umdlancer

I finally got my hands on a Recon (a few of them, actually) and performed a preliminary AR-removal, documenting it with pictures.

First off, some showboating:



1. Ok, now down to buisness. I've taken the Recon out of it's package and have proceeded to open the blaster by removing the screws:


2. Don't forget to move the slide back and remove the screws underneath:


3. You'll also need to remove the two screws on the black endcap, but don't worry about the screw on the orange piece:


4. Open it up, but be careful. That black plastic piece underneath the slide will be annoying; it's held in place by a metal pin which connects to both halves of the shell:


5. Pull out the bolt-sled. There aren't any screws holding it in, so it shouldn't be tricky. You can, incidentally, see the air restrictor in that picture:


6. Ok, let's work on that. First, you need to separate the bolt from the bolt-sled. That's not too difficult, it's only held in place by a metal pin in the top hole which you can push out with a small screwdriver. This is what it should look like after you do so:


7. Here we go, just the bolt:


8. I used a very long screwdriver and gradually punched the air restrictor out from behind. If you have a long enough drill bit and a steady hand, you could drill it out. Alternatively, you could try dissolving the glue holding the joint where the air restrictor is located using zippo lighter fluid, but I didn't have any on hand, and didn't feel like gluing it back together. Either way, your finished product should look something like this:


9. Ok, that's taken care of. Now to plug this hole:


10. I like using epoxy putty, but you could probably use hotglue instead. You'll also notice that I put the bolt-sled back together, that was simply inserting the bolt back into the sled, then pushing in the metal pin back inside the top hole:


11. Ok, see that big circle in middle of the bolt-sled? It mates with a circular piece on the slide just behind the screw:


12. Fit it together:


13. Ok, now put the internals back in place so that it looks like what we had in step #4, and put the shell back together so that it looks like what we had in step 1.

Success!

Edit: Fixed broken pictures.