Emek Teardown

[Cdn_Cuda]

Just got my first even PE marker, a used Emek with PAL, DW Hair45, POPs and an upgraded trigger (not sure which one). So I'm going to take it apart for your viewing pleasure.

[BenoitOWN]

https://www.ansgear.com/Core_EMEK_100_EMEK_MG100_Hyper_Trigger_Dust_Black_p/coreemek100deucetrigger-dblk.htm

[Cdn_Cuda]

Thanks! Was thinking it was a Core or a Emach, but Emach seem to be grey.

[Cdn_Cuda]

First we'll take a look at the PAL system. This is an enhanced feed mechanism on a gravity fed hopper. Essentially it uses air from the gun to poke a rod that jiggles your balls. There's also a little shelf to cup your balls and take the pressure off. So kind like those boxer briefs with the "ball park" built in. PE was kind enough to make everything nice and colourful as well, even though no one will see it. But ball jiggling is usually best to be done in private.

If you look carefully between the feedback and the PAL hopper you can see the blue (upper) and (red) lower section. That's the PAL bits. It's housed directly in front of the feedback and adds a little girth to the feedback itself, but well integrated.


Here we have the view from the bottom of the hopper. That blue piece that does stuff.


And here is all the interesting bits inside the hopper. The red item being the ball shelf to relieve pressure, the blue bit being the ball agitator. This part gets pushed up by the "plunger" in the feedback.



And speaking of feedback, here it is: The red thing pokes the blue thing and it jiggles balls in the hopper. I think...


And finally, the top of the PAL hopper, which has a nicely designed a very helps "Push here" button that helps get the lid open. A really nice little touch by PE.

[Cdn_Cuda]

Now my Emek has a few upgrades that will differ from what a stock Emek has, so I want to be sure to point them out. If someone can add photos of the stock parts later that would be appreciated as well.

Here's the first upgrade I have, an Exalt end cap. This is what you unscrew to remove the drivetrain of the marker. It has nice grip and does exactly what it's designed to do and doesn't look bad either.

My next upgrade is the POPs on/off. This upgrade is straight from PE and is nicely integrated on/off. As the airline is internal you're left with a very clean, low-profile on off.


Next up is my trigger and the safety. Now there's two different types of safeties. This is the newer style push button and some of the non-PAL version had a switch I believe. Again someone can add a photo later. Thanks to BenoitOWN I now know that my trigger is a CORE trigger. It's got pre-and post travel and feels fine. I'll show more of the trigger later.

[Cdn_Cuda]

Now let's look under the hood at the Gamma Core. Being this is my first PE gun I know nothing about the Gamma Core other that it's in a lot of their guns and it's got a good reputation.

Here's some photos of those fun bits! First, all the pieces together:


Then let's take them apart and see what's what:


But wait, if we give it a little tickle, we can see the bolt extended in its blue sleeve. Bonus points to PE for using colour anno on parts. Blue black and red are much more interesting than if everything as just black. The bolt tip was a little dirty, but I cleaned things up as I was going.

And finally I remove the bolt from the bolt sleeve:

[Cdn_Cuda]

Now at this point I'm going to take a moment and provide some less than insightful thoughts. The first thing I noticed about the Gamma core is there are a lot of o-ring. More than I've seen in a gun in a long time. Multiple o-rings on the bolt, a few on the bolt sleeve include an internal o-ring (it is easy to reach at least). The main core also has what looks to be 9 o-rings. Coming from simpler, less efficient markers I was quite surprised. Emeks have a very good reputation at being very reliable and easy to use, but it's sure got a lot of o-rings that would need to be replaced at some point. And in fairness, that point may be a long time from now given how efficiency the Emek is and how low its operating pressure is, which is (according to Google) 135 psi.

[Cdn_Cuda]

Now back to the main purpose of this, taking things apart!

With the bolt removed we can look down the body and see the two nubbin' style detents, one on each side:


So let's get into take the body apart. There's just screws to separate the halves of the body:


Remove those and separate the two halves. Be mindful of the front lip used to connect the top half to the bottom half and keep everything aligned. You can see the lip to the left in front of the front grip.


Here's a close-up of the lip, it tucks into a slot on the body. Thinking it would be a bad idea to break this off, but it would be a difficult thing to do given it's nested into the upper body when put together.


And here's how the lip nests into the body when putting it all back together:

[Cdn_Cuda]

Now turning our attention the lower half of the marker, where the trigger and valve live. You can valve towards the back of the marker (left side) and the trigger plate above the trigger itself.


Here's the gasket that connects the DW Hair45 valve to the body. Be careful not to lose it or you'll need to order a replacement for PE (or they may be included in maintenance kits).



And just quickly we'll pop back up to the upper half and look at the detents and cover. A single detent per side, easily replaceable. Notice the large hole for where the eyes would be on an electric marker. This is just plugged by the detent cover, which nicely has an L on it in case you've accidentally confused your detent covers. Another nice touch by PE.

[Cdn_Cuda]

And now I'll quickly jump over to the aftermarket CORE trigger. It's got a screw to adjust the forward travel of the trigger and an adjustment screw to adjust the reward travel of the trigger. In playing with the adjustment I could tighten down the trigger pull considerably. I need to shoot paint with it to find my preferred trigger adjustment.

[Cdn_Cuda]

Overall this marker has excellent built quality and borrows a lot from the Etha platform. Heck, the body even says "ETHA" on it, which might confuse people in the future when they pull these out of old dust covered boxes.


But there are some design decisions I'm not keen on. The grips, for example, are comfortable but all those ridges are just an invitation for crap to get stuck in. People generally suck at cleaning paintball gear, so just imagine all the muck and paint that's going to get trapped in these thin little channels. Mine already are fill with who knows what and I needed to use a pick to try and clean it out, with moderate success.


But here's my biggest dislike of the Emek. These screws suck. Spyder gets called out for using them on Feednecks, and PE deserves to be called out for using them here. They will strip. And guess what, my bottom left screw is already stripped. Not a huge deal, but an annoyance. This has also prevented me from removing this panel and accessing the valve and trigger, so those parts of the review will be provided in a future update.



Some my next task will be to remove the stripped screw and continue with my teardown, but that will have to wait my friends. Heck, maybe I'll even get to shoot paint with this! I've only dry fired it in the basement.

Until next time!

[Cdn_Cuda]

Now let’s move on to the good stuff! The valve and trigger.

First, we need to remove the plate above the trigger. So gentle remove the four small silver screws. I also remove the safety. Take note there is a spring under this plate and it will move.


The spring goes between the trigger and plate and returns the trigger to the resting position. I have a very light spring here.


Next we need to remove the trigger pin. You’re going to push the pin through the body to remove it. Note the one side of the pin is gnarled to hold better. Push from the opposite end of the gnarled pin. Just push the rod a little to see which side that is.


With the pin gone you can easily remove your trigger and put in something fancy if you like, or just clean your trigger.

[Cdn_Cuda]

But before we can get to the valve more work
must be done! You need to take the grips off. So start by popping out the E logo on the back of the grips.



Once that is removed you can remove the back of the grip, popping the grip tabs out of the frame.



Then remove the front portion of the grips, which wrap around the front of the gun. Then you can see the internal portion of the frame and the air line running from the on/off up to the valve.


Now to remove the valve you will need to gentle push the bottom of the valve up. It’s hard to see (my valve is black) but it’s at the top of the air tube. Give it a poke and push it out the top of the frame until you can grab it and remove it.



….

[Cdn_Cuda]

So here's a nice look at the Deadly Wind Hair valve and pin. It's zoomed and a little oily, the valve does not look as rough as it does in this picture.


And here's the view of the space the valve occupies in the frame. The bottom of the valve (shown in photo) sits on the airline in the frame. In the frame you can see the pin that sides behind the trigger that presses on the pin in the DW valve.



And last but not least, let's look at the ASA. I've got a POPs ASA already in stalled, but you can see how it's mounted to the frame.



And here's the view at the bottom for reference.

[ford]

Cool pics. Love my Emek. I do not understand how people gnash up their screws so bad...

[Cdn_Cuda]

Fair, but these are generally designed for entry level players and as rental units, so the likelihood is they will not be treated with love and respect.

[Toestr]

Cool pics. Love my Emek. I do not understand how people gnash up their screws so bad...

Probably from using the wrong size driver or camming out from over torque (Phillips head was supposedly designed to cam out to avoid over torque on early assembly lines). Socket heads are nice (or bad) because they just don't work if you have the wrong size.

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