Quote:
Originally Posted by jamex
I think I just cried a bit  Didn't you just build me a hurricane kit? LOL. I was under the impression that the hurricane kits once fully worked on and tweaked by a doc, were a better kit than the guarder.
either way, hurricane was the only one with the kimber kit I wanted as you mentioned already. |
Anything build by a good quality installer will become a quality build. It's getting to that point, that's where installers can appreciate the build quality. A Nova kit, even at a staggering $700 price tag, can be slapped together in less than 20 minutes.
A Hurricane kit, on the other hand, requires hours of fitment work. Your build, took me almost 6 hours for just the actual kit installation, plus almost 10 hours of testing, and trialing different configurations for you, and countless hours of consultation.
Just because the kit itself is garbage, doesn't mean the build you'll get is garbage. As long as it's built well, and runs, then nobody really cares how much work went into it, except for the installer (me, in this case.)
Like I said previously, Hurricane kits are expensive, because you're paying for a lot of other little bits and bobs that come with the kit that other kits might not come with. Once you deduct the value of all those extra parts, the value of the frame and the slide themselves (which makes up the core of the kit), the value of those two parts would be less than a Guarder kit. People buy Hurricane kits, not because they're easy to install (they certainly aren't), but because they make very unique conversion kits. If what you wanted was a Kimber Custom Covert II, that's what you got, and it's a well built one. It's die cast aluminum though, and if you wanted one that's CNC machined from billet stock, then your only other option is to buy a real Kimber, unfortunately... that, or machine your own kit by hand.
Just realize, that at the end of the day, it's still just a die cast aluminum kit, just like Guarder's is. Realize the limitations of die cast aluminum. It's not as durable, and fitment isn't as precise (due to the casting process). If it's installed well, it should be free of major wobble, play, and rattle... but due to the soft nature of die cast aluminum, as you use the gun a lot, play will develop. Much like a real gun, but it happens faster with die cast aluminum, despite the lesser forces that airsoft guns endure.
Poorly installed kits will have tons of material filed off just to get parts to slide without friction, and that's probably the worst way to do it, because you end up with slide to frame fitment and/or barrel to slide fitment that makes the gun sound like a maraca from all the slop and wobbling in it.
Hurricane seems to be working from much looser tolerances, or just using crappier molds, so of any manufacturer I've ever had to work with, Hurricane has already required the most amount of work. I'm kind of glad they're hard to find these days. They're a huge time waster for me, but it doesn't mean I'll be lazy with the build. Don't worry, you're going to get a good gun. You and at least a few dozen people on ASC that I've built Hurricane guns for can attest to this. A lot of them have even gone on to 3rd and 4th owners who say their gun built by me is still performing extremely well. Your build was actually the last Hurricane build I'd offered with free installation. Since then, I've tacked on a $300 labor charge to install Hurricane kits. They simply require WAY too much time to get them installed well.
I've seen a lot of them simply slapped together by other installers, and they were chock full of problems. The biggest problem without re-working the entire kit from the gut out, is extremely poor gas consumption. Some of them, I've seen them get only 8 shots out of a full mag of gas. And then there are other installers who alleviate that problem by doing what I mentioned above... filing the crap out of everything so that it's so loose, there's zero friction everywhere, but also no components are really holding well to each other and causes the entire thing to shake and rattle more than a belly dancer on meth.