Quote:
Originally Posted by safx
Big thanks to ILLusion for his coaching over PM early on. Mad Max you're a genius— why are you wasting your time doing anything but designing guns for your own Canadian airsoft company? Oh wait... replicas, dang laws 
So, after taking the gun apart and realizing the inners were all in top shape, I concluded she wasn't assembled properly, and just resetting the leaf spring wasn't enough, as the sear wasn't in the proper position all along. I set the sear so it catches the hammer for both clicks and now she's firing.
*snip* |
Yeah, the TM Hicapa is a very well engineered GBB. I'd say it's the most well engineered GBB in existance. The KSC Glock is pretty good, but I can tell that TM went through some lifecycle testing to refine it into a durable gun. I really hate changing KSC Glock hammer springs. I really like TM's material selection. Economical cast aluminum trigger components made durable and ultra low friction with an economical hard chrome finish. WA used to be the gold standard in GBB performance and reliability. They've stagnated and shown TM where to improve.
WA trigger design more or less copies the sear design from the real steel 1911 economising on materials (cast aluminum instead of investment cast steel) with some design changes. TM branches off on WA with a more elegant take on the 1911 design principle eliminating one spring (disconnector spring) with the triangle feature on their disconnector. TM appears to have noticed a common failure in WA sticky sear failures as they chrome plate their trigger bits and adjusted some engagement angles for more consistent performance. It used to drive me crazy when I'd have to take a WA GBB apart and change the engagement angles so the sear wouldn't stick to the disconnector. The WA disconnector could occasionally stick under the sear so releasing the trigger wouldn't allow the d'conn to slide forward and up and stack behind the trigger. You'd get annoying loose trigger issues which interfered with the firing of a second shot. Thump the gun on the side and the d'conn would reset. Aluminum on aluminum sliding surfaces is an amateurish mistake in product design. Al-Al does not wear well and you get a high coefficient of friction later in life. I would try to offset this with a good scrubbing of molybdenum or graphite powder but TM fixes this with beautiful hard chrome.
The WA triggers were the most tunable for ultra short light action, but they didn't wear as well. TM precludes some tuning tricks with chrome finish (you don't want to file it off), but you can still tweak the trigger loop.
And the hopup! TM Hicapa hop up is the best HU design in GBBs. Consistent and easily adjusted. They're not externally adjustable, but they're consistent enough that the trouble of disassembly is well amortized over consistent performance. WA has been struggling with HU design for years. They're really quite bad. WA has hit a design limitation in HU design. They appear unwilling to stick in a longer nozzle to push the bb forward to preload it against the hop up bump. As a result, their bb sits in a staging area against a rubber feature so the bb pops forwards and bounces off the hop up bump so you get inconsistent engagement with the HU. TM preloads the bb against a consistently set bump so you get solid AEG level HU performance. They've also gone through some pains to consistently register the inner barrel to the slide when the slide is in battery so the IB consistently follows the slide mounted sights.
Glad to hear you got your Hicapa working. It's a solidly engineered GBB for a pistol enthusiast. It's doesn't have the wide aesthetic appeal of a SIG226 or the 1911, but the bigass 0.45 doublestack replicating mag has a huge amount of gas for trippletapping performance. I think the TM hicapa mags have the highest gas/bb ratio of the TM GBB line. Only the WA 0.45 double stacks have similar gas volume:bb capacity. Compare blasting away with a 226 and a hicapa and you'll notice the difference if you compare side by side.