A couple of pictures to wet your pallet! 
I will be breaking down the gun and the gearbox next Friday and doing most likely a tutorial. Any questions related to the BAR fire away! 
Inital thoughts:
Nice weight. The bipod and handle both seem strong. Mag, bipod, rear sight, front sight and carry handle made of a magnetic compound. (Mild steel I assume) Main gun reciever is metal as is the barrel as is the gas cylider non magnetic so most liekly some sort of Mazak, which I believe is the norm with most guns coming out of China.
Not got a Chrono here and not seeing my mate till next Friday but it sounds meaty. Update: 10 shots through the Chrono all came up 349-360The ROF is low with an 8.4v battery which i can only assume is because the ridicilous size spring in the gearbox!
The faux wood looks really good I had to physically touch it and look for seams to clarify it was plastic. Although the first batch of guns is the only ones going to made of plastic so if anyone else gets one they will be most likely wood!
Has very good wiring. Not disimiliar to angel wire or Prometheous NEO cord. Update: Was wrong on this front, it just has a clear tube and is about 20% thinner than NEO cord. Looks pretty tho 
Attached to a small tamiya connector.
The main body of the gun has a stamped serial number AY-0001 and the bipod is also stamped with a seperate number which is B 7312235 N.
Mag sits in tight with no wobble. And as another point the whole gun feels rather solid with no wobble on anything except the faux wood on the carry handle. This does has a screw but havent had a look to see if it just needs tighting. Update: Fixed when added to the actual BAR.
Seems to fire ok but needs a decent amount of space to test. Living in a block of flats makes it a bit tough! This will be tested next Friday. Safety works ok It is marked with a S A F. Now with the real steel version of this BAR it was meant to have 2 fully automatic firing modes. The only thing different between the two was the speed. In the Airsoft replica it is just full auto & safe. I am not sure if this is how it is meant to be (IE should it have single shot) as its been a long time since I have handled Doug's VFC BAR. (Maybe someone could clarify this?)
Bad points found so far:
The stock has a massive cavatity for a battery. Will need foam to stop even the largest batterys from knocking around. (not a big issue!)
The 2nd picture shows the ejector port exposed. Looking at the VFC bar its not meant to be like this. I did notice a bit of plastic was sticking out and when I cocked it back it now has totally disapeared. Will break it down next Friday to see whats going on.
Rear sight is slightly "off" will probably just need stripping down and put back together (again not a big issue)
Didn't come with the battery it was meant too (not going to lose any sleep over the crappy china battery)
Conclusion so far well worth the £300! Airsoft world did also ring me to see if I wanted it downgraded to 350 FPS which I said no. As I wanted to look to see what sort of job the China lot did to the gearbox before anyone else had tinkered with it. You could say this is another "bad point" as you can't use it straight out of the box. If you have ordered one from Airsoft World I am sure they will ask you if you require it downgraded. Also they have added 3 new pictures at Airsoft World showing some of the internals.
Stu
The bipod possibly on the wrong way round in those photo's. But you get the idea
Bad points found so far:
The stock has a massive cavatity for a battery. Will need foam to stop even the largest batterys from knocking around. (not a big issue!)
Nice!
Airsoft World shows foam packing inside the stock - is yours missing?
Nope mine is here, but have put in a larger battery. Like I said not a big issue just need to shape the foam into a battery size that I will use. This however will probably be redundant as I will probably look to attach a real wood stock to mine at some point. If you use a lot of stick battery's the current setup they provide with the foam will be fine!
Once the bar carry handle has been attached there is no wobble what so ever. Updated first post.
well looking at the photos on airsoft world the gearbox is identical to my vfc bar ,even down to the stock mounting bracket.
Das the magazine interchangable with VFC BAR magazine?
Not having a VFC BAR to test with I can not say yet for 100%, although they have the similiar "sunken" mag design. If I had to go either way I would say they do.
http://www.airsoftworld.net/bar-browning-automatic-rifle-aeg-180rd-hi-cap-magazine-pre-order.html
Link of the mag on website avaliable to pre order & description : "Chinese clone of the VFC model steel magazine, 180rd hi-cap."
Were WW2 period M1918A2 BAR not normally seen with black synthetic stocks?
I do know the biPod was often removed.
aka Stigroadie
AFRA
better by design
"Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable. "
Were WW2 period M1918A2 BAR not normally seen with black synthetic stocks?
I do know the biPod was often removed.
The Wiki (not the most reliable source of info i know) says that they ran out of Walnut for stocks while making BAR's although there is no indication at the percentage which had them. It also states that quite a few of the earlier versions of BAR's where shipped without being modified because of the need for them in the field. Again the percentages of these are unkown to me. If you find any facts please pass them on. I was looking at getting a bakelite stock have scene them go quite cheap!
Well I broke down the BAR today with a mate and although I am still happy about it, there are some issues that need to be looked at. (all fixable!) I did have a camera and took about 20 photos's of how to strip it down step by step but left it at my mates 
Will upload next week when I see him again.
Before i stipped it down i ran a couple of hi-cap mags through it with some issues. The plastic chamber of the mag is not fitted well to the outer steel part. Which means the whole inside mag can move 2-3 mm in either direction which stopped it from clicking into place, and feeding. Will look at how to address this going forward. Could just be my mag or the first batch but not a great start 
Also the interior of the mag was soaking in oil which meant this was then being carried through to the hop and barrel by BB's. So like I said will strip down and fix / clean it before used again.
When the mag was working 10 reading's through the chrono came up as 349-360. 10 FPS variation is ok, but inside we found had to reduce this furthur! If the air seal was better on the stock parts I am sure the BAR would be doing 380+ as the spring in side is pretty meaty. m120 perhaps?
I mentioned in my photos about the cocking lever not working properly, which left the hop and clylinder exposed to damage. This was a odd because the way it is built it never could possibly work! The guy on the production line i presume realised this and tried to hand bend it into some sort of workable mechanism but.... impossible. I would guess all bar's in the first batch will have this issue. As a quick guide a hammer came out to flatten it as the cocking lever was in a sort of U shape. It was then cut down to leave a L shaped peice which we attached directly to the internal cocking lever bar. (quite hard to describe without photo's)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiiC0zpjOHU
After taking out the Pin in the above video the BAR came apart exactly as shown. The gearbox from the video from what I handled today looks identical.
After removing the 2 screws from the rear stock allowing access to the wires, foam and battery did we notice another small but annyoing issue. The screws were obviously too long so where just cut down to fit. Nothing again major but something else to add to the list!
On the video at 22-23 seconds you can see the lower reciever and stock removed. The stock had 4 small screws with glue / locktite holding them in to the outside of the motor cage. Then there is a furthur 2 screws (25mm in length) holding the reciever to the gearbox casing. One of mine was as straight as a round about. I am hoping it hasnt damaged the gearbox casing too much. You can then press on the back of the spring release mechanism and remove the spring and spring guide. The spring guide is a bog standard version 2 with no bearing. Being version 2 we managed to fit this one straight in with no problems. A madbull one (red) would also fit but would need some tinkering to do so.
You will then need a an alan key (not the one you get in the box!) to undo the gearbox casing. The gearbox like most china guns caked in grease. The gears were shimmed ok and the gears were stamped DL and looked pretty good. Version 2 style. I would happily run these for a while.
The piston is a half tooth piston and tested a madbull one and it seemed to fit ok. 
http://www.redwolfairsoft.com/redwolf/airsoft/Accessories_AEG_Cylinders_Pistons_Madbull_Polycarbonate_Piston_w_3_Lubricant_Grooves_7_Steel_Half_Teeth.htm
The cylinder head we first thought was not going to be interchangable but again trying a classic army one from an M4 (version 2) it fitted. There is an extra notch cut out for the standard cylinder head but as far as I could tell not a requirement to fit.
The cylinder is a ported m4 affair. Tried a classic army one as a replacement and fitted ok.
The classic army air nozzle was also interchangable and the piston head was good too. Picture below of the parts which was measured up against the china clone.
7mm bearing's seemed very thin, but they might of had to been like this. As there was only 1 shim on either side of the gears. I will want to replace these with a brand i can trust. As replacing the gearbox casing if one fails or if there is any movement causing the holes to be elongated will be a nightmare. Might have to splash some cash though to find some that will fit with the current gear set!
Gearbox casing and a few other area's cocking lever being one were all hand filed to fit. I have never seen anything like this on any airsoft gun before. Which is a little worrying from a quality control perspective. This also means that gearbox casings for an example will probably not be able to be interchanged with another one.
Like i said still happy with my purchase but will need some work to bring it up to my normal high standards!
Hop unit, barrel and pictures will be added next week. Any questions I will answer them the best I can as the BAR is still in parts next to me
Stu
Can anyone tell me if this can be made to fire semi only.Just read that its a p90 gearbox so it should be OK to semi.Now just trying to get it shipped to New Zealand
Can you show me a photo of the top of the mag maybe with a measurement to the BB port centre as I may be able to use them on my steel BAR?
Free speech is expensive these days!
Can anyone tell me if this can be made to fire semi only.Just read that its a p90 gearbox so it should be OK to semi.Now just trying to get it shipped to New Zealand
Its not a P90 gearbox, its similiar but it is different. One may fit with work but having never worked on a P90 I cant say .(only a thompson same version but different motor placement) Your best bet would be to get a mosfet. I had this one http://aegwizard.com/AEG_Burst_Wizard.html in my grease gun to attempt to make it single shot but could not get the timings exactly right. Alhtough it was just plugged in between the battery and the gearbox instead of being wired in. You do this by changing the burst count from 3 - 1. So in therory with this you can make any gun single shot if your willing to play with it for a while.
Can you show me a photo of the top of the mag maybe with a measurement to the BB port centre as I may be able to use them on my steel BAR?
Oddball trying to upload a picture with my phone which shows measurements but taking some time! Will update soon.
Measurements added. Click on picture to zoom. Quite an odd desing with the mags internals sunk at an angle. Although if you were looking to convert them an M14 mag almost fits directly into a BAR mag (brand permitting of course!) Just the lenth of the M14 mag is 75mm compared to the 90MM of the BAR mag.
Also note you can see at the far right of the white line the amount of play there is with the feeding hole.
Hope this helps.
Stu
as mentioned its not a p90 gearbox ,but is identical to my vfc which looks like a modified g&g m14 box .
the g&g m14 gear box is totally different to any other make of tm based m14 box.
p.s the mags look identical to my vfc bar mags.
Did you manage to get the cocking lever working properly?
Did you manage to get the cocking lever working properly?
The cocking lever worked fine it was the bolt which should of moved back to allow access to the hop which was FUBAR. There was no way mine was going to work in the way it was sent to me. I am either missing some key components or they just failed big time in this area. I cut down the part which was meant to be there and attached this to the internal cocking lever.
Stu
That's what i meant, sorry brain is half asleep tonight.
Will be interesting to see if it's the same on mine when i get it.
