G36c Build

Unlike other G36c conversions, I wanted something that looked authentic, and had a working magazine release and working cocking lever. The goal was to have the cyclone feed inverted and tilted sideways to allow a paintball feed from the magazine. Read on to see how far I got.

A Tippmann A-5 and a Tokyo Marui G36c sacrificed their lives for this project, my first one. Here's a picture of what I want the Tippmann to be converted to. This the Tokyo Marui G36c as it is, out of the box. The scope is an Aimpoint red dot.

A quick rig of everything taken apart, as well as the flatline barrel.




The first problem spot. The air source is coming from here, which interferes with the G36c magazine holder. In the second picture you can see it fitted.



Everything put back together, with the majority of the body replaced. That magazine release works! And it won't interfere with the air line. The A5 is within the G36 body. You can see the silver filed down front section of the A5.



Here it is with the stock Tippmann barrel. Unfortunately it looks like there's not enough clearance for a straight barrel, which is awesome that I'll be able to use the flatline!



Here's another shot of the stock barrel removed, but here I've but the trigger assembly in. I'm not going to be using the stock trigger assembly, I will be using the G36c assembly. Currently it's set up to use the safe and single shot switches on it. I don't have an egrip to try out the auto mode, but that's for another version.



The next steps will be the hardest, which involve setting up the G36c trigger assembly to work with the A-5 assembly. Looks straightfoward, but it'll take some time. Along the line will be the cocking lever, which is much easier to do than the trigger assembly. I'll also be putting a RVA on this, and if you're wondering if the cyclone feed will work, I'm saving that for last! I have a feeling that it won't work, just because there's not enough space to put it. I'll have to think of some other way to feed balls vertically into the chamber.

I've got two stocks at the moment, one is the stock stock (haha) that came with the G36c, and the other one is the real G36c stock from Heckler & Koch. Can you see the differences? Even though both are plastic of some type it seems, the authentic one feels way more sturdy, and is definitely heavier. Maybe because it's real. And ya, they do fold in. I'm not sure how much folding it'll do when it's all installed together, but I'm going to try and keep the compactness of the G36c possible!

This last picture is a close up of the trigger and magazine release area. I'm using the stock G36c pin to hold everything down. It's made of metal, so no worries there. I'll also be using the A-5 pins to hold the sear and trigger assembly to the A-5 internals, so there'll be no worries of things flying off at me.



Maybe I should move the paintballs to a secure location. I don't want paint mucking up the work!
More work done! I had a chance to get off of real work earlier today, and have done about an hour or so worth of work to get the trigger assembly together. In the first picture here you can see my flatline bare and cut. It fits perfectly in the G36c shroud though!



And put together!




The next step is hooking up the safety and the cocking lever! It's got a bit more weight already because of the metal A-5 inside the G36c body. I can't wait to add the cocking lever and hook up the RVA and HPA line! I've skipped a couple steps between the cut A-5 trigger assembly and putting it all together. The tolerances between the outside of the A-5 and the inside of the G36c are pretty tight. Lots of careful dremelling had to be done to make sure I removed just enough plastic to fit! There's no looseness of the gun when I heft it up.. A good sign.

It's slowly coming along.. Started working on the integration of the RVA with the HK stock. Here's a blurry close-up of the HK stock with some dremel work done.

The HK stock attached. At this point the stock is collapsable. Unfortunately since the JCS RVA is so long, I've had to abandon my idea of having a collapsable stock. For rigiditys sake it's fixed. That's alright though, since the Cyclone feed would get in the way of the folded stock anyway.



The final A5 trigger assembly cut and fit.



This is a metal brace piece that's been cut and fitted to keep the G36c and the A5 solid together. It also holds the rear stock in place.



As you can see from this image, the RVA sticks out quite a bit, probably around an inch and a half! I'll have to drill a hole in the HK stock to allow for velocity adjustment.



And, in order for everything to fit (the metal, the A5, and the stock), I had to trim a little of the RVA down on the sides. Shouldn't matter too much. In this picture you can also see the fitted G36 magazine on the left and the Knight's Armament front grip on the right.



Next big steps are installing the G36c cocking lever to work with the A5! Below is the completed gun, minus the A5 trigger and Cyclone feed. You'll notice the JCS RVA is now installed. There's a metal brace that connects both left and right sides of the G36 to the A5. No sloppy movement here!



Here's the right side, minuse the Cyclone.



Closeup of JCS RVA.



Putting on the Cyclone.



Here's everything put together, save the right side of the G36 assembly. I'm currently working and filing it down so it'll fit snugly.



And here's the gun so far with the iron rail on the top. No trigger or G36 right side yet, will get to that today.

---

Whew.. Ok.. Two more pics before I finish up for the day.. Here we have the completed gun, with left and right sides, and the Cyclone feed attached correctly.



And here is yours truly holding it up! You'll notice that the fire selector switch isn't there at the moment, and neither is the trigger. I will be getting to that tomorrow. As well, the cocking lever isn't in place, hopefully I can get to that tomorrow too, and then I'll put air through it to make sure I didn't mess anything up. The air supply, Mirodasc, is going to be on the left side of the gun. I bought the Spec Ops Tombstone, but I'm not sure how I'm going to rig that up just yet. I'll be running a remote for the gun, for sure. And it's all HPA, if that matters.



So three things left, cocking lever, fire selector switch and trigger, and gas line.. Here's a quick snapshot of the finished trigger assembly. The HOPE was that by selecting fire or safe, the A5 would automatically be set.. Unfortunately the tolerances are WAY too tight, so I've had to improvise. Here's the right side of the G36c-A5. The switch will be there so there won't be a gaping hole. The selector switch will also be able to toggle between the three modes (safe, single, auto), but it won't have any effect on the firing mode of the A5.



I'm working on the cocking lever this afternoon evening, and it looks promising! Next step, gas! A little bit more detail here. This is prepping for the cocking lever. I've cut a groove into the top of the A5.



Unrelated to that, here's the top of the trigger mechanism.

And finally, here's the G36 cocking lever attached to the A5 cocking lever.

It took a heck of a long time to get the silly groove smooth and frictionless! Sanding, fitting, sanding again, argh. At least it's done! What does it look like fitted and working?? Well, why don't you download this 2.5MB avi (right click-save as, apologies to 56k users) and see for yourself! Let me know what you think. Sometime this week I'll be putting air through it.

---

Sweet...
Well, I ran air through this contraption this evening, and let me tell you, it's ALIVE! Hot damn. I didn't screw anything up! I still have some work to be done, which is routing the gas line out from the magazine area along the side of the G36, and then maybe through the grip? Maybe through the stock? Not sure yet. So right now, I can remove the magazine and just have a 9oz CO2 canister jut directly vertical off the gun. Just for now until stock arrives for me to route everything correctly.

Here's a comparison from what I started with (and wanted to emulate) and what I got. Not too shabby!

Original Tokyo Marui Airsoft G36c.

The G36c-A5.


And here are some pictures to end off this fun, hard, and exciting project! Things to keep in mind for version 2 is an Egrip conversion, and mm.. Anything else? I can't think of anything off the top of my head right now. Maybe do some black painting to get rid of some unsightly silver exposure.





Oops, now that I look at it, I forgot to put some screws into the iron sight and magazine release! What I've got in mind next is a P90 conversion for a Spyder Imagine.. That should be fun.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed reading what I enjoyed creating! If you have any questions, I should be able to answer them fully, since I'm finally (sorta) done! If you want any extra pictures that I didn't post, let me know and I can take one to answer any questions.

---

A couple new pictures, with my 9oz CO2 connected while I wait for remote line parts to become available (it's backordered at the moment). This is the way I'll be playing this weekend, so I should have some cool video and pictures in action!




It's extremely well balanced too! More pictures, as per requested. In these pictures you can see the job I did to pipe the remote through the side of the magazine. I'll most likely go back and just have the remote stick out vertically as opposed to the way it is now (at 45 degrees).






Here are some more pictures of the disassembled marker.





Another close-up of flatline, cocking lever and G36c cocking lever, and tac-cap. A5 taken apart with exposed internals. It's stock, as you can see.