z-force design

[HOLLYW00D]

well, i'm new to the cocker world in general, but i recently received my z-force kit and it looks great.  assembly was not rocket science, and everything fit together nicely.  i had loctited (blue, as usual) my feed neck on.  then i placed an order for a different feed neck because i found that the feed neck it comes with, the hopper still swivels no matter how hard i tighten it down.  so i go to remove my feed neck using a strap wrench, and instead of turning the feed neck, the piece the feed neck screws on starts spinning (!!!!).  now i have a problem, i can either call them up and talk to them about what happened since it does have lifetime warranty and i doubt this would not be covered since i did everything "by the book" or i can take matters into my own hands and cut out the down time.  first, i noticed that the top part of the body was two pieces (duh, it separated, obviously...).  i would have figured that the feed neck nub (for lack of better words) would have been PART of the top body, but instead, it was pressed in (with green loctite, but still...  racegun mills that with their bodies).  i also noted that the nub that is pressed in, was not anodized BEFORE being pressed in.  so essentially if i don't line it up just right, i will have a black gun with a raw aluminum feed neck nub showing.  i would have figured all pieces would have been anodized PRIOR to assembly.  long story short, i got some JB weld, slapped that nub back in its place and it lined up perfectly (i was amazed i got that lucky) and all is well now (waiting on my new feed neck).  BUT, a few things i would have done differently:

*  first, i would mill that nub to be part of the body, not a press-in piece.

*  second, if i did have to make it a press-in, i would not have made it a prefect circle.  perhaps a fin going down the part that presses in and a groove for the fin in the body.  this would eliminate any problems regarding that piece coming out.

*  third, i would anodize all the pieces FIRST before assembly.

i think this was a poor design decision (cutting corners if you will).  as of right now, i believe that this is the only flaw in the z-force design.  i will have pics in the gallery sometime early next week.

[drg]

Anodizing would affect the press-fit however, and you'd be beholden to the quality of the annodize. If one batch were a little thick or thin you might end up losing the fit. Some kind of spline would probably solve the problem, or threading (I dont know if that's practical and it seems silly to have a threaded part that another threaded part screws into.)

Is this likely to be an issue among all Z-forces?

[HOLLYW00D]

hmm, you bring up an interesting point about the "after assembly anodizing," but i was under the assumption that if something loctited was throwing into chemicals and then had high voltage passed through it, it may somehow alter the chemical properties of the loctite and make it weaker (?).  as for this being a likely issue among all z-force kits, i don't know.  but it's very likely...  threading that piece and the body would not help since the threading would be mainly on two sides of the tube due to how the body is cut (if you give the orifice in the body 4 sides, two of them are tall, where the other two are very shallow).  i'm not sure how one expected to keep two round, smoothly finished pieces from torquing free just by adding some green loctite. *shrug*

on a side note, i had my body together when i was trying to unscrew the feed neck, and instead of shearing off the "two tiny screws," i broke the grip on the green loctited feed neck nub.  so all those who speculate that you can easily shear those screws, i hope this proves that it won't be that easy to do so.

[drg]

Nice work on busting that myth. This is the kind of information you can only really get from firsthand experience.