AGM Gbb M4A1

[The Keeper of Secrets]

So, I finally got enough free cash together to get one of these. Ordered it with a can of 134a so as to be a good boy and not void the warranty.

Ordered on Thursday, sent out Friday, arrived Monday via Parcelforce 24. Pretty nice. The box seemed to have survived trial by Parcelforce anyhow. Here's how it came:



Nice black sturdy box, with few markings but nicely done all the same. Ripping off the cover revealed this:



All nicely padded in black foam, no movement and very secure. Inside you get the manual, the gun, one magazine, a green sling, a cleaning rod, a speedloader and adapter, and a small bag of bbs. Accessories not of the best quality but work and are a nice touch.



So, onto the gun.

When you pick it up, you notice that it's slightly lighter than an AEG, and the weight is in different places. It's also thinner. This takes a few minutes to get used to if you have only handled AEGs. But it is a well balanced rifle.

The metal is good quality, nicely finished. It seems to be nice and strong and I'm confident it will be able to pass trial by skirmishing.

The plastic is very nice quality, and brilliantly finished. The stock is textured, the handguards are not, which was slightly disappointing, but I can get some different ones if this becomes irritating. Apart from those and the pistol grip, the entire external build is from the same nice quality metal. AGM really have stepped their game up.












So, you then pull back the charging handle, and feel how heavy it is. The bolt is a solid lump of metal encasing a plastic blowback engine. The recoil spring closes the bolt with a satisfying clunk.



So, I broke out the 134a and gassed up the mag. The mag is very heavy, just a big lump of metal, and finished in dark silver. The fill valve is a silent one, which I very much like. Filling up the mag resulted in the top valve hissing. Damn. The leak was small enough so that I could fire the weapon, but big enough to mean I would never get through a whole mag. But, I knew these had the odd valve lock thing that the western arms pistols have. However, that wasn't the issue; the valve was all the way out and still hissing. I had heard some things about them needing to be worn in, so I just hoped it was that.

So, disregarding that for a while, I put some .2s in and let rip. The recoil is amazing, much more kick than I expected, and the bolt returns flawlessly every time. ROF is average on full auto, bit slower than an AEG but doesn't sound it due to the larger amount of noise. The only annoying thing to report is that the recoil spring boings every shot, which you can hear if it's right next to your ear.

After that, I noticed two things. One, the leak had gone, completely. Brilliant. The other thing; the bolt lock wasn't working. The gun wasn't locking back. I knew these have a bolt lock on the mag that prevents it locking but that was off. So, off to the shed we go.

A bit of TLC later, and the thing was working. Turned out that the small clicky button thing on the bolt lock was causing too much friction for the mags to push through. Works fine now but was fairly worrying; that had been one of the features of a GBB rifle I had been most looking forward to.

134a had more than enough power to cycle the gun, giving a very nice kick and a good ROF.

The hop was already set, the .2s were flying nicely. Just about reaching AEG range, but the accuracy wasn't great. But that's to be expected from a GBB rifle, to be honest you're buying it for the realism, not the performance.

All the other parts of it function fine, the selector switch has a nice positive click and needs to be cocked to be put into safe, just like the real thing.

The iron sights are just like you'd find on a Marui M4, with more nice clicky noises as you turn the dials.

The forward assist works, if you manually hover the bolt just off fully closed, and then hit the FA, you can feel it moving the bolt. This is a really nice touch for me as a realism fan.


Overall then, this rifle is a very nice leap forward from AGM, and well worth the 200 notes you'll hand over for it. I'll update this after I skirmish with it. Feel free to ask questions.

[bravotwozero]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

Do you think it's worth saving for the WA version?

[MiniSnipa]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

Well WE version id save for instead of this and get a new charging handle

[MadMax]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

i would stay way from the WA the price is just to much and then all the upgrades you would have to do to it to get it working nice and have a metal body. You might as well get this one and put the same upgrades in and it will already have a metal body. Saying that i got me a WE and will be getting the WE scar too as the design is better than the WA one.

[The Keeper of Secrets]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

The WE one is nice, but it's chargig handle does break. This one seems solid enough.

This one does suffer from cooldown pretty bad though. After about 3 or 4 seconds the rof on auto slows to a crawl and a cool day. TBH though, that mimicks the heat issues on the real M4, and so I quite like it.

Oh, and after a very simple quick bit of filing, I got an ICS RIS front (the handguards) on this. Very solid.

[MadMax]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

yeh the old WE one always broke, cus of the crap metal them made it from. But now thats all been fixed. Also get the same cool down rubish on green gas, thats why iv switched to co2 now :D

[Jamanyar]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

Hey,

I've just received my AGM GBB M4 (RIS), could please tell me how you managed to get the bolt to lock once the mag had emptied out.

Cheers

J.

[romeo]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

i bought the WE and the second mag i put in the handle snapped.. its now waiting to be fixed in zero, and charging handle is taking 2 weeks to come

[The Keeper of Secrets]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

Hey,

I've just received my AGM GBB M4 (RIS), could please tell me how you managed to get the bolt to lock once the mag had emptied out.

Cheers

J.

Ok,

Field strip the gun.

Look at the bolt stop mount, there is a small spring button on the right hand side that "clicks" the bolt stop on and off. This causes too much friction and so needs to go. The way I did itwas to maul it slightly, then push it in so that it got stuck. Then apply small drops of glue using the tip of a pin.

Then lubricate the bolt stop, then stretch the spring inside the mag.

I'm not saying it'll work, but that's what I did. Bit botchy I know but it has worked.

[kershmallow]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

Ive been stuck between this and the G&G GR-16. Not too bothered about accuracy and range, but obviousley i would want it to be half decent.

The main thing i would be after would be kick, and noise. From what ive heard, the AGM gives out an awesome crack - not too dissimilar to the real thing. Obviousley this is only airsoft, but hey, its quite impressive. The recoil too - if this thing can give a decent kick: i.e similar to a TM desert eagle hardkick, then im willing to sell body organs for this thing.

Its probably these 2 things that are making me choose the AGM over the G&G. Gas just seems so much more...intense than electric, pneumatic blowback too.



So yeah, Keeper, you seem to have sold me this one

[Stealth1911]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

They do kick very nicely, my only complaint at the moment is that with green gas the stock recoil buffer spring is too strong (reduces recoil, but does increase cyclic rate, but less gas efficient) so im going to try and find a weaker spring (think prime do them) and get the airsoft surgeon 80g 7075 speed bolt.

My bolt catch doesnt work at the moment, any chance youve got a picture of the fix you performed jsut so I can work out where to attack with teh dremel?

Funny, you wanted ris on yours, i got the ris version and want standard grips!

[Stealth1911]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

Well, put it this way, screw the WE, skirmished the WA today and it was lush.

There are a few issues, if you speedload the mag to full with 50 it doesnt feed properly (due to crap double stack) but if you hand load it (takes a while :P) then it fires flawlessly.

the bolt lock issue needs addressing,w ill do that later

the hammer is already wearing, fired around 300~ rounds (mostly in the safe zone just playing around with it, but fired 50-100 in combat) will be upgrading all the internals next payday anyway.

Accuracy is very impressive, initially the gun was sluggish, but at the end of the day I used some of Jesus Armaments ultimate gun lubrication and it made it 10x better, shame I didnt do that at the beggining of the day!

Oh, and having one mag sucks

[The Keeper of Secrets]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

My bolt catch doesnt work at the moment, any chance youve got a picture of the fix you performed jsut so I can work out where to attack with teh dremel?

I'll get a pic up later today/tommorow, but if you look around the bolt catch mount, you'll see the sprung button that makes it click on and off. It's on the right hand side. That needs to go. I mauled it and them pushed it in so that it wouldn't come out again.

[johnnyj]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

kos just took my bolt carrier out to see what you mean and looking that little button on the mag it does not make contact with the bolt , what i have noticed on my agm is the bolt had warn on the place that its catch's and the little metal pin on the bolt catch its self , just turned the pin around and the bolt locks back now but i do plan in swaping all the bolt catch for a G&P unit and getting a new bolt carrier

[The Keeper of Secrets]

Re: AGM Gbb M4A1

The little tab on the mag that pushes up the bolt catch should be fine, I just had to grease mine up.

The little button is one the bolt lock unit/mount. Yeah the bolt lock will have worn down there.

How did you get the pin out? It doesn't have two open faces..