9 minute read
TECH: M4 SOPMOD BUILD
In Partnership with NUPROL and Military1st
THE BIRTH OF THE BLOCKS PART II
THE AR AND “M4” STYLE OF AEG HAS PROVED TO BE THE “PRIMARY” CHOICE OF AIRSOFT PLAYERS AROUND THE GLOBE, AND INDEED IF YOU LOOK THROUGH THE RANGE OF VIRTUALLY ANY MANUFACTURER OUT THERE IT’S GOING TO BE THE AR-STYLE THAT IS DOMINANT! BILL CONTINUES WITH HIS JOURNEY TO RECREATE, WITH THE HELP OF OUR FRIENDS AT NUPROL AND MILITARY1ST, A BLOCK 1 M4 SOPMOD, A MOD 0 CQBR, AND NOW THE KIT TO GO WITH IT!
Ido love a build project; in fact when I was a kid I wanted to be a gunsmith but my family talked me out of it as “there’s no money in guns”… hah, if only I knew then what I know now! Here I am, the older and wiser (I hope!) me and what do I do for a living? I build, shoot and write about guns and gear both real and replica, and although I’ll never be a millionaire, I LOVE what I do!
The “BLOCKS” project so far has been a really interesting one, but when I sat back to think about it I realised that what I was doing was essentially recreating the platforms and loadout that I used when I was at the very height of my playing days! Once I’d set the wheels in motion to create a passable BLOCK 1
M4 and a Mod 0 CQBR and handed them off to Jimmy for some internal refinement I found myself ordering in a new set of tri-colour BDUs from Military1st and digging out all my old gear from the very early 2000s!
I am an absolute “magpie” when it comes to gear, so although I wanted a new uniform set, the rest of the appropriate kit was still safely stored away in the “Gear Locker”, and I had a great afternoon digging it all out and reminiscing about games and comrades past! I still have all of my BDUs and combat shirts in ACU cut in the US Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP), but although I have some more “modern” tri-colour I’ve always wanted a basicish BDU, and a visit to www.military1st.co.uk scored me a lovely two-piece set from Helikon-Tex which they had at for a reasonable price, and delivered super-fast!
My intention with the tri-colour BDU is to reconfigure the shirt as more of a “RAID-style” to fit in with the “SF Theme” of the two ARs, and I’ll come back to that in the concluding part of my “BLOCKS” series later.
So, where do the two ARs sit now, what work has been done, and how have I configured them and why? For the first part I’ll hand over to Jimmy to detail just what he’s done inside the two SPECNA ARMS AEGs!
Image from Public Domain source
INSIDE TRACK
Both of these platforms being from SPECNA ARMS have already been well-used and seen some (airsoft!) action but they have fairly robust internals and from the multitude of Specnas I have worked on to date I have only ever seen one faulty Gate X-ASR and one bevel gear fail. The task at hand here was to give them a bit of an overhaul, rectify any velocity problems and increase accuracy. I carried out exactly the same process on both of them apart from having to replace one of the advanced motors due to it locking up; fortunately I had an exact replacement on hand! Both gearsets were completely re-shimmed starting with the bevel gear in order to get the
best motor height and perfect mesh between the bevel and pinion gears. Fully cleaned and re-greased using Abbey gun grease, which is a favourite of mine for gears. All compression parts were cleaned thoroughly and re-lubed using GHK silicone oil. Piston o-rings were replaced for Viton rubber o-rings which gave a perfect cylinder airseal; the original ones were leaking a little which gave inconsistent chrono readouts.
I lightly sanded, using fine wet and dry, a few small imperfections from the gearbox piston rails making them much smoother allowing smoother piston travel. Both barrels were thoroughly cleaned through using isopropyl alcohol and then lightly polished using a very small amount of Autosol just to remove any tarnish in order to aid the BBs to travel on a much smoother surface helping the BB maintain the spin, thus increasing range slightly. As a result of the work done I managed to get both carbines hitting comfortably and pretty consistently at 345 +/- 3 fps (on a .20g BB).
I do like the Specna internals; they are actually fairly good as stock internals go. Full metal rack piston, double o-ring piston head, double o-ring cylinder head, o-ring nozzle… there are far worse gearboxes on the market in all honesty!
FIELD READY
To achieve my own “field ready” SOPMOD M4 and Mod 0 I went back to the “official” components in the first “BLOCK” or group of modular enhancements to the basic “infantry M4”. This list is now also easily available in the public domain if you look for it, but you can also find it in PART I of this series back in Issue 136.
I also looked long and hard and reference images online of how “operators of the day” had their carbines set up (this again is far easier these days!) and also thought about how I had my much-loved “noughties” M4 configured; one reference image I remember we all used from the first time round I’ve included here, that of a SOPMOD M4A1/203 combo. I do still need to find a Quick-attach sight for use with the M203 but as a good G&P version is iro US$60 that may have to wait! I also consulted my old “Weapons of Delta Force” book (written by Fred Pushies circa 2002, ISBN-13: 978-0760311394) which is an invaluable source for information!
As both the Specna E03 and E04 are quite close to an original “A1” in many ways I needed to do very little to the basic carbines externally other than finding a couple of decent CRANE-style stocks for them; I do have the “XM-style” stock (as shown) but the CRANEstyle allows for better battery storage, so is more useful in airsoft terms. I’ve also (at the moment) kept the original motor grip in place… just because I like it and it works for me! Many SF users fitted COTS parts to their M4s so this isn’t a “deal breaker” for me.
Two parts were ultra-important to me in the build though, were the Insight Technology AN/PEQ-2 and the KAC quick-detach sound suppressor (QDSS) as they both scream “Afghan M4”! Luckily I already had a couple of old “PEQ-2” boxes lurking in the man cave (and ordered a new red laser model from Daves Custom Airsoft), but you can find these easily enough online for very few pennies these days… I had forgotten just how big these are compared to the
Image from Public Domain source
LAMs we use now, and when fitted to the top of the rail I remembered why I used to fit them on the side instead, so as not to obscure my optic sight picture! This is also shown in many reference images.
I still had my original Guarder KAC Style QD Silencer but as this was already sprayed up I was pleased to find that you can still get these if you search hard enough (thanks to Ronald at titan.eu for helping me get hands on a new one!), so I grabbed a plain black one for the Mod 0.
SEEING CLEARLY
Optics choice? Well, as I said in Part I of this build report I stuck with the NUPROL range, mainly for cost reasons! I do still have my original, real “511” holosight that came home with me from the USA, but the NUPROL repro is perfect for the Mod 0; my reference for the Mod 0 though shows an Aimpoint COMP M2, but as I’m still hunting for a “straight mount” for this I ended up going back to the 511-style as I love this as a wide FOV CQB optic anyway.
For the longer carbine I went for the NPCOG 4 X 32 as this works pretty much perfectly to replicate the early-model Trijicon ACOG, and for the “field-ready SOPMOD M4” this is my definite choice. Looking again at my “ref pic” it actually showed the longer model M203 mounted, so this went on, the “big badda boom” option that screams SOPMOD M4 to everyone, from their S&T distributorship. I’m still debating whether or not to mount the “old skool” G&P Scorpion Series VLI X9 Illuminator Combat Light as standard as the front end of the M4 is now getting pretty heavy as it is… I’ll probably “pouch” this and attach as needed! Talking of “illumination” I was slightly reticent to fit a Scout-type light to the Mod 0 as although the early ones were definitely about in the time-period I’m looking at for this build, it’s not something I used personally “back in the day” and it just didn’t “feel” right to me. Luckily I noticed that S&T also do a M910 LED taclite/foregrip combo that’s the dead-ringer for the old SureFire M910A Picatinny Rail Vertical Foregrip Weaponlight (which was included in the “wider” SOPMOD list) that I used to run on my SCAR circa 2007-8; this had already been around for a while, and seemed the ideal solution for a CQB-length beastie!
Both carbines are now pretty much complete bar the small details that really make a build like this “sing”, so the next stage is bringing everything together. I am still considering “paintjobs”, but as things stand I think that the Mod 0 will remain plain black, although the longer version will receive one of my sprayjobs. For the final part of the BLOCKS project I’ll conclude on the finished carbines including some range-testing results, along with some suitable kit to go with them!
My thanks as always go to Tom at www.nuprol.com for helping (and humouring me!) with this project, and also to Lukas at www.military1st.co.uk for getting the new BDU set to me so swiftly! AA
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