08 PTW mysteriously died..

[icaris]

Hi guys.

Hopefully one of you PTW gurus will be able to give me a hand.

I gamed my PTW 2 weeks ago and it was working great. The selector switch broke at the game but the gun its self was working fine. I fixed the selector last night and went to try it out and my guns completely dead. I did not touch ANY electronics.

This issue is really boggling my mind. It worked a week ago and now its just dead..

Diagnosis:
- Hook up battery, no action from gun at all.
- I tried two different battery's and checked them with a lipo tester, they are good.
- I'm not getting ANY LED's on the board behind the mag well
- Checked fuse and it's perfectly fine.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[mcguyver]

Make sure that all control cables are plugged in, especially the 4-wire.

Make sure the selector board is not damaged. Remove the selector lever and operate the selector rack manually. You will only get the LED to light if the selector board is being operated and working correctly.

[icaris]

The 4 wire, is that the one going to the board in front of the gears?

The selector seems to be moving just fine, although i cant really see if its firing properly yet lol

[mcguyver]

It connects the EL-003 board in the buffer tube to the EL-001 board in the front of the gearbox. It delivers power to the EL-001 board from the EL-003 board when the battery is connected. The EL-002 is the selector board on the left hand side of the gearbox. When the battery is connected, power is delivered to the EL-001 which then awaits a go-no-go signal from the EL-002. Once it gets a go signal, the LED lights and the trigger can now activate the the EL-003 to deliver power to the motor to drive the gun, in either semi or full/burst.

This is the sequence of operation of the PTW, not including shot counting nor active braking.

Make sure that your connections are solid first, then you can worry about whether you have a bad component. I would focus on the EL-002 selector board first.

[Nova316]

While you are looking at the powerboard, Look at the fuse as well to make sure its not blown (check the one in the buffer tube). That'll cause the LED not to light up
The most common one is having a disconnected 4 pin connector

To access the one by the optics board you need to
1. Pull pin holding the bolt catch in
2. Carefully lift up the optics board
The 4 pin while should be in the base, also make sure the selector board is connected as well

When you move the selector by hand you should see the LED turn on
or turn the selector super slowly to see if it engages the small board(EL-002). Your selector switch could just be slightly off/on the wrong teeth

[icaris]

Ive taken the gun almost completley apart now.

The connections all seem to be fine but when I took off the pistol grip i noticed the soldered wire was almost about to fall off and when putting the pistol grip back on it did fall off.

Going to solder that back up. Could that have very well been the issue?

[icaris]

Re-soldered the motor connection and still nothing. The motor got warm though if that means anything.

[Nova316]

The LED isn't working now either?
Motor shouldn't get warm, Can you freely spin the motor to spin the gears?

[icaris]

The LED hasnt been working since i discovered any issues with it at all.
Yes I can freely spin the motor and gears.

The wiring going from the mini ecu to the motor is in really bad shape. Im pretty sure it needs to be replaced but I don't think that's the cause of my issues.

[mcguyver]

It sounds like you have multiple problems. Send it to a PTW repair tech, there may need to be module swapouts to test function. Unless you have spare electronics kicking around, you ain't gonna be doing it.

Also, control wires in bad shape are a sign of a mistreated gun, and there may need to be other things fixed up to deal with that issue.

[icaris]

Im going to be replacing the gearbox and motor with FCC ones here very soon. Time for an upgrade anyway.

ANd yes, I believe it was mistreated. I got it used a few months ago and it was in shambles when I got it. Only recently got it working properly and then this happened. -_-

[mcguyver]

FCC gearbox is not an upgrade. The Systema gearbox is superior in my opinion. The gears are of much better quality in hardness, surface finish and tolerance.

Unless you have suffered severe damage, there is no reason EVER to replace a Systema gearbox. They will last for hundreds of thousands of rounds at high velocity with minimal maintenance and no appreciable wear. Toughest gearbox in the history of airsoft.

[icaris]

Ok. Thanks for the info guys.

The gearbox appears to be A-OK to my untrained eye but I did notice that the red wire on the control board looks burnt. Would you guys advise I replace the control board with the new FCC one to be safe?

I'll hold off on the gearbox and just order a new FCC motor for now.

If the new motor doesn't fix my issue I'm going to send it off to get fixed.

[mcguyver]

Do you have pictures? I could probably tell you which components need immediate attention and the results of damage.

[icaris]

Ill go take some pics with my phone in a few and post them up.