Version 1 PGC ProWin Gearbox Review |
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PGC ProWin Gearbox (Version 1, 7mm, blue version) Initial impressions of the gearbox, or my main purchasing point of the unit, was the better air seal within the unit, causing a better velocity rating from the unit. Well, this was topped off with the fact of the quick takedown, easy maintenance, and above all, the quicker spring change. Purchasing the unit from Airsoft GI was the first feat to overcome. I visited the store, early January 2006 and had a nice talk with the owner. He asked a lot about airsoft here in Wisconsin, and could barely believe that we played it. Well, nine months later, he still remembered me. He had to contact me to see if I was alright with getting a partially assembled unit, and to see if I would like for his technician to assemble the rest for me. I graciously thanked him for the offer, but declined the offer to finish assembling the unit. That was a minor part of my wanting to purchase it, knowing that I could put it together. Later on you’ll see why I regretted declining. So after about a weeks worth of waiting for the unit to ship, it finally shipped on Friday the 17th of November via UPS 3-Day Select. I received the unit on Wednesday the 22nd of November, the day before Thanksgiving. This caused a problem. I was supposed to be leaving at about 10 a.m. that to visit relatives, well the package did not come until about 4 p.m. so that day was delayed greatly, and the girlfriend was extremely upset. What else could go wrong with this so far? I mean, it came late, delayed me from leaving so far, and was already opened. Could anything else happen? Oh yes! Finally Thanksgiving Day I got a chance to sit down and start to pre-fit pieces together, to make sure they would fit. To my surprise, almost everyone did, without extensive modifications, keep in mind that is outside of the body that they fit. Only problem I had was with a piece of the spring release mechanism, it was a bit to large to fit into its intended hole. That was easily remedied with a bit of a drilling exercise, and BOOM it fit. Fit too well actually, but big deal, so there is minor play with the mechanism. So after dry fitting almost all the parts, I moved onto the hard part, assembly. I started off by getting the spring release mechanism to actually work. The biggest part about this was a little screw that holds two arms together, that push on a release for the spring. They did not want to fit properly with each other once they were put into their respective places, maybe the screw cross threaded the first time, maybe it just wasn’t meant to work perfectly, and you need to modify it a bit, but this part alone took eight hours to actually figure out a solution. Part of the gearbox body was scuffed in the process, no big deal. Next up was getting power inside of the unit, so that it could actually work. This was simplistic by nature, but by design, tricky. The hardest part to over come with this was the top half of the lower gearbox body, that’s a long one to say, had grooves cut in it where the electrical system shouldfit. The G&P electrical system that I used was about two millimeters to big on one of the corners. I remedied this by cutting the corner down a bit, and then melting the plastic a bit to give it a good fit with the top portion. After that modification was preformed, it fit great. Along with the electrical system modification, I needed to modify the swing arm. I had a swing arm similar to this, and I needed one like this. This was an easy enough fix with a pair of pliers and a hobby knife. Got that fixed, moved on. Installed the cutoff lever and ball bearing bushings and started to near the finishing touch of the lower gearbox. After greasing up the inside of the gearbox a bit, and putting bearing grease on the ball bearing bushings, I started to fit the gears into place. Had all three put into place and noticed the bevel gear would not move like it should, it would get snagged in the middle of rotation. I went out on a limb and guessed that the claim of no shimming needed, by the manual, was bogus, and decided to try shimming the gearbox. I had that soon finished and everything meshed nicely after the shim job. The hardest part when assembling the lower gearbox was trying to get the anti-reversal latch to go into place correctly. The manual stated to put the anti-reversal latch on the bottom portion of the gearbox and put the bevel gear on the top portion and close it up like such. The problem with doing what the instructions actually told you is that the bevel gear would fall out every attempt that was made. I placed all three gears and the anti-reversal latch on the top portion of the gearbox, after numerous attempts the previous way and soon found out that it was much easier to attempt to put together the lower portion this way. After getting the process down, forgetting to put in numerous things, and breaking an anti-reversal latch in the process, the lower portion was finally assembled. One of the harder parts of fitting it into the lower receiver was filing down the inside portion of the gearbox where the wires run up from. Soon thereafter I tested to make sure the gears actually spun with a battery attached, with sweat beating down my face and butterflies in my stomach, knowing that it might blow up, I pulled the trigger and all I heard was the sound of the gears spinning very fluidal with each other. That problem was conquered, in just four days time. I moved onto examining the upper portion of the gearbox, taking it apart a few times to see what all it was made of, its construction, and to see if I could install the titanium tooth piston that I purchased just for this project. After a bit of examining I found out that the piston fit, but was a bit tight inside of the upper portion and so I decided to test run the gearbox with a stock G&P spring, to see if everything would work. If I could have a dime for trusting my intuition each and every time, I’d have about ten cents by now. The piston was in fact a bit to large in diameter, and did not slide as free as it should. I did not want to run the risk of ruining a good piston by sanding down the sides, so I just put back in the PGC Enforced Fiber piston. I will most likely run this piston inside of the gearbox until it blows out, at which time I’ll either buy a new one, depending on how long it lasts, or modify the DeepFire titanium tooth piston to fit correctly. Well most of the gearbox was now assembled, with the exception of the barrel being installed, I had it finished. Onto the modifying of the body to get the gearbox to fit correctly! The modifications needed for the body were small but extensive. The first modification needed was the front pin holes needed to be ground down on the top like such. This took a while, and the cost of a new file set, a lot of time, and a bit of concentration. The second modification that was needed to be preformed was inside of the upper receiver needed to be sanded down to allow the upper portion of the gearbox to slide somewhat freely inside of the body. This was easy enough, but time very time consuming. The third modification was so that the stock could stay onto the gun. This was done by purchasing a new machine screw and bolt and sanding down a part of the inside end of the receiver. All three of these steps took two days time, working on it for about 5-8 hours each day. The filing is easy, but it takes time to get it filed correctly. So day seven finally pulled around, and I decided to write up a review on this, but my actions were timed out on the website I was originally intending to write this on, so I lost that. I then decided to go tinker with the gun a bit more to see what, if anything, I could make fit better. I couldn’t really find much, so I just practiced taking the two halves apart, figured out how to truly use the spring release mechanism, and filed a few more “problem areas” inside the gun. This review, or partial review, was written on the spur of the moment, so it lacks pictures of the actual process, and actual modifications I needed to perform, but you can somewhat form a conclusion as to what I was in reference to with the pictures provided. Questions or comments please feel free to post them, or PM me. Pictures: Airsoft Atlanta Airsoft Extreme PGC A-Ron Reviewer : A-Ron Reviewed : 30 Nov 2006 |
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