Some problems I had with the v2.2 you may have

Also don't expect ra to be nice answering your concerns, they were aholes to me and said I lied about my problems and even when I sent pics said it was impossible for it to have those problems

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@Swift, in the first picture you had the SHS tapet plate which has the hole deeper than normal, had the same issue on VFC gearbox, changed to another one which is ok.

I know about cylinder issues, I tried 4 in mine and they fit ok.

The piston should slide easy in the gearbox but not to loose, i have more than 1mm play on each side, that`s more than 2mm overall. The spring will push the piston sideways due to compresion and to wide piston guide rails and that will affect not only piston head touching the cylinder but also the teeth meshing between the piston and sector gear.

Knowing that I intend to have a stress build I dont think it will be ok.

Any other opinions ? Please share them.

I am already fed up with all the money thrown away for shit parts...

 

I had both of these issues with my RA V3 shell. In addition, the cylinder area was also too small for any of the cylinders I had. I couldn't attach either of the motor cages because the shell was too big there. Couldn't get the hopup chamber to insert into the shell. The shell didn't even have a hole for the trigger spring!?!?!?

 

@busido
I tried 3-4 different tappets
Including vfc, shs (pictured), g&p, and another all had same issue

Also the only cylinder I could get to fit was a zci aluminum cylinder and I tried a retro arms cylinder and that also didn't fit

And forgot to mention the cut off lever did not fit right on the shell, had to mod the lever to work

And had to mod any hop up to fit, hole was too tight (insert sex joke here)

Honestly the two options to have a working 417 in my opinion is tm and hpa'd vfc



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I will make a video tomorrow with this gearbox shell and post it here and also send it to Retro Arms. I don`t think they will mess with me, the European law`s are pretty clear regarding the return policy. Their shit is plain not as it is advertised.

 

Retroamrs parts haven't been that impressive from what I have seen especially for the price you pay.

That being said, Im not really seeing anything here that wouldn't happen with another manufacturer other than poor packaging.

2. Not sure why a piston diameter smaller than the rails is an issue. Being the same size, or larger, would cause too much fiction with the piston. You want a piston that is slightly loose in the rails so that it slides freely. This will ensure that there is no excessive friction and thus load on the motor. So long as the piston is not coming off the rail when the gearbox is closed, this really isn't an issue. As long as the piston stays on the rails, the piston head o-ring should be able to seal with the cylinder. A tight or very close fit here is not needed.

I should also mention that the gearbox was likely designed around the Retroarms piston. If you aren't using that piston, there may be more or less play with whatever piston you are using. The TM gearbox design is only a guideline that manufacturers follow. It isn't a standard. As such, different brands have different nominal sizes and tolerances. Expecting brand A to be drop in with brand B and function flawlessly is unrealistic.

3. Could it be that the hop up rubber is stretching as you slide it into the chamber. Are you apply a bit of grease to the outside of the rubber and sliding it in slowly? Even if it isn't stretching, it isn't difficult to cut off a couple of millimeters of rubber. I have had to do it on some of my builds as well.

 

I found today a piston which is larger than the others and i hope it will be ok.

Other problem is motor alignment with the bevel gear
I shimmed 4 times the gearbox and it still has issues. I will try to finish it tomorrow. Tried to put the original motor cage, doesn`t fit on the RA shell.
In the original gearbox even if the gears where self shimming it was dead quiet ..

The hopup unit has the wheel to large (Prowin style) doesn`fit the G28 and it barely fits my M4 ( broke the charging handle )
And no, the hopup rubber is not stretched, the body is 3mm shorter. When I cut the rubber and mount the hopup the rubber is forced and the bb can`t enter the unit ....tried with 4 rubbers and 3 inner barrels.

I can`t be mad anymore, this is hilarious.

 

After alot of stress i succeded to mount the gearbox and the surprize was that the bbs won`t load . I used the original VFC hopup unit , the nozzle was almost 1mm to far in the hopup. The original nozzle was 21.2mm and the nozzle from the bore up kit was 21mm, so even with a shorter nozzle I had problems. I couldn`t put the receiver on the lower because 2 guides on the gearbox were to thick.. dremel and after 15minutes it worked.

At the first try the teeth from the piston broke .. so I put another piston and hopefully tomorrow I will get it to work with a shorter nozzle.

I sent another email to Retro Arm because they didn`t even bother to answer the first one, I told them on a very polite tone that they advertise some products that are not compliant with the original ones and I wont bother to send their trash back because is not worth it.
I will never buy their products again.

 

Long story short.

After days fidling with the boreup set, modified tapet plate, nozzle lenghts, hopup unit position, gears and RA shell issues I ended up with a working sistem, I gained 10fps and 0.3 joules for the same bb weight.
The G28 shoots a very consistent 520fps with a 2fps variation.
Next step is to get a HPA engine.

 

If your are going to hpa use the stock gearbox shell just will cause less problems


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I received the answer from Polarstar regarding the ETA of F2 engine.

PolarStar Airsoft We currently do not have an official ETA on the F2 project but we are aiming for a release within the first quarter of 2017.

 

Brill Armory said they're getting the brand new V2 gearboxes that are supposed to be TM-spec

 

The VFC G28 and VFC 417 use the version 2.2 gearbox.

 

Hope you don't mind me asking, what tappet plate and nozzle did you end up with? I have the exact same rifle and experiencing problems with leaking between nozzle and hopup rubber and I'm not sure if the nozzle is the right one.

 

I ended up putting in stock g&p nozzle, tappet, cylinder head, piston head
And zci aluminum cylinder for the compression parts


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Apologies for the necropost, but I'm having a difficult time finding some of the information mentioned in this thread. Has anyone figured out what parts play nice with the Retro Arms HK417 gearbox? I managed to snag one, but don't know what internal components will work without excessive drama.

 

I think it should just take whatever parts the 417 takes, which I'm fairly certain are normal V2 parts.

 

According to @Bushido and @Swift, that isn't the case:

Hello,

I just want to share with you the issues the I have with the gearbox shell Retroarms V2.2 which I ordered for my VFC H&K G28 DMR.

Bellow is the email that I sent to Retroarms, please share your opinions about this.

"I am contacting you with some questions regarding my order number 3143.I received the CNC gearbox shell V2.2 and the Hopup unit for M4.

These parts were ordered for my airsoft replica VFC H&K G28 which is built around the VFC H&K 417 and therefore it uses the same V2.2 gearbox shell.

The problems that i have are :

1. That package arrived in Romania damaged due to the poor packaging.

2. The gearbox shell has an issue when I put the piston in it.
I attached the picture with the piston and the gearbox shell. On the piston the we have the diameter d (fig.1) which is smaller that the dimension between the 2 arrows on the mounted gearbox shell (fig.2)
The result is that the piston has at least 2mm play between the guides in the gearbox, this play will have a negative effect on the piston movement when it cycles in the gearbox.
I tested with 4 pistons from various producers and also with the origina VFC one, I get the same problem.
The gearbox was not mounted in the weapon because after this preliminary check I decided to contact you first.

3. Hopup unit for M4When I put the inner barrel with the hopup rubber in the hopup unit I cant put the C clip to block the barrel because the hopup rubber is not completely in the hopup unit, the end of the rubber is 3-4mm in the C clip window. The only solution is to cut 4mm from the hopup rubber to be able to put the C clip on the hopup unit.
I tried with 4 hopup rubbers (Maple Leaf, Specna Arms, G&G and Systema), also with various inner barrels like VFC original, Deep Fire, Madbull and Prometheus.

I want ot mention that I own other airsoft AEG`s which have aftermarket gearbox shells and none has the problems mentioned above.

It would be nice to have your answer as soon as possible with a resolution for the problems mentioned above.

After alot of stress i succeded to mount the gearbox and the surprize was that the bbs won`t load . I used the original VFC hopup unit , the nozzle was almost 1mm to far in the hopup. The original nozzle was 21.2mm and the nozzle from the bore up kit was 21mm, so even with a shorter nozzle I had problems. I couldn`t put the receiver on the lower because 2 guides on the gearbox were to thick.. dremel and after 15minutes it worked.

At the first try the teeth from the piston broke .. so I put another piston and hopefully tomorrow I will get it to work with a shorter nozzle.

I sent another email to Retro Arm because they didn`t even bother to answer the first one, I told them on a very polite tone that they advertise some products that are not compliant with the original ones and I wont bother to send their trash back because is not worth it.
I will never buy their products again.

View attachment 6209

Some problems I had with the v2.2 you may have

Also don't expect ra to be nice answering your concerns, they were aholes to me and said I lied about my problems and even when I sent pics said it was impossible for it to have those problems

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@busido
I tried 3-4 different tappets
Including vfc, shs (pictured), g&p, and another all had same issue

Also the only cylinder I could get to fit was a zci aluminum cylinder and I tried a retro arms cylinder and that also didn't fit

And forgot to mention the cut off lever did not fit right on the shell, had to mod the lever to work

And had to mod any hop up to fit, hole was too tight (insert sex joke here)

Honestly the two options to have a working 417 in my opinion is tm and hpa'd vfc



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Sorry, I have not read though this thread but I am guessing that it is an issue that I brought up with RA and their SR25 gearbox. It may be the same issue with the M4. They reinforced the GB with a thicker front end but did not realise that with a thicker front end that the tappet plate would be moved back further. This means that your air seal will be terrible. You cannot use a longer air nozzle to fix this issues as the tappet plate is already retracted a little and so when it does get fully retracted, the loner air nozzle will not let in a bb. So Retro Arms SUCK. Strong Gearboxes but they let themselves down but not understanding how a GB works. The original A&K gearbox had an area where the tappet plate fitted into, but RA removed this. I have attached a pic that show how I put the little alcove (Space) for the tappet plate to fit into the RA gearbox. (Hope I explained myself well enough)

 

Sorry, I have not read though this thread but I am guessing that it is an issue that I brought up with RA and their SR25 gearbox. It may be the same issue with the M4. They reinforced the GB with a thicker front end but did not realise that with a thicker front end that the tappet plate would be moved back further. This means that your air seal will be terrible. You cannot use a longer air nozzle to fix this issues as the tappet plate is already retracted a little and so when it does get fully retracted, the loner air nozzle will not let in a bb. So Retro Arms SUCK. Strong Gearboxes but they let themselves down but not understanding how a GB works. The original A&K gearbox had an area where the tappet plate fitted into, but RA removed this. I have attached a pic that show how I put the little alcove (Space) for the tappet plate to fit into the RA gearbox. (Hope I explained myself well enough)
View attachment 20441

I just got the RA HK417 gearbox in the mail, so I'll be taking my calipers to it to compare front wall thickness against the stock gearbox. There are other compatibility issues reported by other users though, specifically cylinder and piston fitment. Hoping someone can shed some light on what brand they went with for those parts.

Edited to add

wwwwoooowwwww.....
that's a major ball drop
did they fix this in the current production line? or it's still an on going problem?

I just got one of their V2.5 SR25 gearboxes as well. The wall thickness issue has not been fixed. I got it machined down to match the specs posted by @1tonne.

 

wwwwoooowwwww.....
that's a major ball drop
did they fix this in the current production line? or it's still an on going problem?

 

That I am not sure. I did ask them to fix it and then send me a gearbox that would actually work without this major mod. They never replied and so we can only assume that the gearboxes are still the same.
Sheed who is on here has had the same issue.
It is sad to fork out so much money to get a faulty item that needs major work. Retro Arms need to get this fixed and they need to listen to people instead of acting as though they know it all

 

There must be many people out there who purchased the SR25 gearbox and found it to be faulty. Then they give up on it as most people would not be able to figure that one out. And what frustrates me is that Retro Arms is not willing to listen that they have an issue.

 

This almost sounds unbelievable on the surface...
How can you mass produce a gearbox that is clearly off spec?
I was actually thinking about getting a V2 split gearbox from retro arms - are there any issues with those? Or just the more "exotic" variants?

 

Old thread but I'll add for the benefit of current RA gearbox owners: Confirming what 1tonne said, with a current (purchased a couple months ago from Evike) V2 RA box in a G&P receiver I experienced the EXACT same symptoms and after much frustrating trial and error I realized the nozzle wasn't able to interact properly with the hop due to the overly thick front wall of the box, and, my piston (SHS) was pinched and not traveling freely. A very expensive and worthless gearbox. A beautiful turd. I intend to take all my expensive parts and switch them to a G&P 8mm gearbox shell (if I'm lucky enough to find one). The G&P 8mm gearbox shell works because it's to very precise TM specs. It's not rocket science.

 

Get a dremil and spend about 2 hours thinning the front wall. Make sure you get it perfect. Mine is still going well and it is under a lot of pressure. I run my rifle at 3.3 joules on 0.48gm bb's.

 

Better yet, I'll take it to my neighbor who's a retired aerospace machinist and maintains a home machine shop. He'll do a better job and I can make better use of the 2 hours...like read or walk my dog. The piston fitting is something that will require some trial and error I guess. The funny thing is I was so sure that I was improving my gearbox build quality but found myself wondering why my old builds with whatever shell I had available all worked so much better. F'n airsoft. Your post was really helpful as it shed light on what I was experiencing with this RA gearbox.