Fixer-upper Part 4: Classic Army P90

Here we are again. A broken gun up for grabs for cheap on a For Sale site. And grabbed it I did.

Patient: Classic Army Sportline P90
Symptoms: "Has had some electrical issues, been to a tech but stopped working again quite some time ago and has been unused since"

I've never owned a P90 before, but it has been on my get-one-some-day list for some time. This one is from the Classic Army Sportline series, meaning the externals are mostly plastic. Now, the real P90 is mostly plastic as well, so it did not bother me that much, even though usually I'm a stickler for realism in materials. Compared to a real P90 the only thing not of similar materials is the upper receiver. The outer barrel and flash hider are metal, as are the optics rails. Furthermore, metal uppers should fit right in if I ever want to get one.

The gun came with a Swiss Arms C-more style red dot (with a missing front clamp), two hicap mags, two NiMh batteries and a dumb charger. The internals had been upgraded to some degree, but the previous owner did not know much about them. In his words, he didn't know what had been done, the gun had been to a tech twice for electrical problems and now just would not fire at all.

Troubleshooting

It didn't take long to find out that the batteries had simply died. With a fresh 7.4 V LiPo this thing came alive, if only on full auto. Something was wrong with the semi function, and I could hear a rattling sound coming from the inside when the gun was tilted back and forth.

Externally everything seemed good apart from a small crack in the rear of the receiver. The two sides of the front grip also did not quite stay put due to a screw having lost it's threads. Nothing to hinder functionality, that is.

The P90 turned out to be exceptionally easy to disassemble. As you might know, my first gun was an AUG. That was very easy to gut, but this one was even better.

After popping the back plate, you see two screws. Take those out, remove the plate they held down, and the gearbox comes out.

The P90 uses a less common V6 gearbox, so replacements and spare parts are somewhat harder to come by than on your average AK or M4.

The upper receiver can also be removed simply by pressing a rectangular button on top of the receiver and sliding the whole assembly out. I could not help but fall in love with the design straight away.

The modularity was not limited to the externals. The gearbox comes easily apart as well, separating the motor cage, wiring and trigger switches into an assembly away from the main body. No wires to stop you from working, and you can test everything without inserting the GB into the gun.

The problem with the semi auto not working quickly became apparent once I peeked into the trigger switch assembly. A part had broken off from the trigger trolley (seen above still wedged below the trigger contacts). With the piece off, the trolley would simply skip over the trigger switch, not move at all and thus not engage the contacts.

The rattling I heard when tilting the gun was not an extremely short spring as I though at first (the gun chronoed just above 0.6 J), but rather the broken stem of the plastic spring guide sliding inside the spring.

The two main problems had been identified, and I got to work fixing them.

Fixing-upping

In addition to fixing what was broken, my plan also included swapping the plastic bushing for steel ones and re-shimming, fixing AOE, installing a MOSFET, and putting in a flat blade fuse and deans connectors. My plan was to build a CQB beast with a high ROF and moderate power.

Swapping out the broken spring guide seemed rather straightforward, as I quickly found a steel spring guide in my spares drawer. The V6 box takes V2 spring guides, which makes it easy to replace. Or so I thought.

A couple of test shots later the spring was compressed into the piston, which in turn was stuck in the rearward position. In case you've never done it, let me tell you that disassembling the gearbox again with this kind of a mine inside is just lovely. I managed to get it out without issue, luckily, only to have it get stuck again (because of course I had to try it again). It was pretty clear that the spring guide would not work here.

I scavenged another spring guide from an M4 parts box I had lying around, waiting to get assembled. It was otherwise similar, but the end was tapered and, more importantly, it had a diameter that was 0.21 millimetres smaller. The one fifth of a millimetre was all that was needed, the spring did not get stuck. The spring, as well as I, was free to move forward.

Swapping out the plastic bushings for steel ones was pretty straightforward, but they did sit quite low in the shell, and I had to use more shims than I've ever had to before. At some point I began to question whether or not I was doing something horrendously wrong, as the the combined thickness of the pile of shims on the spur gear crossed the 1 mm mark. It worked swimmingly, though, so that's tolerances for you.

Trying to fix the angle of engagement on the piston turned out to come with its own set of problems. The piston head was attached with a tiny nut sitting free inside the piston. I could unscrew the head with ease, but lacking a socket wrench for ants I could not put it back on. Who makes these things? I opted instead for an aluminium double sealed head I had lying around.

My problems with the spring guide had apparently resulted in some structural problems, since at some point during test firing the steel tooth broke off the piston. Luckily I had an old spare nylon piston with it's own plastic piston head that went in after a quick AOE fix, similar to the one pictured above.

My first attempt at fixing the trigger trolley consisted of glue and a several thin layers from a piece of paper towel. I figured a glass fibre style layer cake of material and bonding agent would result in a strong base which I could then file into shape. 

Too bad the plastic wasn't very glue friendly. The glue soaked paper held together fine, it just would not stick to the plastic hard enough to withstand the strikes delivered by the cut off lever. The same exact thing happened with various attempts made with super glue, epoxy and even chemical metal. This was one piece of engineering I was not exactly happy with. A thin piece of plastic subjected to repeated strike forces sounds exactly like a recipe for success.

Since the original plastic was a no-go, it was time to fabricate a stronger part. I chose a piece of sheet metal for the job with roughly the same thickness as the original plastic. After tracing out the shape of the trigger trolley, I cut it out, filed it down to size and rounded off any rough edges.

I drilled a few holes (with a 1.5mm drill bit) into the metal, filed down the original trigger trolley, drilled some holes into that as well and roughened up both surfaces, hoping the epoxy would finally bond well enough. I chose to make the holes canted every which way so that once the glue set, the pieces would not come off each other so easily.

To further address the issue, I cut down the trigger contacts so that the trolley would have more freedom to move up and down (the top piece is cut to shape above, the lower shows the original shape).

Everything was working pretty nicely apart from the fact I was getting triple and quadruple shot bursts on semi. The culprit in the end turned out to be my upgraded trigger trolley. The sheet metal was not as thick as the plastic, and thus the trolley was able to sit higher in its rails before disengaging. This in turn made it so that the cut off would not lift it out of place until the trigger was fully pressed down. I fixed this by epoxying another piece of the sheet metal onto the cut off and filed it to size. No more problems with semi auto! 

To round things off, I made a basic DIY MOSFET out of an IRLB3034 and some resistors. The middle prong is cut off and the negative lead is attached with a small bolt and nut to the back plate. Sturdier attachment, better flow of current.

Wiring up a MOSFET on a P90 can be done exactly like in the AUG, since the trigger assembly is the same. There's one switch and a pair of contacts for the semi, and another for full auto. It's only the movement of the trigger that decides whether the gun fires semi or full auto. On the AUG it's up to the shooter, on the P90 the fire selector limits the movement of the trigger.

All the extra bits and pieces fit in without issue and the gun was mechanically ready for service.

One final fix was to repair the cracked receiver. Since the material is ABS, you can forego glue and use pure acetone, as it melts ABS. My end result is a bit sloppy, but with an unhurried approach, slowly wicking the acetone into the crack, you can achieve a brilliant result. While mine isn't aesthetically as pleasing as it could, the upside is still that the plastic is again one single piece as it was when moulded, not two parts held together by an adhesive layer.

With an 11.1 V LiPo this little beast is pumping out 33 rounds per second at 0.92 J. Right on the money, if you ask me. Now I only need magazines that aren't hicaps and can still keep up with that.

Questions? Comments? Anything you'd add or like to know more of? I'd love to hear from you!