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Barra 400e Full Review (LONG with pics and data) by Turbinator!

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boomBBQ:
Thanks so much for the great review. I will be adding one to my cart. Question is whether I should order this first or the Crosman ST-1   :o

Turbinator:

--- Quote from: boomBBQ on September 07, 2022, 04:05:31 PM ---Thanks so much for the great review. I will be adding one to my cart. Question is whether I should order this first or the Crosman ST-1   :o

--- End quote ---

You're welcome, glad you found it useful!

Wow, never looked at the ST-1 before.  I guess you'll need to decide if you want to first manage batteries (400e) or CO2 (ST-1).

Turby

buellm2:
Thanks for the excellent review.   I've been thinking about these since I first heard about them.  Of course I think about a lot of things I never actually buy, LOL.   Anyways are you going to do a follow up review after shooting 10,000 or so BBs through it?  I'm sure many are wondering about long term reliability.   Also, I been wondering how exactly the power mechanism works.   Is there a little electric motor that drives an internal compressor?

Turbinator:

--- Quote from: buellm2 on September 08, 2022, 01:02:28 PM ---Thanks for the excellent review.   I've been thinking about these since I first heard about them.  Of course I think about a lot of things I never actually buy, LOL.   Anyways are you going to do a follow up review after shooting 10,000 or so BBs through it?  I'm sure many are wondering about long term reliability.   Also, I been wondering how exactly the power mechanism works.   Is there a little electric motor that drives an internal compressor?

--- End quote ---

Hi there - I admittedly have not been putting thousands of BB's through my 400e, I have been distracted by my Crosman 1377's as of late.

As far as I know, me being familiar with air soft, the power mechanism works roughly this way:

The battery powers the motor;
The motor is housed in the grip;
The motor has a pinion gear on the shaft;
That pinion gear interfaces with a gearbox;
The gearbox drives a piston back and forth in a tube;
The tube interfaces with the back end of the barrel;
The magazine is spring loaded and forces BB's up into a feed port that goes right into the barrel chamber;
When the trigger is pulled, the circuit is closed and the motor spins, driving the gearbox, which in turn drives the piston, which in turn forces air into the chamber and out the barrel.

In full auto mode, this process repeats over and over until you stop pulling the trigger or run out of battery power.  The gun will continue to dry fire even when out of ammo - the gun itself has no provision to know when BB's are depleted from the magazine.  The user has to sense this by either observing a lack of BB's going downrange, or by listening to the different report of the 400e when it is fired with BB's versus dry fired.

As mentioned in my review, the 400e seems to share key components in the gearbox with air soft guns, so if one wanted to get adventurous and start swapping parts, one could.  You could tune the performance of the 400e this way using aftermarket parts.  I have not tried this myself, but I did personally tune a Tokyo Marui MP5A2 by upgrading the motor and the piston spring.  Anyone who is reasonably handy with tinkering can work on these types of guns.

Back to your first question, I'd be happy to follow up with an add-on to my review after putting the 400e through some more usage.  I have a pile of BB's waiting to be used. :)

Turby

buellm2:
Amazing that a tiny little motor and battery can drive a piston at high speed to propel a BB at similar speeds to lever action BB guns.   Is the 400E more powerful than a similar airsoft gun?   I've never fired an airsoft gun.

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