AirsoftChewy PM'd me to ask me about this gun but I figured others might be interested in my response as well, so I'm posting it here.
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Originally Posted by AirsoftChewy
Hi MacieKA
Can you tell me what you had to do to your Diablo? You posted in a thread regarding it needing some work.
Im no novice to stripping guns - just not airsoft guns  |
I got my Diablo about a year ago. It has gone through many revisions and*I have essentially turned over every part in the gun to the point where the only things left from the original are the Diablo RIS, the outer barrel, and the gearbox shell. I've gone through a couple trigger sets, swapped the gears, bushings, the entire compression system, gone through several pistons, inner barrel, hopup, motor, pistol grip, buffer tube, and stock. I've also swapped out the stock nylon body for a G&P Magpul body. For anyone wondering, the Diablo's G&G GR16 gearbox fits in the G&P body like a glove. One of the snuggest and "correct" fits (in terms of the pins) that I've personally seen.
This isn't to say that the gun is a lemon, but once I got around to fixing the stock gun's quirks I simply decided to keep going with upgrades and improvements. The gun eventually morphed into my personal lightweight "high speed" setup, and now fires somewhere between 36-40rps at 400fps.
That said, there are a couple things you need to know about this series and why I don't recommend it as a first purchase.
- Something about the trigger action on this particular gearbox is defective. It's a known issue and SOCOM Gear / G&G actually did some kind of recall, possibly only valid in the USA/Asia/Europe. I'm not sure whether this issue has been fixed on the models currently on sale in Canada. The actual defect manifests itself as a sticky trigger where your gun fires on auto continuously and you cannot stop the gun from firing. This issue took me a long time to figure out on my own, and is not something I would expect a typical airsoft shop to consider worthwhile to fix -- you are almost certainly going to get "the runaround" if you try to fix this at the shop that is selling these Diablos. It's just not worth their time.
- The spring on the charging handle on this gun is quite loose. It was the first part I replaced.
- The stock G&G motor on this gun is very weak and slow. The KA M4's motor is comparatively snappy.
- My Diablo came with a hopup unit that was missing the tension spring that secures the hopup against the gearbox. Watch out for this!
- The stock brass-colored bushings in the Diablo, and some of the other G&G-built SOCOM Gear guns, right out of the box look like they've been hit by a sledgehammer or run over by a truck.
- The feeding on the stock gun is terrible. You will not be able to use most mags other than the one that came with the gun. That said, this is a cheap fix. I replaced the G&G hopup unit with a Modify one and feeding was fantastic well into the previously-mentioned 36-40 of rounds per second range.
- The Nylon body, though superbly light and extremely strong (I have abused the daylights out of mine and have not been able to crack it or cause any significant damage), has unsatisfying acoustics compared to the all-metal King Arms M4.
- The crane stock rear plate has pinch-tabs for opening it that are prone to snapping --- especially in cold weather, when it is very difficult to pinch them open for battery swap.
- The gun comes with no stock sights. Note that eventually when you get heavy into airsoft you will come to understand
The Truth Of Aiming In Airsoft, which is that you can get stupidly tight groupings even at great distances just firing from the hip with no sights at all, however, that hilariousness aside, you are going to want sights, and the gun doesn't come with any. The KA M4 comes with some great ones.
So these are most of the major cons against the Diablo.
At the end of the day what you need to understand about this gun is that it is essentially a budget G&G Combat machine with a plastic body and some Madbull upgrade parts (front RIS, inner barrel) and rebranding. Meanwhile, this forum is full of people who have built amazing guns using the King Arms M4 as a base. In fact, you yourself could go and build a MUCH better Diablo than SOCOM Gear has cobbled together in this package.
Check out Madbull's page for PWS parts:
http://madbull.com/catalog/index.php...facturers_id=5
As you can see, building your own superior Diablo could be easy, and starting with a King Arms full metal rifle is going to be put you on a much more reliable and sturdy base.
Hope that helps.