on the Glocks, the safety had a bad habit of moving around if the recoil was too hard, thereby suddenly engaging during shooting. This one seems much firmer, I don't see it moving anywhere by accident.

 

XDM_indicator.jpg

 

The cocked hammer indicator. It works!

 

Also, the magazine release is ambidextrous, and very stiff. Smaller risk of accidental mag drops.

 

Sights are metal, not sure if they're molded into the slide or not.

 

 

Internals, KJ KP-08:

 

KP08_takedown.jpg

 

The KP-08 comes apart in usual 1911 fashion. Steel parts (that I can reach with a magnet) include: Hammer, disconnector, knocker lock, valve knocker, trigger bow, and the spring guide. Yeah. Wow. Like, thanks KJ.

 

When putting the slide back on the frame, you need to manually push the disconnector and knocker lock down, or the rear edge of the slide won't go past them.

 

This gun came with both a normal gas magazine and a CO2 one.

 

The inner barrel was filthy as hell out of the box, I mean the inside surface just covered with drops of grease from end to end. Cleaned it up. I'm Mr. Clean. Except I'm not bald. But hey, give it time.

 

KP08_frame.jpg

 

Here's a look inside the plastic frame. There's actually as much metal in there as your normal Hi-Capa frame, it's just been sleeved in plastic.

 

 

Internals, WE XDM:

 

XDM_takedown.jpg

 

XDM takedown takes some practice, but once you understand it (and RTFM) it's a piece of cake. When reassembling, you may need to jiggle to outer barrel around to get the takedown lever to lock back into place.

 

The magazine's fill valve was leaking out of the box, and when I tried to tighten it, the valve broke in half. Mother of a fruitcager! Fortunately, I'd bought a spare mag (that didn't leak) with the gun, so the review may proceed.

 

Steel parts: apart from screws, springs and pins? None lol. Why am I laughing. :(

 

XDM_barrel_gouge.jpg

 

Have a look at this beautiful, pristine outer barrel. It looks the same on the opposite side. Somebody done something bad to it.

 

XDM_wtf.jpg

 

I think this is the reason. See that big ol' breakage in the spring guide hole? Well, normally when you put a Glock barrel back in the slide, you just drop it in, case closed. On this, the barrel needs to be angled carefully in through that broken gap, or it'll jam against the sides somehow. It seems this is exactly what someone has been wrestling with on this specimen, causing nice gouges in the outer barrel.

 

XDM_guide.jpg

 

Is the spring guide steel? No. Is it hollow? Of course it is. lol.

 

 

Performance:

First some velocity readings, 10 shots using Extreme Precision .20g BBs and Ultrair power gas (90% propane, 10% butane), except for the CO2 magazine, @ ~20ºC. Chrono is an Xcortech X3200.

 

KJ KP-08, gas mag (fps):

335

322

317

318

309

312

308

307

306

310

(max: 335, min: 306, avg: 316.4)

 

Well that's some mediocre consistency.

 

 

KJ KP-08, Marui Hi-Capa 5.1 mag (fps):

281

290

289

289

290

293

292

290

292

294

(max: 294, min: 281, avg: 290)

 

Well that's some much better consistency, but considerably lower power. Recoil felt the same as the KJ gas mag.

 

 

KJ KP-08, CO2 mag (fps):

322

334

306

317

311

321

299

310

313

295

(max: 334, min: 295, avg: 312.8)

 

Holy poor consistency Batman. I can tell you that all the extra pressure of the CO2 goes into the recoil, because it is just fearsome.

 

 

WE XDM (fps):

286

278

286

285

282

289

285

282

284

279

(max: 289, min: 278, avg: 283.6)

 

Pretty good consistency!

 

 

Now for some accuracy testing. Both guns were shot from a Weaver stance, so no bench rest or anything like dat. Targets and counterfeit money were printed out on A4 sheets.

 

For both guns, hop-up was set to minimum for the 5m tests, and then turned up some at 10m.

I only tested with the CO2 mag in the KP-08 because it was the least consistent, so why not test worst case scenario.

 

 

KJ KP-08:

 

KP08.jpg

 

The trigger on this thing is both really good and really annoying. It's good because there's only a fraction of a mm trigger travel, and the break is super clean. And annoying because the trigger itself has a bit of up and down play, and the trigger pull is pretty hard. Coupled with the utterly insane recoil on CO2, the accuracy may suffer a bit. But hey, the groupings don't look that bad.

 

 

WE XDM:

 

XDM.jpg

 

Looks good! A note on the 10m grouping, the bottom hole was the first shot that I took, then walked up to the target to see if I had even hit anything, then walked back and shot the last four rounds. So with a change in stance and stuff, I dunno I'm just making excuses and whatever.

 

Anyway, the trigger pull on this is much better than I expected. Much lighter and cleaner than Marui Glocks and clones.

 

 

Conclusion so far:

 

The KJ KP-08: It looks great, feels great, sounds great, smells great, the parts are great, the price is great, the power is great, the consistency is (not so) great, and the accuracy is (kinda) great. It's great.

 

The WE XDM: Hmm. It didn't blow me away like the HK3P Glock did, but I still like it. It looks fine and it performs fine. It's fine.

 

Still to come: long range testing outdoors, and maybe see if more accuracy can be squeezed out of the KP-08 with Marui Hi-Capa mags.

 

Bye!

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Quite interested if you can improve the consistency of the KP08, I use a KP07 with CO2 exclusively and I love it. Accuracy is okay and range is good with 0.25 ( 330 fps / 0.20 ) and will improve vastly with a TK twist barrel/ Firefly bucking and 0.30.

Truth be told, it's the bang that makes KJW CO2 pistols rock, even more so in CQB ;).

 

Edit: post was quite OT, sorry, let me congratulate you with the unbiased and to-the-point review :)

Edited by Lone_Bullet
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Nice job. Quick, clean and to the point. Was actually considering buying one of these two and I've settled on the KJW. Oh, and I'll be getting the one without the trades as I'm cheap as well (lol).

 

I've a number of KJW's in my collection (as well a TM, KWA and even HFC) and have been very impressed with their quality of machine work and materials. I have two KJW G23's, one which is years old and has thousands of shots, never mind dry fires, through it and it has never given me trouble. Just bought a second one a few months ago.

 

I've heard there can be issues with the rail being somewhat difficult to use with some light systems, have you tried attaching a M3 style light to the pistol?

 

You mentioned the front sight as being movable by hand, are you actually able to remove the sight from the slide? I can see a bit of a problem with that, but as you mentioned, solvable with some lock-tite.

Edited by Wingman
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Lone_Bullet: interesting, I always wanted to try one of them Tony Cosby twisty barrels. Now I might. Thanks for the grats. :)

 

 

Wingman: Thanks. Oh yeah, I'd definitely say you get so much more gun with the KP-08 compared to the WE XDM. Mine was $98 from UNCo for the dual power version, that's just stupendous value.

 

I just tried on a Streamlight M3X on the KP-08. It'll go on there, but it is extremely tight. Seems like a matter of sanding down the stippled finish on the rail a bit.

 

As for the front sight, I just now noticed this:

 

KP08_frontsight.jpg

 

Grub screw in the front sight, so you can lock it down. Brilliant!

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I love the XDM but the we version sucks *albatross* compared to the marui version shot the two of them last skermish session and every thing about the marui was better (except the price of course) the frame and slide on the we version is made from cheap ###### and looks and feels very breakable I would but my money on the plastic marui slide outlasting the we cheap metal slide.

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The KJW's consistency can be improved a LOT by swapping out the hop-up rubber for a TM or PDI one.

 

I really quite like the KP-08, the only thing about it is that it won't fit a Serpa for a M1911 like my Hicapa 5.1 will.

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It did with my KP-06 when i replaced the hop rubber. KJW pistols are the only non TM pistols i'd consider buying. I loved the G23, the P226 (even if the mags were ######) the Hicapa 5.1 and starting to love the KP-06.

 

Good review mate, i was originally intending on getting the KP-08 but not having anywhere local to try out the grip put be off and got the KP06 instead. Might have to add it to my collection anyway :)

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So I dropped in an A+ bucking I had lying around, took some chrono readings with the KJ gas mag. Conditions as in the review, except ambient temp ~22ºC.

 

313

317

308

310

307

309

309

309

307

307

 

Okay. I also noticed I had a few BBs left in the Marui mag from the review, decided to run them through the chrono:

 

312

312

310

311

 

Hmm. Well what can I say, it improved consistency. And power output on the Marui mag? I don't understand.

 

Then some 10m accuracy tests with the A+ bucking and the KJ gas mag, hop turned up to max:

 

KP08_10m_Aplus.jpg

 

Conclusion: I suck at shooting. That is of course unacceptable. Let's try that again:

 

KP08_10m_Aplus_boss.jpg

 

So yeah, changing the bucking really helps, lol.

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Man, your style of review properly makes me chuckle. Gets the facts across 'n all, and I like the lack of speculating 'n suchwhat.

 

Handled a friend's WE XDM on Saturday, and I gotta say I'm well impressed. Paint wears quick on the slide, but in a nice way, and it kicks like a *badgeress*. Assuming nothing breaks in it, it shoots like a TM does 'n all.

 

Does the KJ spit much gas on the first few shots? My 1911 (I suspect a lemony lemon of the lemoniest kind) spewed vapor like some sort of steam vent..

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I got my WE XDM and 2 spare mags last week at the War and Peace show. The two spare mags I bought leaked from the valve on the back of the mag! Luckily some silicone oil mixed in with the gas cured this.

 

I personally bought this over the TM because of it being able to handle green gas better. From what I've heard, the TM was designed to handle 134a and that green gas had a tendancy to blow slides off. I gave the pistol a good clean inside and out and it is shooting as far as my old upgraded TM Glock.

 

Looking at the internals, the piston cup looks exactly the same as the Glock so it should be able to take the silverback O-ring piston heads that I had great experiences with in my old Glock. The stock piston cup was covered in dirt, I cleaned it off and gave it a smearing of grease and this helped a bit. I also washed the hop rubber in warm water with soap to get rid of all the gunk that was in there.

 

One thing I've noticed was that the screws in the hop unit can actually hold the hop in place if you do them up tight enough. I tightend up the screws fully and it took a lot of effort to move the hop dial. I'm hoping this stops the hop moving like it did on my Glock.

 

I'm going to have another go with it tonight now that I've done some more cleaning on it. I'll let you guys know what it's like.

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hwagan: hmm. Ohh I see how it is. You're getting a chuckle out of my flowery tablecloth, are you? Well let me tell you something mate. I like flowers. Is that really so amusing?? Well I'm glad my limp-wristed taste in home decor can spread some bloody joy!!!

 

But thanks. :D

 

The KP-08 does spray a little gas I guess, but not that much. Next time, don't get lemon flavour, they're really not that great. Mine is more like chicken. It's great. :)

 

 

Wild_Wii: cool story bro. :D

 

But really, thanks for the tips, and keep us posted with more info plz. I guess I'll go through the blowback mech too and see if it needs some maintenance. Washing the hop buckings in soap and warm water is always advisable, I usually do that too. But for these reviews I just cleaned the barrels and left the buckings as-is, to document performance in a close to out of the box condition. :)

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hwagan: hmm. Ohh I see how it is. You're getting a chuckle out of my flowery tablecloth, are you? Well let me tell you something mate. I like flowers. Is that really so amusing?? Well I'm glad my limp-wristed taste in home decor can spread some bloody joy!!!

 

But thanks. :D

 

The KP-08 does spray a little gas I guess, but not that much. Next time, don't get lemon flavour, they're really not that great. Mine is more like chicken. It's great. :)

 

 

JOY SPREADING SUCCESS. Still, as flowery tablecloths go, that one's pretty swish. Not too girly or elderly, it's like an acceptable floral pattern. Anyway.

 

When it comes to the gas blurting a bit, I found one of the biggest causes (in my 1911 at least) was the hammer spring, being designed to smack a Co2 valve; Clipping 2-3 coils noticeably reduced the puffs off liquid gas, so if you can find a spare hammer spring, or a stock TM one or something, give it a go, might get some more efficiency out of it.

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I didn't manage to test the XDM out last night, when a lovely young lady invites you out for curry, you don't refuse!

 

I did some plinking in my room (not with the young lass unfortunately, FOREVER ALONE!) and noticed that even rapid fire causes next to no cooldown. I even managed to accidently vent the enitre mags worth of gas and it barely got cold. I'm really impressed with the mag design.

 

Now, providing there are no further temptations tonight, I'll get some more testing in!

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Update: accuracy @ 20m range:

 

 

WE XDM:

 

Notes: the hop-up seemed to be very effective, so I had to turn it down to ~30% and aim quite low. The sights might also be off in elevation. The results:

 

XDM_20m.jpg

 

Not mind-blowing accuracy, but definitely usable. The strong hop-up is also promising for longer range use, I would think? The trigger is also really great for target shooting, a very light trigger with a quick break. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the way this gun is performing.

 

 

KJ KP-08:

 

Notes: here I encountered some serious gas spitting with the KJ gas mag, like hwagan said. Maybe it was the higher ambient temperature outside? I switched to a Marui 5.1 magazine, which didn't seem to vent gas at all. The hop was turned to max, A+ hop bucking still equipped. Point of aim was centre of target. The results:

 

KP08_20m.jpg

 

A stray shot, but otherwise the accuracy at 20m seems servicable. I'm not sure the A+ bucking is helping accuracy any, I'll do further testing with other buckings at a later time. Again, the hard trigger pull was kind of annoying, probably better suited for actual skirmish use.

 

 

Conclusion:

 

Both guns reached 20 metres with fair accuracy, with the XDM displaying some fine performance in stock condition. Can't really complain much. Nope. Not gonna complain.

 

 

Still to come: Further long range testing with the KP-08 using other buckings, maybe also with a weaker hammer spring as hwagan suggested. And skirmish report, duuuuude!

 

 

hwagan: an acceptable floral pattern. lol. :lol:

 

Wild_Xylophone: oh, "curry", is it? That what the kids call it these days? lol. :lol:

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Wild_Xylophone? You nutter! :P Yes it was just a curry, damn friendzone! :(

 

I did some testing last night (finally!) and while I'm happy with the overall performance of the pistol, there are some things that I'm going to need to do some more work on. I'm going to swap out the stock bucking for another one becuase mine will hop shots nicely as long as you don't go mental. Once you start going rapid fire the hop just gives up and drops the shots. I've also had a couple of double feeds. The barrel also needs a clean as it's got full of gunk, probably just excess oil from the clean I gave it the other night.

 

I've got a spare bucking I'll chuck in it tonight and then I'll have another go. As far as everything else goes, the pistol kicks like Chuck Norris, sends a BB quite far and the mags held at least two and a half mags worths of gas! One teeny tiny annoyance (some may find this petty), is that when you slap in a new mag when the slides back, the slide will return without me pressing the slide release. Ok, it stops me from having to worry about it, but it's just a little thing that bugs me.

 

If all goes to plan with other stuff, I might even get a nicer slide for it!

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OK, I had my first skirmish with the pistol on Sunday.

 

While the pistol itself is of excellent quality, the WE mags are absolute gash. The two spare magazine I bought both leak from the flow valve through the top where the gas router is. Trying to get these gas tight so far has proven to be quite a challenge. The flow valves are screwed in stupidly tight and I cannot get them to come out. The one mag I have that holds gas is great though, hold enough gas for over two mags worth of shots.

 

The pistol itself was a joy to shoot, however, I found the ideal weight ammo to use was .3 as anything lower attempted to fly into space. Using .3 ammo the pistol has some tremendous range on it. The maximum range was about that of an upgraded AEG. The slide action remained crisp and smooth throughout the day (well, throughout the games I played until a freak storm drenched me) and the pistol had no issues apart from over hopping BB's.

 

The pistol came out with a lot more power than I was expecting. It came in at 280 FPS on a .25, from what we've seen from our chrono that comes to about 310 FPS on a .2. This was also on a fairly cool magazine as it had just been gassed.

 

I think like most things WE, it's a pistol for people who know how to tinker. If you want a gun that shoots perfectly out of the box, buy the TM. If you have the time and know how, the WE is the way to go. It has a nicer polymer frame, a metal slide and the potential to be a great shooter.

 

Tonight will be a night dedicated to tweaking my XDM, I'm going to my local site for the pistol night but I will mainly be testing out my XDM to see what I can do to get the most from it.

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OK, another update. Tinker night turned into "replace bucking and play" night. A friend of mine gave me a TM (I think) bucking which didn't solve the over hop. It just seems like the hop arm is just too aggressive in it's hoppyness. It settled down over time but was a bit temperamental. I also noticed that there was all manner of ###### in the blowback chamber. I cleaned the piston lid before, but there was still dirt in there.

 

The leaky mags I've now fixed by finally taking the release valve out of the mag and giving it a healthy splodge of silicone grease. I'm tempted to buy a TM mag though to see if there's any difference. The WE mags suffer when they get quite cold, but keep them warm and they are OK. I did have one mag dump it's whole reserve of gas and freeze the blowback chamber, but that's only happened once. I think I need to take my two remaining mags apart and give them some TLC.

 

Another note is that the hop can creep because the screws holding the hop chamber together come loose, I need to get some thread lock and secure them. It's not a major issue hop wise as it's over hopping a .25 with the hop fully off anyway.

 

I've just bought myself a TM plastic slide, barrel and recoil spring set off here so if the XDM hates the cold I have a chance to use it with (hopefully) less issues.

 

More tinkering and cleaning to come! I'll also see if I can see if it takes any other upgrade parts, I think I have a spare TM piston lid somewhere so if that's the right size that means it should take some Glock upgrades at least.

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Thanks for taking the time to make this review! :D The WE XDM caught my interest awhile back and I have owned the KJW KP 08 for about 8 months now. Its taken alot of abuse from me. It's a solid pistol, but you'll be finding that parts will break on you. Issues I've ran into with this pistol is the disconnector breaking, along with the slide stop, magazine catch, and spring guide plug. Of course these can be easily replaced but its still an inconvenience. You'll also be running into problems with the outer barrel. The barrel is two piece and screw onto each other. Over time, the barrel will loosen and cause the gun to jam (though it can be fixed with a little loctite). You'll also find that it's not entirely compatible with TM parts. There's other problems here and there but that can be saved for another day. With all said and done, it's still a solid shooting gun for the price. If I were to rate it... probably be a 7/10.

 

 

Picture of broken parts:

57694d05.jpg

Edited by SimplyEpik
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Yikes! What gas were you using?

 

Same reaction I had! Haha. Well, I have used only green gas/propane with the pistol. I'm not sure if I personally had faulty parts or this can be expected on other guns. Though I have read other's experiences about the disconnector breaking and it is actually sort of common. Not so sure about the other parts but oh well.

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