Aftermath Kraken Police (Cansoft clear lower reciever) Review

[Jakkal]

Allrighty, this is going to be my first gun review, so I’ll try to do a good job here. The following information is found on the website where I ordered this product (Cabela’s) and seems to jive with the information presented on the Aftermath site. This review will cover what I saw over the chronometer, my general experience with the gun and my personal observations on its handling and characteristics.

Retailer: Cabelas
Price: $199.99 (Got it on sale for $149.99)
Downgraded after import? : Possibly, not sure.
Product Description
• Full & semi-auto action
• Metal gear box with metal gears
• High-torque motor
• Adjustable Spin Shot™ system

Authentic look and a heavy duty construction are characteristics for this dependable and classic AEG Airsoft rifle. Equipped with a metal upper receiver and gear box makes this rifle a durable for the toughest conditions.

Caliber: 6mm.
Magazine Capacity: 380.
Velocity: 430 FPS.
Overall Length: 34-1/2".
Weight: 6.8 lb.

The Gun Itself
Getting it out of the box I found it a pretty nice piece of work. They claim the “Upper Reciever” to be metal, however this simply means the bolt slide and the dust cover, which seem to be made of a decent enough metal. The lower receiver is clear as stated.

The rear stock is a black plastic. It’s solid enough, and can fit a decent sized battery in the compartment, and I managed to fit a 3000mah NIMH battery in snugly, however a 3300mah battery was just a little too big. The stock battery is a 1200mah, however mine did not last overly long, and would usually die by the end of a 6-hour game, lasting about 2400-3600 rounds of fire. (Yes, I was laying a LOT of suppressing at my first game.)

The front handgrips are a little wobbly, being a thinner mould of the same kind of plastic as the butt-stock. You could probably use a bit of foam to firm it up without a problem. I didn’t find it too much of an issue, myself. The front iron sight is a bit more of a problem. It’s secured by the lower rod, not really. Bend the rod down a little and you’ll find that the front sight is actually held in by one screw, secured into the outer barrel. The hole through the sight however is a little too big and with minimal effort or want the sight tends to shift. I’ve screwed it in tighter many times over the 5ish games I’ve played with it, and I’m by far I managed to fit the thing with a red dot sight.

Performance
Performance out of the box was acceptable, however not up to discerning airsofters standards. I was finding that I could easily hit a coke can anywhere up to 30-40 feet, but after 50ft at most the BBs would lose momentum and drift quite drastically. This was very easy to see on the field, and could be frustrating at times, lending to a lot more of burst and used BBs. Very little double feeding occurred, though it does very occasionally. My biggest disappointment here came in finding out that it was shooting very low and very inconsistently. FPS was anywhere from 230-360 and very, very sporadic. It was mostly settling in the 250 area, but the readings were all over the place.

The Innards
The gearbox came stock with that zinc-alloy stuff for gears. It does decently enough, but the spec is a tiny bit off on the gearbox. (More on that later.) It’s functional on the inside, the piston and piston head are really cheap green plastic. The piston itself was 1 metal tooth, and the piston head sported 4 fairly large ports. The Hop-Up unit seems to do at least decently, and has one of the W style bits. After taking it apart, I found the hop up rubber had already ripped and was absolute crap. The inner barrel looks to be about a 6.08 which seems standard. Tappet plate and nozzle are plastic as usual, and the trigger switch is plastic. The factory shim job seemed decent but could of course use improvement. The factory grease was pretty thick, and probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to redo either. The factory spring guide just had a washer to relieve spring tension, with the other end of the spring held solid by the back piece of the piston head, which an anchor screwed into, securing both the piston head and the spring.

Personal Experiences and Upgrades
Well, the first game or two I was pretty happy. Probably mostly due to the new experience. By the second game I had already grabbed a bigger battery.

Because of my consistency issues, I made a trip down to Toronto for a new spring and piston head. I was given the wrong spring, one meant for 300fps with .2s, however as far as FPS consistency, the new piston head and a nonlinear spring had me shooting 250-260 very consistently with .25g bbs. I had also upgraded to a 6.03 tight-bore barrel, which helped somewhat with the accuracy, however it was in installing the new barrel that I found out that the hop up rubber was ripped.

Aesthetically, I had painted the the clear part of my receiver. It was however, finally time for my X-47 tactical rail system to arrive. The X-47 gave me a replacement hand guard for the front end, as well as a full wing back for a rear optical attachment. Apparently made for TMs and TM clones, it fits closely, but not perfectly. It took a while to figure out how to get the damn thing on, but it eventually worked and has no wobble unless you loosen the allen key screws, two of which seat and hold tight right onto the frame under the handgrips. After the paint job, the black waffle magazines I bought and the X-47, it makes for a really updated and badass tactical AK look. As a warning to anyone reading this, the X-47 is EXTREMELY hard to come by, and it ended up costing me over double the regular price for the product, plus shipping from Hong Kong.

In the next game, I found that the ripped hop up rubber was the real issue with the consistency of my accuracy. Once I had gotten a new one, it fixed much of my issue, and my grouping is much tighter. I had put it to the chronometer at this time, and got my stable readings of about 260fps. In the last 5 minutes of this game, my gun had decided to refuse to fire. Springer pistol here I come. After getting it home and taking it apart, I found that the piston itself had broken. The small plastic bit that had kept the metal tooth attached to the piston decided to snap right off. Fantastic. So I ordered up a new piston, threw it in and the gun worked great albeit the low fps.

So on the advice of some people online, I stripped down and rebuilt my gun several times over the course of two days, trying to find out what was causing my lowered FPS. At this point I did not know I had been given the wrong spring and so presumed it to be an air leak or something similar. So I stripped the gearbox down, changed the grease, used thicker stuff where I had figured the air seal may be weak. I was also at this point trying to put a friend’s hot spring in to see if I would achieve the same FPS.

In doing so (being very tired) while I was putting the gearbox back together the last time, did not notice that the anti-reversal latch had slipped past it’s seating and decided to block an inappropriate gear, chipping the tooth of the cheap zinc composite stuff. I hoped it would be functional when I put it back together properly. This being a big mistake, I managed to strip half of the sector gear off because of the little chip off of the other gear combined with the extra force of having to fight a heavier spring. New reinforced gears on the way, and a piston later (Of course they sent the wrong gearset) I finally have it reassembled, and shooting a very consistent 345-349fps with .25g bbs. Proper hop up adjustment will have me shooting far and straight in no time.

In conclusion
I’ve had adventures and misadventures with this gun. If some fairly basic upgrades are made to it and care is given with the gears and putting the gearbox together properly every time (And don’t do it tired.) it seems to be a fairly solid gun. QC is a little loose on it from the looks of it, however I do know people who have gotten the same item and had it function for years without a hitch as a stock item with very minor upgrades so I may have just gotten a bum spring. One of my best friend got the M4 version (Aftermath Kirenex Police) and has had none of my abovementioned problems, and his gun is shooting very consistently at 360-380fps with .2g BBs.

In closing, I hope this will be of help to someone looking for a starting AEG or a decently reliable backup at a low cost. I’ve done a lot of tinkering with it, creating some problems along the way as I was trying to fix others. This is the first AEG I had taken apart and worked on, and also the first I have owned. If anyone has any questions, feel free to post them and I’ll answer to the best of my ability, and I may post before and after pictures for aesthetic value.

[CR0M]

excellent review, very detailed. I like reading the reviews on the deemed "lower class" airsoft guns because I dont know what to expect. Where as a big name brand at 2 to 3 times the cost better be good.

[ruinz00]

I got one of these as a backup. I used it on Feb 7th at a game because my new primary isn't in. I found that the mag did lot like to feed, about every 4th shot would feed.

The OEM on mine is SRC, it has it stamped on the mag and gearbox. I was kinda surprised to see SRC stamped on it. The clear receiver is thicker than previous versions. Mine is also missing the screw to the battery tray.

[JLiang]

Originally Posted by CR0M

excellent review, very detailed. I like reading the reviews on the deemed "lower class" airsoft guns because I dont know what to expect. Where as a big name brand at 2 to 3 times the cost better be good.

I completely agree. All the CA and TM reviews get boring after awhile simply because they're so consistent. (And for good reason!) With these kinds of reviews, I get more variety, and as such, I enjoy reading them more.

[Jakkal]

Originally Posted by ruinz00

I got one of these as a backup. I used it on Feb 7th at a game because my new primary isn't in. I found that the mag did lot like to feed, about every 4th shot would feed.

The OEM on mine is SRC, it has it stamped on the mag and gearbox. I was kinda surprised to see SRC stamped on it. The clear receiver is thicker than previous versions. Mine is also missing the screw to the battery tray.

I forgot to mention, that after I painted my reciever I had some feeding issues. It turned out that I laid on the paint a bit too heavy and where the trigger guard / mag catch sits on the frame and sat a little too low to actually make it function properly, but it was still firing a shot randomly every few motor rotations.

For me, scraping out the paint from the magwell and under where the trigger guard screws in fixed the issue. Not sure if you said you painted yours or not.

[ruinz00]

Originally Posted by Jakkal

I forgot to mention, that after I painted my reciever I had some feeding issues. It turned out that I laid on the paint a bit too heavy and where the trigger guard / mag catch sits on the frame and sat a little too low to actually make it function properly, but it was still firing a shot randomly every few motor rotations.

For me, scraping out the paint from the magwell and under where the trigger guard screws in fixed the issue. Not sure if you said you painted yours or not.

Mine is unpainted. I didn't get a chance to paint it before our first game.