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Inside the APS UAR (you know, that one that could have been a proper AUG A3)


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So i got one of these things from a friend in NY that owed me money. he broke it because he finger banged the *suitcase* out of it in a CQB game. so i took it apart to plan on what modifications im going to do, so i took some pictures along the way. as of right now, this isnt going to be complete, i have to take a couple more pictures to better defign a couple of things.

 

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lol, excuse the advertisement, i don't have a full gun photo of it on my phone or anything, just the photos we took for the shops facebook.

 

I had neglected to take pictures of taking the gearbox out, but its pretty simple and i think i can describe it well. i will however take pics once i start putting the gearbox back into it.

1: remove the flash hider. quite the PITA for amerisofters and the glued FH. but i was able to unscrew the grub screw and heat up the FH with a heat gun without damaging the plastic flanges on the front of the upper receiver. i used a pipe wrench to unscrew it without damage, though i didn't care if i did.

2: remove the 2 body pins (the middle and front ones) that hold on the upper receiver and jimmy the upper forward until it stops. at this point, the upper receiver tabs are hitting the internal selector mech, so be careful. they look just as fragile as any M4 upper receiver tabs. you have to lift and flex the upper receiver over the selector mech in order to slide the upper off.

3: remove the rear pin and take off the butt pad, as if you were going to change out the spring.

4: look at the front of the gearbox where it meets the hop up unit. there is a single screw holding the 2 together. remove that screw and the gearbox is free to slide out of the back of the lower receiver. the wiring comes with it to, so be careful with it. though, there is plenty of room.

 

with the gearbox out, you can see the internals are very similar to their AK internals with a modified safety selector that interacts inside the gearbox. but the whole thing looks more sharp and blockey. i have worked on APS AKs in the past, they didn't look as nice. but i'm willing to bet that most spare external gearbox parts from other brands wont work well with this box.

 

anyway, onto some pics:

 

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so there's the whole of the gearbox. i had taken off the selector cams before taking the picture, but you can see them separately. the whole things is just an AK gearbox. the selector switch interacts with the selector system inside the body. the safety cam literally does nothing, they went so far as to grind off the trigger blocking safety off if it, why not just omit it all together? the body has a safety bar in it that blocks the trigger you actually pull, so this on gearbox safety is totally useless anyway.

now, before i move over to the internals and stuff of the gearbox, i'm going to shift focus to the body, barrel and hop up.

 

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the body has a good bit of flex to it with the gearbox out, so be careful. also, you can see some glue on the bottom of my body, i'm sure that's factory and says a little bit about APS's policies about QC. although, that is only one of 4 instances of halfassary i have seen dealing with this gun so far. the glue, the safety cam and something to do with the spring guide and bushings that ill get to in a little bit. but i will say that, overall, i like the design, ill elaborate that the end.

 

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now here is a pretty cool feature. i took 2 pictures of the bar that links the triggers together so you can see it. the first pic is of the trigger pulled, and the second is of the trigger at rest. the system used is nice and that screw you see behind the trigger bar in both pics is a pre travel adjustment screw for the trigger. in this location, it works well for taking the uptake out of the trigger pull (and with a BTC Chimera, the creep too). overall, the system as tight tolerances in mine, so the trigger has no jiggle and with the the screw adjusted properly, it will feel like a normal carbine trigger rather than a squishy bullpup trigger. all the artifacts and stuff in the pics are the globs of grease in the body. this thing will be a dirt trap after a while. i am not looking forward to taking it to a sandy climate.

 

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here you can see the hop up unit as is sits in the body. there is no short cut to removing it other that taking apart the whole barrel bracket system. its not hard, but with that out, parts of the mag catch system and selector system can jimmy free of the body, so don't shake the gun around or actuate the trigger/selectors/mag catches while you have the barrel system out of the body. to remove the barrel bracket, you can see some of the screws in the pics above. there are 3 sets of screws you can see and a 4th set below the barrel nut. you'll want to remove the set furthest to the left of the picture and the set under the barrel nut. then you'll be able to lift out the bracket. other than the screws themselves, you shouldn't expect anything to jump out at you. the safety bar is also attached to this bracket and its under spring tension, so expect it to fall under pressure. it wont fall off, its pinned to the bracket, but just pay attention to the spring at the back of the bar (where its pinned) so that you do not warp it when you reset the bar in place during re-installation.

 

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here you can see the 2 screws at the bront of the bracket, under the barrel nut and the safety bar dangling off the front of the bracket. you can also see that i had already removed the screws holding down the hop up unit and the bracket sitting on the front of the unit (also a useless piece as the outer barrel needs to be removed in order to take out the chamber. no sense in this redundancy)

 

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from there, you remove the hop up adjustment nubs and levers and that bracket to the front of the chamber. then, you need to unscrew the barrel nut (its only hand tightened, if not, there are flat faces you can use an adjustable wrench on) and remove the outer barrel. it is standard aeg M4 style and metal, compared to the bracket and barrel nut that's made of polymer. i wouldn't worry about the polymer though, its a beefy system and the upper receiver supports the barrel all the way around. i wouldn't expect and breakages. also, don't worry about torquing the barrel nut down passed hand tight. the polymer threads do slide over each other easily, so its pretty resistant to vibration. also, a note on barrel length, the stock outer barrel is 10.5 inches long, but the hop up unit sits far enough back to house a 363mm barrel. though, the gun comes with a 455mm (or around) barrel. a 14.5 inch barrel will hide a 455mm barrel, that's what i plan on doing in the end. the barrel i'm putting in temporarily is a KM Head 300mm barrel.

 

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your probably still staring at that last picture, i know i am, but ill get to it in a bit.

as you can see now, its a very beefy looking, but nonetheless, AK hop up unit. its still proprietary in the sense that it screws into the gearbox on final assembly, but you may still be able to get like a pro win in there. i'm not too concerned with it though, as the unit is sized just fine. in the 2nd pic you can see the stock barrel on the right and a KM Head 6.04 on the left. i have had problems in the past with APS's tolerances in the hop up/nozzle area, but the UAR doesn't seam to have these issues. the UAR still has APS's signature short bucking, but i had no trouble switching the barrel and bucking out, the c clip snapped back in just fine and i have no wobble. APS's bucking has short lips, so i'm not sure that my new bucking will interfere with BB movement or correctly engage with the nozzle, but i'll just have to wait and see.

now, that hop up arm. it looks like APS was going for a built in concave spacer, but someone *fruitcage*ed up and made it flat tipped and too short. when together, the hop up barely engages when all the way on, but there's not enough room for a nub, not that there's anything to hold a nub in place. i plan to install an R-Hop, so it doesn't really matter. it looks like a good place to modify and glue a large flat nub to.

PS: yes, the old bucking on my UAR has a broken lip, that's why i'm replacing it now. i would normally use a madbull blue bucking.

 

ok, now back to the gearbox and time to dig into the internals.

 

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so, you can see from these set of pics that it has the standard affair of chinese steel and polycarb internals. the piston has no bearings, but the spring guide does, so its all good. nothing really screams replace me except one thing and with a proper adjustments, the gun should run for quite a while before it's overhaul time. everything is very greasy and i have to mention a few things next about modifications that should be made and others that may worry some. also, i'm not sure why the cylinder head is already so dirty. i guess the system really likes to suck in dust and dirt.

 

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the first thing that worried me was the cylinder head. it has really thick walls and i was afraid i wouldn't be able to replace it. in past APS rifles, the nozzles and cylinder heads were proprietary. but in this case, i could sit a standard JG V2 cylinder head in there and the nozzle fit on it just fine, so replacing the cylinder head with an aftermarket aluminum one with multiple o'rings will be completely possible.

 

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here you can clearly see the sector gear. the only thing i want to talk about is the sector delayer chip. on the most recent APS guns, its made of hardened steel. the problem is that its rough and acts like sand paper on the tappet plate. i have seen the damage these APS delayer chips can do to tappet plates. so, if you don't what your tappet plat to pre maturely wear, remove this guys delayer chip. the gun doesn't cycle fast enough to need one anyway. good new is though that its a standard AK tappet plate.

 

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here's something that really bothered me though. its just a CQ issue with mine, but a couple of my bushings weren't seated completely correctly as you can see with my sector gear bushing on the right side of my gearbox shell. they are not particularly good though, so replacing them is the only things id replace OOTB. they are made of aluminum and already had a good amount of wear when i received the gun, despite God's *seamen* load of lube in the gearbox.

 

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now we have the stock spring and spring guide. the spring was like that when i removed it from the gearbox. i am not sure if my friend in NY cut the spring (improperly) or if the spring broke, but i cannot find the other part of the spring that came off, so i'm inclined to think he cut it in order to get it shooting under 350 for his local fields in long island. i have heard that it shoots about 365 normally with the stock spring.

the spring guide is nice IMHO. it has a steal base and internal shaft but the external shaft is polycarb. it has bearings and i'm not sure whats up with the 4 wings. i mentioned something wrong with the spring guide before, and here's whats up. its threaded for a screw, but there's non to keep it from moving. usually, with ARES style removable spring guides, there's a large flat head screw that would pin the spring guide to the back of the gearbox, there is no such screw in this gun and that worries me. i thought maybe my friend forgot to re-install it, but promo pics of the gearbox show that the gun just doesn't come with one. this can cause premature wear to the polymer shaft of the spring guide and possibly kink the spring while firing. i am going to add a screw back there, but i may be worried about nothing. there are plenty of gearboxes out there that don't affix the spring guide to the back wall.

 

anyway, that's all i got so far. if you want to follow the links back to my PB account, you can see a couple extra pics about how the selector switch system works, i just don't feel like talking about it.

overall, the faults i see with the gun are all solvable and you can do a lot with this platform. i'm very happy i own one and cant wait to finish upgrading it. definitely going to get a chimera in it and replace all the internals with quality stuff. the only thing i can forgive them for not making a proper AUG A3 is that they chose to keep a normal trigger and selector system. the overall design is very smart. thank you APS for the innovation.

 

im going to add my upgrades and modifications to this thread in the future. the first thing i'm going to do before i finish getting it back together is to modify the mag well to use MAG midcaps since that's all i got.

 

PS: someone please buy my DG AK so i can put some money towards this gun.

Edited by crackisbad
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Just thought id chime in again, managing to get 29rps with an SHS highspeed on the stock gears (only dropped one shim) and a 9.6 1500.

And i think the funny shaped sector chip is causing the feeding issues, so im going to swap it over with a round one tomorrow

Edit: theres meant to be a nub in there... Hmmm... Lol. Also, i cut the top of the mags to fit but im cosidering removing the spring loaded magwell bit to allow all midcaps to fit... Whats your thoughts on that?

Edited by Im going space
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Thanks for the shoutout to my review. The only other thing to note, which I mentioned in the review, is that some midcaps still don't feed properly after opening up the magwell slot, due to them not being held high enough up against the hop-up unit. How I fixed this temporarily was to add some tape in the top of the magazine's mag catch hole to bring it a little higher into the gun. I'm experimenting with adding some plastic onto the mag catch itself so that you don't have to mod your mags. 

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Cool, I'll try out a few things along those lines and see if it helps. Watch out next time you dry fire that gun, you've got a BB in the chamber ;)

 

EDIT: Just tried it out using my go-to airsoft gap filler, Velcro. I tested out a few different set-ups, and was pretty pleased with the results. I still had a few mags (one G&P worked, one didn't, MAG plastic still fed most of the time) that didn't want to feed reliably, even if I added enough material that the mag wouldn't even click in, but overall, it was a big improvement for most mags. I'll add this as a possible solution to the review, thanks for the suggestion!

Edited by booligan
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the thing is, the design of the gun doesnt even need the middle body pin. the rear of the upper has a tab that sits under a pert slotted into the lower reciever. the upper has to be slid off the front, so only the front pin is neccissary. hell, cutting off those reciever tabs makes the gun easier to take down.

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