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Got my HFC/WE/Armotech HiCapa last week. Got home last night and finally got around to looking at it.

 

The box is a totally unbranded brown cardboard box which is kinda convenient for anybody who's considering flogging these for themselves.

 

Anyway, Snowman said (quite rightly) that the grip safety wasn't working which did disappoint me slightly.

I shot off a couple of mags with it. It DOES have a nice enough kick but the recoil spring is pretty soft. The slide wallops back pretty fast (on green) but the return cycle is slow enough that you can actually watch the slide move forward again.

It's not hideously slow but it's the slowest return of any gun I have.

 

The slide locks back very solidly so it seems like the gun might benefit from a harder recoil spring.

I suppose if you were running the gun on CO2 then a much stronger recoil spring could be fitted which would make the cycling much faster. I'd guess that the current spring is in so that the gun DOES lock-back reliably on gas.

 

The other thing is that it's damned fiddly to get the recoil spring out so you might struggle to actually fit a stronger recoil spring.

 

I removed the hammer spring housing and found that moving the grip safety an extra 1mm (if that) backwards allowed it to engage.

I filed a bit off the tab which holds the grip safety in place behind the hammer spring housing, reassembled the gun and found that the grip safety now works perfectly. 5 minute fix.

 

Next, a couple of observations and questions...

 

Firstly, if you cock the hammer with your thumb the gun does NOT fire. The hammer drops but no gas is discharged. You need to actually rack the slide before the gun will fire.

On the one hand, this is a bit of a PITA. I often cock my M190 then drop the mag, lower the hammer, reinsert the mag and then holster the gun. This means the gun is loaded but with the hammer down. Safe.

The Hicapa seems to require that you either leave the gun totally unloaded OR that you leave it loaded and cocked.

I dunno. For some reason this doesn't bother me with a glock but, with a gun that has a hammer I like to be able to decock it if I want.

On the other hand, it's kind of interesting to think that there must be some rather clever engineering going on inside the gun so that it only discharges gas after the slide has been racked. You'll never find yourself firing on an empty chamber as long as there's BBs in the mag.

 

Finally, I can't see an easy way to field strip the gun.

 

I got as far as removing the slide then removing the spring guide and spring but, with those parts removed, the barrel won't drop far enough to clear the GBB chamber.

It looks, to me, like you'll need to undo the hex-screw which secures the GBB chamber before you can remove the outer barrel.

 

Is this normal for a Marui HiCapa?

 

Beyond that, it is a very nice gun. Bit rattley but nothing major. Quite impressive. Especially since it's the cheapest gun I've ever bought. ;)

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Got my HFC/WE/Armotech HiCapa last week. Got home last night and finally got around to looking at it.

 

The box is a totally unbranded brown cardboard box which is kinda convenient for anybody who's considering flogging these for themselves.

 

Anyway, Snowman said (quite rightly) that the grip safety wasn't working which did disappoint me slightly.

I shot off a couple of mags with it. It DOES have a nice enough kick but the recoil spring is pretty soft. The slide wallops back pretty fast (on green) but the return cycle is slow enough that you can actually watch the slide move forward again.

It's not hideously slow but it's the slowest return of any gun I have.

 

The slide locks back very solidly so it seems like the gun might benefit from a harder recoil spring.

I suppose if you were running the gun on CO2 then a much stronger recoil spring could be fitted which would make the cycling much faster. I'd guess that the current spring is in so that the gun DOES lock-back reliably on gas.

 

The other thing is that it's damned fiddly to get the recoil spring out so you might struggle to actually fit a stronger recoil spring.

 

I removed the hammer spring housing and found that moving the grip safety an extra 1mm (if that) backwards allowed it to engage.

I filed a bit off the tab which holds the grip safety in place behind the hammer spring housing, reassembled the gun and found that the grip safety now works perfectly. 5 minute fix.

 

Next, a couple of observations and questions...

 

Firstly, if you cock the hammer with your thumb the gun does NOT fire. The hammer drops but no gas is discharged. You need to actually rack the slide before the gun will fire.

On the one hand, this is a bit of a PITA. I often cock my M190 then drop the mag, lower the hammer, reinsert the mag and then holster the gun. This means the gun is loaded but with the hammer down. Safe.

The Hicapa seems to require that you either leave the gun totally unloaded OR that you leave it loaded and cocked.

I dunno. For some reason this doesn't bother me with a glock but, with a gun that has a hammer I like to be able to decock it if I want.

On the other hand, it's kind of interesting to think that there must be some rather clever engineering going on inside the gun so that it only discharges gas after the slide has been racked. You'll never find yourself firing on an empty chamber as long as there's BBs in the mag.

 

Finally, I can't see an easy way to field strip the gun.

 

I got as far as removing the slide then removing the spring guide and spring but, with those parts removed, the barrel won't drop far enough to clear the GBB chamber.

It looks, to me, like you'll need to undo the hex-screw which secures the GBB chamber before you can remove the outer barrel.

 

Is this normal for a Marui HiCapa?

 

Beyond that, it is a very nice gun. Bit rattley but nothing major. Quite impressive. Especially since it's the cheapest gun I've ever bought. ;)

Sounds like a decent gun but shouldnt this be in the readers review section. Are the mauri hi-capa parts and mags interchangable? But any way +1

 

 

:Dr_Evil:

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TM Hi Capa field stips very easily, no screws need be removed. Only thing I had to undo when I put a metal slide on mine was the screw at the back securing the blowback mech to the slide. Don't suppose you've got a TM Hi Capa to compare it to? Cos I've put a metal slide on mine and... goddamn, that's good! :D But the full metal copy was kinda disappointing.

 

Oh, what's the gas efficiency like?

 

:zorro:

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TM Hi Capa field stips very easily, no screws need be removed. Only thing I had to undo when I put a metal slide on mine was the screw at the back securing the blowback mech to the slide. Don't suppose you've got a TM Hi Capa to compare it to? Cos I've put a metal slide on mine and... goddamn, that's good! :D But the full metal copy was kinda disappointing.

 

Oh, what's the gas efficiency like?

 

:zorro:

I'll take some pics of my slide later on to show you what I mean.

 

You're saying that with a Marui HiCapa you can remove the spring guide, recail spring and guide-bush and the outer barel will then drop out?

 

Given that this is supposed to be a copy of a Marui gun I can't see how this could be so different. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong?

 

One thing: If a Marui HiCapa owner could scan the manual I'd appreciate it. This gun has absolutely no, nada, zero, zip instructions with it at all.

 

Anyway, this isn't rearlly a review of the gun. I just wanted to let people know that the non-functional grip-safety thing is fixable and ask a couple of questions as well.

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I'll try and dig my instructions out at some point. You do know the barrel drops out the front of the slide? Probably a dumb question, but I'd feel even dumber if you didn't know, and I didn't ask.

 

Edit ~ I agree, this isn't a review. In it's truest sense, this is general discussion about a specific gun. :)

 

:zorro:

Edited by Sledge
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I'll try and dig my instructions out at some point. You do know the barrel drops out the front of the slide? Probably a dumb question, but I'd feel even dumber if you didn't know, and I didn't ask.

It does? :mellow:

 

*wanders off to check*

 

Whaddayaknow!

 

Though it pains me to do so, I suppose I'd better +ve rep you for this info. <_<

Edited by Hissing Sid
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Incidentally, buying this HiCapa has satisfied my desire to own some kind of .45 without causing me to spend a fortune on a WA gun.

 

I used to own a real Colt 1911 years ago and I found it a bit, I dunno, just wrong for me. You can't operate the slide release or mag release without adjusting your hold on the gun and you can't decock the hammer easily because of the grip safety.

I also recall thinking that the guns proportions were kinda clumsy. It was too long and the slide was kinda narrow and spindly.

 

I flogged it and bought a SIG P228 and never looked back.

 

Must admit, I still think all of the above criticisms still apply.

Funny thing is that the IPSC world seems hell-bent on making custom 1911 race-guns which address all the faults that the standard 1911 has.

 

Why don't they just give up on the 1911 and move to a gun which doesn't have all those faults to begin with?

 

Answer: Cos guys like to tinker with stuff. A standard .45 USP wouldn't have as much cred as a 1911 with $1000 of bolt-ons. It's the same thing that causes people to ride around on Harleys when they could buy a Honda which'd do the same job much better.

 

THAT's the only reason the 1911 is still around.

 

Ahem...

 

Meanwhile, back on the topic of the HFC HiCapa...

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Calm down, Sid.  When you talk about a gun in such detail covering all aspects of it, it might as well be labeled a review.  What's the difference between a review of a gun and someone just talking extensively about how it feels and how it performs anyways? ;)

So, giving too much detail and giving people something interesting to read now relegates a thread to somewhere that I won't get MY questions answered or create any discussion of the subject?

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Well, this thread has enough information that will benefit people who is doing research on the metal hi-capa. Over time, the general discussion section gets so crowded, and this thread may be buried under thousands other threads, but the reader's review section is much cleaner for people to look through and find this info. However, if you feel that a thread posted in the reader's review section receives less attention than a thread posted in the general discussion, and hence, your questions are less likely to be answered, I can understand that, and will move this back to the general discussion area.

 

Looks like somebody already beat me to it. :)

Edited by Shao14
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Cheers for the info Sid. However, I have noticed a few things that are different to my experiences so in the interest of having all the facts, I thought I'd illustrate where mine is different...

 

 

The box is a totally unbranded brown cardboard box which is kinda convenient for anybody who's considering flogging these for themselves.

 

My box does have writing on it, but doesn't state a specific manufacturer like WE/HFC/Armotech, etc... Just says Hi-Capa 5.1 and some other texts. Is this what you meant by "unbranded" or is yours totally blank?

 

 

 

Anyway, Snowman said (quite rightly) that the grip safety wasn't working which did disappoint me slightly.

 

Sounds like yours was either badly assembled at the factory, or it was stripped afterwards and not put back together properly. My grip safety worked fine from day one and from your description, it sounds like alignment was the only problem stopping yours from functioning.

 

 

 

The slide locks back very solidly so it seems like the gun might benefit from a harder recoil spring.

I suppose if you were running the gun on CO2 then a much stronger recoil spring could be fitted which would make the cycling much faster. I'd guess that the current spring is in so that the gun DOES lock-back reliably on gas.

 

I tried a harder recoil spring on mine (The Guarder 150% recoil spring) and that made things a lot worse. Recoil was slower and the slide didn't lock back after the last round fired.

 

Like you, I believe that this gun was intended for a stronger gas than green.

 

 

 

The other thing is that it's damned fiddly to get the recoil spring out so you might struggle to actually fit a stronger recoil spring.

 

It is a bit of a pain, but gets very easy with practice. Getting the inner barrel out of the outer barrel is the tricky bit ;)

 

 

 

I removed the hammer spring housing and found that moving the grip safety an extra 1mm (if that) backwards allowed it to engage.

I filed a bit off the tab which holds the grip safety in place behind the hammer spring housing, reassembled the gun and found that the grip safety now works perfectly. 5 minute fix.

 

Yup, definitely sounds like it was just poorly aligned the last time it was assembled.

 

It is well worth noting though, that if you have removed the frame from the grip, remove the hammer spring (rear base of the grip) before reassembling frame and grip. Trying to put the frame and grip back together with the hammer spring already in place is VERY VERY fiddly. I have lost many hours of my time trying to reassemble the gun before I discovered this trick, so I thought it would be worth pointing out ;)

 

 

Hope some of this helps :)

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Couldn't have been misaligned. The tab which sticks down from the bottom of the grip safety, and wedges behind the hammer spring housing, was too thick.

 

With the grip safety tab pulled back hard up against the spring housing the gun would still shoot.

After I filed some of the thickness off this tab I found that the grip safety worked.

 

TBH, I found that it is still possible to pull through it though so I've also now filed a small amount off the top of the spring housing.

 

All in all these mods mean that the grip safety is probably sitting about 1.5mm further back than it was and now the grip-safety is rock-solid.

 

I took the frame to bits as well and I DID notice that there were burrs on all the cast bits of the hammer assembly. In an ideal world I would have taken the hammer mechanism to bits and filed all the lumps and burrs off the various surfaces but 1) the mod to the grip safety worked fine and 2) the hammer mechanism seems to be very complex for a single-action gun.

 

Only other thing that's bugging me now is the tacky paint on the outer barrel. I'm seriously considering bunging it in a lathe and running a bit of emery cloth up and down it to give it a pukka "spun" finish.

 

Oh, and the box DOES have a copy of the same "OPS MRP CAL .45" trades and some stuff like "HiCapa super accuracy" as well. Just no brand names.

 

Mine seems to lock back securely enough that the recoil spring might be improved slightly but I dunno if it'd be worth the effort.

TBH, I'd start by using the standard spring with a spacer of some sort at the rear end rather than fit a harder spring.

 

To get the inner barrel out do you need to undo that tiny screw and remove the piddling little bit of black plastic or is there another way?

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Anyone chrono'd this on something stronger?

 

:zorro:

Despite all the talk of CO2 usage, I've yet to actually see a CO2 mag available anywhere.

Must admit, though, I haven't looked that hard.

 

Thing is, the recoil wouldn't be improved by running it on CO2 as is. It's the return stroke that's slow.

You'd need to fit a stronger spring and THEN run it on CO2 to make it cycle properly.

 

Don't get me wrong. I reckon it's a decent gun. If somebody gave me a £500 full-metal WA Para I think I'd still prefer my G17. I figured I ought to have a .45 of some sort and I like metal guns. This fits the bill perfectly without costing a fortune.

 

Check back later for full-metal DE hardkick. Parts on the way. Oh yeah!

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Not sure. Haven't found the need to remove the inner barrel yet. From the looks of it, I would imagine so though ;)

 

Incidentally, I found that cutting a small amount off the hammer spring has improved the locking-back of the slide, but only a bit. Probably not worth bothering with for most people though.

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S'funny, yet again I find myself forced to say that nothing I've yet seen comes close to my G19.

 

To use the medium of phonetics to make my point...

 

This HiCapa Kinda goes Blat (gun fires), Clack (slide hits rearward position), Shhhclunk (slide returns forward).

 

My G19 just goes "BLAT!" and it's ready to shoot again.

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I suppose the most important question is: would you recommend this gun to others?

 

:zorro:

Dammit! You keep making me double post. :P

 

Dunno.

 

Not sure I'd recommend any HiCapa. They're something of a paradox. People who are real .45 lovers won't want it cos it's not a real gun. People who truly just want a practical skirmish gun would be better off with a G19.

 

It's all about choice.

 

I must admit, I reckon I'd probably choose to put something else in my holster for most skirmishes.

That's not as damning as it sounds though. I mean, you can only ever shoot one rifle or one pistol but that doesn't stop us all buying sackfuls of guns, does it? :)

 

It's a nice, cheap gun. No more, no less.

 

In fact, It's VERY well made. It's actually more of a looker than a shooter.

 

Which reminds me, somebody asked about the sights earlier. They're cast into the slide, even though they look like they'r in a dovetail. The rear sight looks like it's adjustable but I haven't tried to twiddle it yet.

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Thing that's putting me off, is it sounds like its going to need tweaking to get it to work, whereas the TM is great out of the box. Then again, it's full metal for the same price. It's the KJW thing all over again: guaranteed out of the box shootability, or full metal with quirks?

 

Perhaps what I should have asked was: would you recommend it someone who wanted a 1911/p14 style pistol, given the alternatives (WA, KJ P14, TM Hi Capa)? From what I've seen of it, I wouldn't.

 

:zorro:

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Well...

 

I've only played with a mates metal KJW P14.45 for a short while so I dunno if it has any quirks but I think, in all honesty, I'd prefer it to any HiCapa.

At least the P14 looks like a combat weapon. The HiCapa looks too much like a race-gun for me.

 

With hindsight I should have got a P14 instead of this but, at the time I bought it, nobody else had one so I thought I'd get it just to be "different".

 

[edit]

Don't want to sound too negative about the HFC HiCapa. It's a good gun and, as I say, it's removed any urge to buy a WA 1911 and then spend a fortune on metal bits for it. I like it but it's just not my usual style. It's a bit too fancy for me really.

Edited by Hissing Sid
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