Shooting but not shooting.

[Rotting]

First time I opened up my mechbox today. Figured I'd give it a go. Anyway, I came up with two problems.

First being the motor loses electrical signal when it's placed inside the mechbox. If I hold it out of the mechbox and the wires become pulled a slight bit, suddenly the motor is now operational. I'm guessing I pinched a wire somewhere causing a short. If this is the case, where can I go about buying proper wire to rewire the mechbox?

Second problem is function itself. Even though I botched the wires a bit, I did manage to test it a bit before the short showed up. As soon as it was put back together, I did the usual. Dry fire on semi, drive fire on full-auto. Then went outside in the garage to take a shot at the leaf bags. Problem is no shot happened. When I say no shot, I literally mean no shot. When I dropped the gun down to a 45 degree angle, the BB basically rolled out, but the mechbox was shooting as if it were firing, just isn't firing anything. Immediately thought "Okay hop-up is jammed". Took it out, gave it a look, saw nothign wrong, but cleaned out the barrel anyway, reinstalled it, and gave it another go. Still, no dice. Mechbox cycles, but no BB is shot.

I guess it's important for me to say what I did to the mechbox. What I did was a complete disassemble, along with learning the basics of a V3 mechbox. Upon reassembly, I put a new piston in (Modify Polycarbonate Piston Half Teeth). I tried to put a new cylinder head in (Modify Cylinder Head V3), but the little holes were too small compared to the mechbox, so I set that aside for when I upgrade to a new reinforced mechbox instead of trying to make the holes bigger and potentially destroying my new part. What was also placed was a new nozzle (Also Modify). I took a shot at shimming. I'm not sure if I did it right, but I guess I'll find out sooner or later. The one thing I did that in hindsight I probably shouldn't have, was take a couple paper towels and wiped all the grease off the inside of the mechbox, along with removing all the excess grease on the gears. I do not own gear grease or white lithium or anything aside from 100% silicone oil, so no new grease was or anything was put on any parts.

Hindsight's 20/20, I should have just waited and went to my gun doctor to have this all installed properly. Now I'm more or less forced to go to my gun doctor, and probably have to pay him off because of my fuck-ups >_>

Question now is, what are the potential problems causing the mechbox to cycle, but not actually shoot a BB?

[Hash Vapor]

I don't know, you might have messed some parts in it but what I would do is retake it all apart and reassemble it using the numerous how-to videos on youtube as a guide. If you still can't figure it out then take it to a doc.

[lyncher]

Check for a short at the connections on the motor, any exposed wires? Maybe a fray?

For the BBs rolling out of the barrel, is your hop up on? try adjusting it.

[Amoki]

Originally Posted by Rotting

First time I opened up my mechbox today. Figured I'd give it a go. Anyway, I came up with two problems.

First being the motor loses electrical signal when it's placed inside the mechbox. If I hold it out of the mechbox and the wires become pulled a slight bit, suddenly the motor is now operational. I'm guessing I pinched a wire somewhere causing a short. If this is the case, where can I go about buying proper wire to rewire the mechbox?

Audio shops or specialty electrical shop selling silver wiring, try getting a the largest gauge size that will go into your mechbox

Second problem is function itself. Even though I botched the wires a bit, I did manage to test it a bit before the short showed up. As soon as it was put back together, I did the usual. Dry fire on semi, drive fire on full-auto. Then went outside in the garage to take a shot at the leaf bags. Problem is no shot happened. When I say no shot, I literally mean no shot. When I dropped the gun down to a 45 degree angle, the BB basically rolled out, but the mechbox was shooting as if it were firing, just isn't firing anything. Immediately thought "Okay hop-up is jammed". Took it out, gave it a look, saw nothign wrong, but cleaned out the barrel anyway, reinstalled it, and gave it another go. Still, no dice. Mechbox cycles, but no BB is shot.

From experience this is largely due to your hop-up unit losing way too much pressure to even pressurise the BB leading to minimal/negligible FPS output. Change your hop-up chamber unless it's due to damaged air-nozzle or some other air-sealing issues from the mechbox.

[yuhaoyang]

My shitty clone V3 has a tendency for the trigger housing to dislodge the tappet spring. Check that?

[Rotting]

Hop-up is all the way off. Was also working fine 3 days ago when I was firing it before having open the mechbox, so more than likely the hop-up is fine. A new air nozzle was put on, so I doubt that is the problem either, unless it came broken from the factory, and by looking at it, it was fine. I'd check the tappet spring, but I've done enough damage on my own. I'll just write it down and tell the local gun doctor about it.

The negative wire is slightly frayed, could be the problem. Not going to really bother to fix it, I'll just completely rewire it with some better wire.

Amoki - What's typically the highest guage that fits into a mechbox?

[yuhaoyang]

14

[IceTray]

Originally Posted by Disco_Dante

Hmmm... is the hopup assembled correctly? If it is, the air nozzle might not be attached to the spring. I had that problem once. Just open er up and test fire the gearbox before you put it back into the hopup unit.

This is Dante's input to your not firing problem, pressumably based on his Sig. -He also doesn't clean his inbox, and therefore can no longer accept PM's.
You could also reassemble the gun with the same parts from three days ago, and see if the problem persists.

[Rotting]

Got it fixed, and learned from my mistakes.

Dante just had his wording mixed up. The nozzle wasn't properly attached to the tappet plate. Another problem was that when I detached the piston head from the piston, the second half of the piston head remained on the piston, and I had no idea. I also got a replaced piston, since I should have bought a full-teeth piston, but bought a half-teeth piston. Luckily the gun-doctor had one, traded me mine for his. We also learned that my motor was having problems seizing up due to the lower plate causing too much pressure. The plate was dremelled down a fair amount so that the motor now fits in there properly, so now I have a high-torque motor in there.

Gun operates, I learned some new things about my mechbox. All is well in happy-land again. Still kind of pissed off that I bought bushings that don't fit (7mm bushings, 6mm mechbox) and my cylinder doesn't fit either, but that could be due to a crappy mechbox as well. I'll have to look into it. Having an experienced gun-doctor advise you on how to solve things = priceless.

Dilemma solved