CYMA G36 Mag Feeding Problems
 

Hi folks,

Avid forum reader here, first-time poster. Let me preface by thanking everyone here for your awesome posts, I've learned a lot just by lurking here and reading.

Also, forgive me if I get some of the part names wrong, I haven't yet had a chance to read up on how a mag is constructed and what everything is called.

On to the question:

I recently picked up a CYMA G36 mid-cap mag, fed it perhaps 60-70 BBs using my speed loader, popped it into my G36 and.. nothing. I took it out and saw that no BBs had been loaded into the gun. I looked inside and could see BBs nestled near the exit, but they didn't seem to be quite touching the spring-loaded "blocker" (the part the gun's BB feeder tube pushes out of the way. When I pull it out of the way manually by hand, they don't fly out like they would with any of my other mags.

Instead of taking it back to the store (didn't spend much on it anyway) I thought hey, why not try to learn something and take the mag apart and put it back together again to see if I could figure out what had gone wrong. I was careful not to lose any parts and got all the BBs out, then put it back together, fed the spring through the screwed-in side door of the mag, sealed it up, put the mag together, fed in some BBs again, and.. nothing.

The BBs in the mag seem to be "jammed". The spring seems to be pretty lively so I'm not sure what else it could be. Should I try lubricating the interior of this thing? Am I loading too many BB's? Could it be how I'm loading them in?

Here's a picture I took of the inner mag when the outer shell is off:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1149620/airs..._mag_inner.jpg

Any suggestions on what I can try?

Thanks

It looks to me like that's at least a 120 round mag judging by the length of the spring so I don't think you put too many in. Looking at the bb follower however, it looks as if it's bent, so if you took it apart completely and heated the follower a bit with a hair dryer(on the highest setting to make it plyable enough) you could most likely bend it back into shape! Hope this helps!

If by follower you mean the part that sits between the BBs and the spring, it's kind of a two-piece plastic snake with a hinge in the middle. It seems to be meant to be bent. I might snap some photos of it later if it helps me figure it out.

First of all you put it together wrong.

The plastic piece in the middle of the mag should be at the very end of the feed path.
You may have put other parts in wrong as well like the BB follower, but I can't tell from the picture. Lubing your mag would probably help too.

The plastic piece that links together the two springs never came apart and was there before I took apart, so is it possible it was constructed wrong in the factory? Is the big snake-y follower actually the spring-to-spring connector.. ?

I didn't mean that. I meant the huge dark spot that isn't at the end of the feed path but should be.

Ah! Thanks a million for this hint. I'm gonna try that now :)

Update: Turns out it's not possible to put the end-of-the-line blocker (large dark thing) at the very end of the line. When you look at the other side of the mag, there's really only one place it can go:

https://img.skitch.com/20110715-r8hp...42upytrb4n.png

Once I've fed the spring in, the only thing to do is to hold tight and seal it up. I tried the follower on either side of the spring, but the spring is symmetrical and either end seems to have the same effect. I guess I'll try some lubrication next.

That mags seems to suffer from piss-poor design...

It is probable that nothing you do will make it reliable...

Looks like your bb follower snapped in half and is jammed halfway.

Well, the follower is like the head of a toy plastic snake with the tail attached to it. It has a hinge in the middle. It's definitely not snapped in half and is clearly meant to rotate in the middle. It looks in good shape to me.

My best guess is that it is indeed poorly-engineered and might at best respond to some lube.

Solved:

Picked up silicone lubricant spray (rubber safe). Took it apart, lightly sprayed the internals, sealed it up, fed the spring back in, sealed, cleaned, the exterior.

Test fired and feeds perfectly now.