ICS not firing.
 

Ok my gun's cycling and loading the bbs properly but it doesn't fire the bbs out of the barrel. When switched to auto it will cycle a few time and then a few bb's will just roll out the barrel.

I noticed this the other week at a game and I've finally gotten time to take it apart. From what I can see, everything looks good in the uppersection of my gearbox (where the piston is). I've tried turning off the hop-up and still no difference.

Anyone have any ideas of what could be wrong?

Thanks

did you take the upper mechbox out? if so you may want to look at the cylinder head area and make sure everything moves correctly. if you push on the nozzle, does the tappet move? is the tappet broken or intact?

I've stripped down the upper and everything looks good. The tappet moves when I push the nozzel and it's not broken.

what have you done as far as mods go?

List everything you have done to this gun; what you took out and put back, what changed, etc.
A similar thing I saw was because the piston head had separated and stayed stuck in place.

Particularily since the ICS piston in the M4's can be of dubious quality.

As of now no upgrades have been done. I have a new spring, bushings, and a tightbore ready to install but I want to get the gun running first.

The only thing I've taken apart is the upper. When I put it back together the first time I realized the cylinder head wasn't in the proper place but i caught my mistake and fixed it.

I don't think it's the piston head cause it was still attached to the piston when I checked it.

As far as I can tell everything is put back to where it is supposed to be.

your loss of compression screams "nozzle/tappet" but if you say it's ok, well look elsewhere. is the nozzle moving when you fire the gun in semi? turn it upside down and look into the feed tube on the hop chamber and fire in semi. the nozzle should move. also, is the piston head o-ring still in place. if you can take some pics of it and pm me i can see if something catches my eye.

I'm just guessing everything is alright cause I don't have anything to compair it to since this is my first AEG. I don't have a digital camera but I'll try to borrow one this weekend.

I'm going to take it apart again tonight and really look carefully at all the parts to see if I can notice anything you guys have said.

I had a problem like that. I tried everything I could think of and finally took it to ken @ 007 and had him look at it. Turns out the problem with my ICS was the o-ring on the piston wasn't sealing very well. When I had looked at the o-ring before it looked fine to me. What I didn't check was that the piston was actually compressing air when it was pushed in. If you hold your finger over the end of the brass nozzle on the cylinder head and push the piston in it should be hard to push in (on account of the air inside being compressed) If the piston slides in easy then the o-ring isn't sealing

Considering how easy it is to take the upper mechbox out and apart just try that again. When you take out the upper, pull out the hop up and barrel too. Make sure the spring on the hop up is there and in place properly. This is the long spring that pushes the hop up towards the mechbox to insure a proper seal. Also make sure that you fit in the hop up in the proper position when putting it back into the gun. After you fix it my next advice would be to sell the gun. Parts Ive seen broken in the ICS M4 with a 140% spring or stock.

1. Motor - The metal colar between the gear and the motor snapped right in half. I still have the motor sitting in my bin of airsoft parts.
2. Piston - First tooth on my piston broke off.
3. Tappet plate - Arm that holds the spring snapped off.
4. Selector plate - Snapped in half. I know the TM ones are supposedly the same but after I put in a TM one it wouldnt fire properly. It was sorta in between each selection of the switch. So to get the gun to fire properly you had hold the switch between settings. Then full auto would sometimes fire full auto, sometimes fire semi. Sometimes this would screw the gun right up and you had put it back to safe or push the forward assist to reverse the gears. Speaking of the anti-reverse latch.
5. Anti-reverse latch - Little piece of metal broke off the arm thats attached to the anti reverse latch. Theres two little peices of metal that stick out and keep the two pieces(arm and anti latch) from moving freely from each other. So with one of these peices broken off the anit latch would get stuck out away from the gears. This means that latch stopped working all together. I was able to fix this problem by cutting the arm off completely with my dremel. Basically this would make the anti latch now work like any other latch. Easier that replacing it with a TM one.
6. Got to see an M4 right out of the box with missing parts. Missing hop up barrel clip and mechbox screw.
7. Mag feeding problems - Both with the ICS hicap and starmags. Would fire the first few shots then stop. Or would work when it was in a good mood but I must have had one pissed off gun. Broke at every game I went to. No wonder they released it with a split mechbox.
8. Im sure Im forgetting something. Worked on 3 of these M4s now... so ya alot of problems.

Sorry to crap in your thread a bit here. But Im just a former ICS M4 owner trying to give some honest advice. Ive seen alot of people on here saying the gun is great so I guess it cant be all that bad. This has just been my experience.

Heres the gun I built after my ICS experience. Parts I built it with are.

Magpul stock
Guarder body
CA front end(1 piece barrel)
Reinforced mechbox
eg1000
OK tightbore
all the rest is upgraded as well except for the gears, piston and head, cylinder and head which are all TM parts.

8-O
Bahaha, what version of ICS was that thing?
Sounds horrible. I own one myself but haven't put many shots through it yet.
No problems so far... except my damn crap ass homemade battery!

They were all second version. The first version didnt have the forward assist reverse latch thing. You have to admit one thing even if you own a ICS M4 and it works great. No mater what you do to the thing it always sounds like crap. Makes a unheathy sounding whhring noise. I can always tell which guys are using the ICS on the field just by hearing them firing. Im like "Eh man I think somethings wrong with your...... Oh wait thats an ICS. Nevermind"

I think you said the exact same thing to me at my first game.


Anyways, I've finally had time to open it up. I checked it by putting my finger over the cylinder head and there was resistance. It wasn't a complete seal because the piston very, very slowly moved forward.

when I tried it with the nozzel on it moved forward over three time as fast. Could this be the problem? Are the nozzels supposed to have an oring on it?

Ok I'm still having a problem but I just noticed that when I turn the gun upside down and load one bb at a time, the bb drops into the chamber after the first shot. When I take a second shot I can see about half the bb. The hop-up is all the way off but something seems to be blocking the bb from firing. Anyone have any suggestions on what this could be?

Did you replace the hop up bucking and nub? Or is it still stock?

Hop up is still stock. This is the one part I don't really know about. The Bucking is the black rubber sleeve right? I've installed my tightbore so I've had to change barrels. All I did was remove the old barrel, take off sleeve and tiny o-ring on the end of it, replaced it on the tightbore and put the barrel back onto the hop-up unit. Did I miss something here that I might have screwed up??

I found that the stock hop up bucking does not sit nicely with the systema tightbore that I installed on to my ICS hopup, it wouldnt shoot and would sometimes double/triple/quadruple feed. And so i replaced my hopup bucking (sleeve) with the gaurder one. But the gaurder nub (small cylinder thing) is bigger than the ics nub so that needs to cut down to size.

After all that work it finally shoots great, like a monster.

I'll try to swap back to my original barrel to see if that's the problem.

The bucking is the little cylinder. If you take out the barrel and look down it from the nozzle end, you should be able to see the bucking move the sleeve as you turn it up and down. If it is not moving fully off to fully on, remove your barrel and check everything in the chamber again. When I install a new barrel or hop sleeve, I put a little silicone oil around the outside to help it slide into the chamber easier and let you avoid making any jerky movements during installation. This lets the bucking stay in its place and not cause you any grief.

Ok I just swap barrels back to the stock one and nothing changed.

When you press the trigger does the piston move? Could it be that you installed the cylinder backwards?

I installed my cylinder backwards once and the bbs had the same effect as yours it rolled out. The two holes on the cylinder should be facing the retractable stock (back end of the gun).

The cylinder isn't the problem. The bbs seem to get stuck in the hop-up unit.

I just noticed when loading one bb at a time that the nozzel doesn't seem to be going back all the way every shot. About every third shot the nozzel will go far enough back to let another chamber. Would this be the tappet or a timing issue?



Upgrades so far are:

Guarder Air Nozzel
Area 1000 piston and piston head
Guarder Spring Guide
TN Tightbore
Prometheus SP100 spring

You have almost the same set up as mine. Did you check that the tappet plate spring is connect to the frame correctly? Is it installed correctly?

I think it is. You just attach it to the shell and to the tappet right? There isn't any way of putting it on wrong it there?

Damn dude im stumped.... this is really weird...

Try this. Take out the hop up with the inner barrel. Make sure the hop up is fully turned off. Manually place in a bb into the chamber. Over the hole with your where the bb enters normally from a the mag. Blow into the bb. If it takes alot of effort. Then the problem is with your hop up bucking and sleeve.

The bb should normally be blown out of the hopup and inner barrel with some force but not enough to cause your vains to pop out.

Stokes, you've taken my teachings to heart, young grasshopper.

LOL! ALL FROM YOU BUD! ALL FROM THE KING of UPgrades HIMSELF!

When I tried putting the bb in the chamber and blowing it out it wouldn't move. Looks like it's time to take it to a gun doc.

You can fix this yourself trust me... I had the same problem. You dont have to send it to a gun doctor. The problem now is either your hop up sleeve is to tight or your hop up bucking is to big. I would replace the hopup sleeve with the gaurder one but keep the ICS hopup bucking as that bucking can only be used on the ICS and the ICS will not take any other bucking.

This will run you for about 7 to 9 Canadian Dollars. You dont have to pay a gun doctor to do this for you.

Well I know that the sleeve is to tight as the bucking (which looks like a little bead right?) is all the way up in the hop-up unit so the hop-up is off. When I take the barrel out of the hop-up unit and keep the sleeve on I have to pop the BB past the beginning of the sleeve, after that the BB just rolls down the barrel.

So your thinking the sleeve is too tight? Would it have shrunk? Everything was working fine until one day it just started to jam up. I'll try to look around for another sleeve first. I'm just kinda in a rush cause the Stargate game is in two weeks and this is my only AEG.

Thanks for the help.

Np man anytime to help a fellow airsofter/friend. Your best bet is to get the gaurder one. I had the exact same problem when i tried to use the stock ICS hopup sleeve on my systema tightbore. So when i changed it to a gaurder sleeve all was well... its kinda weird i might add but it worked in the end.

could be part of a broken BB, I've had this happen befor try taking out the hopup/barrel assembaly and get a good look in there, might be a little chunk of something

What kind of material is the hop-up sleeve made of, and have you gotten it lubed up at any point?

I hear silicone oil can cause hop-up rubbers to swell...

I'm sure someone has probably already mentioned it, or it's a non-issue because you haven't done anything to it... but it's worth mentioning.

They do swell, big time, buckings do the same thing, but he would've noticed it buy now because it's next to impossible to put hopup sleeve back in place if it "got fatter" from silicon.

Just put a Guarder Hop-up sleeve in and it fixed the problem.

What causes the sleeve to shrink? Is it to much silicon oil or does it just happen over time? I guess it's a good idea to always have an extra sleeve with you.