How to Repair an Airsoft Gun

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Chad Boone, I am with Mantis Airsoft located in Lawrenceville, Georgia. I have been involved in Airsoft for two and a half years as a player. I'm an Airsoft tech, which means I work on guns, upgrade guns, fix guns. I've been doing that for about two years professionally. I also design operations, and run those around the southeastern area. Today I am going to be showing you how to repair your mechbox in an Airsoft gun. We are going to be going over a version two mechbox. There are other versions the closest one to this is probably a version three. This will show you what is in the mechbox, what can go wrong, how to fix it, what to look for. So we will go ahead and get started with that. The first thing we want to do once you have your mechbox released from the body of the gun you are going to see on the version two four screws across the top, front, midway, the bottom, and the back. Now depending on the model mechbox that you have you might have two down here so you want to look for that. You need to take those screws out. The one thing to keep in mind as you are removing these screws is this box is under pressure so there is tension inside the box, there is the potential that it could suddenly pop open on you. So you want to keep your hand on it, and make sure that shell doesn't separate. Typically what I do is I will leave this screw in, and one of these screws in they will be the last ones I take out. Just so I don't have to hold the box down the whole time taking these screws out. Now before you go to open your shell one thing you want to look for is to see whether the mechbox is loaded or not. And what I mean by loaded is sometimes the spring will half compress. This is not loaded, because all I can see in this window is spring. If it were loaded you would see the piston back here, which means you have got the spring compressed further there is a lot more pressure inside the box. You can still open it, but you are running into a little bit more risk when you do so. If this happens put the lower receiver back on. Typically you can see this before you take the lower receiver off. Put it in single fire, hook up a battery, and fire it in single a couple of times, and that should reset this spring. We've got all the others screws out except for our last two. At this point we want to kind of hold pressure down. Once we get this apart, and get the screws out we are going to want to open it up. What you need that will help greatly in this is either a small screwdriver or this, which is simply a nail set. You can get them in any hardware store. You can use this to open the mechbox, which you will see in just a moment. You can also use this to take body pins out so it's kind of a multi-use tool there. So pull these last two screws out. Make sure you put them in a safe place so they don't get lost. We are ready to crack the shell. What you want to do is you want to take your screwdriver or your nail set or whatever you choose to use, on the back you see there is a hole here this is where the screw comes in, and holds the spring guide straight. Well being that is the spring guide it gives you control of the spring. You are just going to stick that inside the hole there, and keep your hand on it. That way you can control the spring so it doesn't pop out when you crack the box open. Now when you open this it is probably going to pop. Things are going to shift around. Don't let that scare you, it is kind of a sudden thing, but it's normal. Nothing is breaking, and nothing is going to spring out as long as you have control. Rest your palm on the front part of the box, and on the cylinder here it is going to keep it down where it needs to be. Grab the underside and the topside of the box, you just kind of work it loose, and you will see it is starting to crack open there. I am going to open that far enough to where I can get the spring guide out, and release the pressure. Now the box is not under pressure I can very easily lift the box, take my upper shell off. So this is typically what you are going to see when you open the mechbox. You have got your gears, anti-reversal latch, spring guide, spring, piston, cylinder, cylinder head, tappet plate, trigger, and that is your electrical switch, which is what fires the gun. Depending on what has happened to your gun say you were out on the field, and suddenly it locked up, and it won't shoot anymore. One of the things that you would look for when you open this thing up under those circumstances is you want to check the teeth on the piston, which you will see on the underside here. Make sure this piston is not blown out in the back. If it is blown out you can see this whole back side here is missing, and that piece had to go somewhere so it is probably jammed up in your gears down here, and that is what is preventing the gun from shooting. The other thing you want to look for in those circumstances is to make sure that you are not missing any teeth on your gears. If those break off they get jammed up, causes further stripping, and will completely shut the entire box down. To get to the gears so you can inspect them, and also inspect the piston you have got this little spring down here that sits on this post. You want to release that spring, so that it just sits there idle. Now you can lift the entire pressurized assembly out, which is your spring, piston, cylinder. Grab the top of the nozzle, the spring, and just pull that whole assembly out as it is set it off to the side. Now you can get to the gears, and start inspecting them. First thing you want to do is take your bevel gear out. Go ahead and take your anti-reversal latch out place it somewhere safe. Now inspecting this you want to check all of your teeth, and make sure all the teeth are intact, they don't have any burrs or any rolled metal, they look good, and they look clean. Make sure there is enough lubrication on the gears since you are in the box. That gear looks okay. Next you are going to pull off the sector gear. Now these gears are put in here with shems, which are basically a small metal o-ring type deal. This is what holds your gears tight inside the box. Those are very important. You are going to want to make sure that you keep those lined up with the gears that they were on, because more than likely when you took the gun apart it should have been properly shemmed. Next gear again you want to inspect all the teeth, make sure everything looks good, everything is there, you are not missing any teeth. Then finally you want to look over this gear make sure everything is in place. Say that we were missing some teeth on our sector gear. Well we will say about how many we are missing we are going to want to go inside this box here, and find every single little tooth, little piece of metal, and pull it out. If you don't pull those out, and you go to use the gun again they are just going to get caught in the gears, and can cause further problems. So you want to make sure you get all of that those little pieces of metal or little pieces of plastic. Or whatever got stripped or broken you want to get all of that out of there so you get a good clean box. On this assembly the spring often times will be attached to a metal piece on the front, which I will show you in a moment. And on other guns the spring will slide right out. They are not attached to anything. On this particular model it is attached in there so we had to pull the spring out with the piston. Now when you have the gun apart it is always a good idea to go ahead, and pull this o-ring off. These things will shrink with time. Just to kind of massage them and get them back out to shape just pull it off, and kind of stretch it out. That will recondition the o-ring so that it will create a better seal inside your cylinder. Then go ahead and put that back on there. Now when you are checking the piston for wear you really want to look at these first say four or five teeth here. You also want to make sure that the back is not blown out. And as you can see that is what the piston should look like if it is okay. You see we have this whole back piece that was missing off of the other one. Now a trick a lot of times that they are starting to manufacture them this way, and a lot of your professional gunsmiths will do this. This first tooth here can cause a lot of problems, and actually cause this piece to break. You can shave that down with a razor knife, and take that whole tooth completely off, and that will make your gears line up better when it engages initially on the piston. So just kind of a hint, and trick of the trade there."