[ILLusion]

Originally Posted by Richand

Anyways to those who have done this before i need tips!
I was thinking of buying our very own Styrak of sasksoft armory's Davidson Custom Metal Hicapa 5.1 Slides
$95.

Any comments on its quality?

All of the Davidson Custom slides that have ever crossed my hands, were missing some critical internal functioning features, that did not allow them to work properly, even with the ILLusion Kinetics / Airsoft Surgeon fixed outer barrel system.

The lack of this engineering feature caused premature failure of all nozzles tested with the slide (I've tested OEM Tokyo Marui, Shooters Design, Guarder and Airsoft Surgeon), which eventually lead to complete and catastrophic failure of the slide when combined with any type of metal outer barrel. The speed of this failure would dramatically increase with the use of steel chambers and enhanced recoil springs.

Not to say that the product that Styrak is carrying is crap. He may have a newer generation version, but at the price he's selling it at, I doubt it. Davidson Customs has been dumping their old inventory slides at firesale prices, just to move a failed product.

Davidson Customs, Creation, Airsoft Surgeon, Airsoft Fire, ILLusion Kinetics, Pro Handgun, CL, and countless other companies purchase and rebrand the slides from the exact same Hong Kong based manufacturer. On the scale of evolution, this manufacturer is now on generation FIVE of these slides, that includes drastically improved internal features, such as reinforced loading lugs and thicker walls which ultimately leads to greatly increased durability. On this evolutionary scale, the Davidson Customs slides that I've seen on the market (particularly if they are made of 7075 aluminum), are generation 1. From what I can tell, they had purchased a huge load of inventory, and have had a hard time unloading this inventory ahead of the selling curve. Essentially, their supply was higher than their demand, which resulted in a lot of old inventory that they're trying to get rid of now.

While pretty, and made with overstrengthed 7075 aluminum, they are under-engineered and fail to meet expectations. Even the original plastic Tokyo Marui slide had the internal features required to allow loading nozzles to function properly.

Airsoft Surgeon started with some of the Generation 1 slides at the end of that evolution, and quickly moved on to the generation 2 slides. Starting with the generation 2 slides, the manufacturer moved to 6061 aluminum, and while technically weaker, the slides actually worked, due to the addition of an internal lug to hold the loading nozzle in place. However, this slide was still only designed to work with plastic outer barrels/chambers, as the lugs were still the same size/thickness of the original plastic slide. Use of a traditional tilting barrel metal chamber (especially with enhanced recoil springs) would result in premature and catastrophic failure of the slide. This would occur due to the slide bashing in to the chamber enough times to crush the lugs. The tilting barrel/rocker design was first invented by John Browning, and is the one feature that is featured on almost all semi-automatic pistols to this day. In airsoft, this feature is replicated, only to mimic the action of the real gun, but is completely unnecessary as far as functionality goes. It does not assist chambering in any way.

Airsoft Surgeon had a huge inventory of the generation 2 slides, and it did take them quite a while to unload them, and I'm not sure if Redwolf Airsoft is still carrying inventory of this generation.

ILLusion Kinetics started business with this manufacturer in the middle of the generation 2 production, and five sample slides were quickly proven unsatisfactory, due to the requirement for strong and durable blowback combined with heavy weight steel barrel systems. Based on feedback provided by myself, as well as samples provided from competitors, Generation 3 was soon created as a solution to the problem. The generation 3 slides were not a complete evolution, and could almost be called "generation 2.5", as it simply used the generation 2 slides, but had a feature secured in place that assisted in loading the chamber forward during the slide's return to battery. This feature alone saved all of the other lugs that were bearing the load of the heavy weight steel barrels and chambers.

Generation 4 slides were soon created after, based on the success of generation 3, which incorporated the internal feature in the original CNC programming, which allowed the feature to be machined directly to the internal walls of the slide to ram the chamber forward. This increased durability to an even higher degree.

Based on feedback by ILLusion Kinetics, it was felt that durability could be increased to an even further degree, as some of the very thin walls that were still contacting the chamber would still be prone to failure, although, the feature introduced in generation 3 and further improved in generation 4 had already reduced the chances of failure by almost 100x. Thus, generation 5 was born, with ALL walls increased in width for maximum durability that is allowed, given the dimension constraints of the slide.

This generation 5 is the latest development for all slides coming out of the shop.

The next step in increasing durability, was to mitigate, or even remove altogether, unnecessary mechanical functions in the blowback cycle. After almost a year of development, resulted in the new straight line / fixed / non-tilting outer barrel design. Tokyo Marui had actually beat us to market with this (it is used in their Hi-Capa Xtreme), but ILLusion Kinetics and Airsoft Surgeon was the first to market with this full one-piece stainless steel solution.

This new outer barrel design allows it to work with almost ANY slide, even slides that have had all of its lugs smashed to pieces. ie, it can work with any of the above mentioned slides from generation 2 and up. This new design increases the lifespan of the slide INFINITELY, as the slide no longer contacts the chamber. If the slide were to fail, it would be due to another failure point that has not been addressed at this time.
However, I have found that these new outer barrels still do NOT work 100% reliably with the generation 1 slides, and is the main reason why I wholeheartedly do NOT recommend purchasing generation 1 versions of these slides.

Would I recommend Davidson Customs slides? IF it is a generation 1 slide, absolutely not. Of the various versions of the generation 1 slides that I've tested (both coming out of the Davidson Customs shop as well as under the Airsoft Surgeon name), 100% of them had failed catastrophically or just plain did not work at all. They were nothing more than pretty paper weights that did not function 100% of the time.
You do get what you pay for, although, it's a very pretty piece of 7075 CNC machined aluminum. There's a reason why many Davidson Customs slides are so cheap these days.

Again, that's not to say that what Styrak is carrying is the generation 1 slide, but because of the price and the fact that it's made from 7075 aluminum, I would not be surprised.
What you want, is to get a photo of the inside side wall of the slide (opposite to the opening of the chamber), and look for features like this:







If it does NOT have feature 2, but has feature 1, then it is a generation 2 slide.
If it has NEITHER feature 1 nor feature 2, then it is a generation 1 slide, and I could not recommend it.

At least with a generation 2 slide, you can still use it with a fixed barrel system to get it to last reliably.

Originally Posted by Richand

Also i need internals and Sights for it,
Now As much as i want to build a new slide what can i salvage from my tm 4.3 that i can transfer to the 5.1, and what ARE the parts that i would need to completely build a new slide.

The parts required would be quite difficult to get to build a complete upper assembly. It would be easier (and cheaper) to buy a completely new gun and work off that.

Why not just build off a 4.3 slide?

Alternatively, if you are completely set on going with a 5.1 length setup, I can have a slide custom made for you, with custom shortened scalloping done to it so that iti would mate perfectly with your extended dust cover frame. I can even have it custom made, so that it can accept the 4.3 front and rear open sights. This may be optimal for you, since Hi-Capa 5.1 rear sights are hard to come by, and even if you do get your hands on one, it can cost you upwards of $90 for a set.