ZEKE M9 metal conversion built on an HFC.

[hitman]

ZEKE M9 conversion built on an HFC.

 

Most of you will think that I'm off my rocker for even suggesting any type of build up using an HFC anything as a base gun. I thought the same thing until i worked on 2 of the damn things for vipermaster, a member of the Hagibis airsoft group, up in Los Angeles.

 

I guess I should say a few brief words on the donor. It's an all metal m9, but strangely, everything about it is oversized. The frame and the slide are just a hair over normal. When placed side by side with a TM m9, it looks like the Marui's fat younger brother. When you build 1911's professionally, this simply will not do. After much deliberation with Hitman, we decided to use the fundamental goodness of the HFC internals and ditch the fatboy clothing.

 

In a few days, a ZEKE military m9 kit arrived in the mail as well as a Laylax 9 ball guide and spring set, hidakaya cylinder spring, a firefly rocket valve, KM metal m9 sear, and a KM main spring housing stop. Now the fun began. I tore down the hfc m9 and began chucking unneeded parts in the corner of the workshop a la Monster Garage. once I had it down to the frame and internals, I started making measurements and comparing the internal frame to the external ZEKE receiver. It was going to be a tight fit and it would require a lot of careful filing and grinding, but it would work.

 

The ZEKE kit has a lot of flashing left over from the casting process. All this has to be removed and all the high spots along the frame needed to be ground flat and leveled. After all this work was done, I set about mocking up the components to see if it all fit. I immediately ran into problems.

 

The internal frame dropped into the receiver, but the takedown lever did not fit in it's opening. the internal frame hole and the external hole were off by .5mm, enough to make a difference. I broke out the dremel and proceeded to match the internal opening to the external. You have to go easy when you do this type of work. It's not steel, so if you remove too much material, you can't weld in any extra. Once i finished with the dremel, i broke out the full round needle file to make all the surfaces even. The takedown lever now fit and worked as advertised.

 

I completed assembling the receiver and set about building my slide assembly. Everything pretty much slotted neatly into place except for one thing: the slide mounted safety. Since the hfc components were too large, I had to use surplus components from another TM m9. All the performance parts went in and performance tuning began in earnest.

 

The last thing to do was fit the grips. In this case, genuine checkered wood grips from beretta. These are not a direct fit, and work is required to get the internal surface to clear the m9 trigger bar, but the results are worth the work. The gun is now more accurate than a marui m9 as well as more powerful. Since all my work is green gas based, here is the seat of the pants performance. It punches happily thru both sides of a coke can, and will rip the bottom. Sometimes penetrating, but mostly tearing it and leaving a very big smile(joker grin big) at the bottom of the dimpled metal. Sounds powerful enough to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[snowman]

Gorgeous!

 

I've got some of those grips, but they're not currently fitted to anything.

 

Cheers.

[BigAl]

Hey Snowman, have you got anything to fit them on? If not do you want sell em?

[playa]

I'm putting in the order for my Zeke kit now, but do you know of any way to put a decocker on the Marui for full m9 goodness?

[Outlaw of Torn]

That is one beautiful gun. I normally hate M9s, but that is most excellent.