TM AUG Barrel Spacer and a Battery question [Solved-ish]

[springs]

Hey all, after entirely too much time playing far too little airsoft, I've been working on doing some maintenance and upgrades.

The project I'm working on is shortening the barrel on a TM AUG.
I got the correct size inner barrel for this, and a little stubby Kings Arms silencer adapter, but as I was fitting things together I realized the silver barrel spacer doesn't fit through the adapter (which if you happen to have a TM AUG Manual handy, it's part ST-41 in the toppish middle of the exploded diagram). I already knew it was going to be a bit longer than I wanted, and I'd like to avoid having to hacksaw it off in case for some reason I feel like putting the old inner and outer barrels on. I know I've seen pictures of AUGs where that piece ended inside the black tube surrounding it, but I'm assuming now they either aren't TM, or were a different version. I haven't had luck finding the specific piece to buy another one to potentially ruin, and I was wondering if any of you had any bright ideas for getting it out.  Or how to order one from TM and what that'd cost me.  Pic below for reference.


Didn't realize how poorly I'd put everything down, but the silencer adapter would snug right up to the black tube that goes into the bowels of the AUG if everything had diameters that played nice.



And for my battery question, I've got an Intellect large type 8.4v 3600mAH battery that's been sitting in a gun untouched for around two years.  Finally slapped it on my smart charger and was met with the blinkie red light of "...when the charger recognizes the battery as damaged or voltage is below 6V."

Despite my glee at the lack of Engrish I love and expect from an American company's instruction manual, my heart sinks a bit at shelling out for a new battery.  The charger's juiced up a Sanyo 8.4v 600mAH, and whatever brand 1100mAH came in my JG G36 without issue.  And with being rated for up to 12V 3600mAH @2amps, I'm going out on a limb and guess it's not my charger being retarded.

Lacking any other large-type chargers, and the closest hobby shop I know of that'd probably have a charger they'd let me slap it on, are there any other options for me for seeing if the thing is well and truly dead?  Or just eat another $60-something as I work away?


EDIT: I've since realized that after that long, a NiMH battery probably has way too low of a charge for the smart charger to even detect. Sadly, my normal wall charger is a small type plug, and I don't have a small to large adapter. (All I've got is large to small and large to alligator clips. So I'm still kind of stuck there, but I know worse comes to worse I can take a pair of wires, some e-tape, and potentially burn my house down).

EDIT 2: Worked my way through my questions well enough. Jerry-rigging the large battery to my normal wall charger yielded nothing. Voltmeter says it's dead, Jim. As for the barrel, best I can tell the plastic was molded around that aluminum spacer. So I took a hacksaw to it at the end of the plastic so it doesn't interfere with the silencer adapter. There might have been another way, but the deed is done.

[MayhemXXXFrosty (AndrewMp5k)]

The NiMh is probably dead. 2 years is a long time for a battery to sit. Sometimes chargers have mAh limits as well though. I know that back in the day my standard Winstar "fast" charger would only go up to something like 2200mAh. I had to get a higher end charger when I picked up my PSG-1 and had a 3600mAh to charge up. The likely hood that the battery is dead though is high and that it isn't your charger (especially if it charges other batteries fine). Are either of your chargers rated for that high of a battery? NiMh's have memory so if it sat so long most likely discharging itself in the process, it probably killed itself and at this point only remembers death. Sometimes you can trick chargers into bringing batteries back to life, I've never had luck with this though (people do it on 3c LiPo's and start them as 2c and after a minute or two they switch it back once it gets enough juice into it).

Although the deed is done, since you couldn't find a replacement silver spacer (though it doesn't really do much anyways except for stabilize the barrel more) I would have just widened the adapter hole to fit on the spacer. Better messing up a part you can replace then one you can't really. With a stubbier front end I doubt removing the spacer at all would have hurt anything (I remember removing mine for my Phantom Kit with no issues running a 590mm inner barrel inside of it)

[springs]

According to the instruction manual, the charger is rated that high. It's a Tenergy Universal Smart Charger (http://www.airsoftgi.com/product_info.php?products_id=1224). I'll drag the battery along with me to games to try on other people's chargers, but at this point I figure it probably died.

The adapter on the inside is pretty close to the OD of the actual inner barrel. I think they designed it that way so you wouldn't need a spacer near the end to help keep the inner barrel from moving around. It's metal, and I don't exactly have a lathe that could have done that. Plus, the spacer was several inches longer than where my flash hider now sits. I would have liked to keep it intact, but I don't expect I'd ever want to go back to the long barrel anytime soon if ever. And if I do, I kept the spacer and could stick it in the outer barrel along with some teflon tape and probably keep it pretty well put.

[MayhemXXXFrosty (AndrewMp5k)]

I personally would have used a dremel since most likely it wouldn't have needed much material removed (even though I have access to a lathe at my work). Even a drill with a big enough metal bit coupled with a vice would have worked IMO. I figured you were going to run a silencer or something on the end and not just a flash hider, but since you aren't you would have to cut it down anyhow. Most likely the spacer isn't really needed (at least the part you cut off). It just helped the outer barrel sit nice and secure because of the AUG's long inner barrel grouped with the hop-up being plastic and tending to break. TM probably engineered it that was because of that.

[springs]

That's what I figured; it being there to help the plastic bits at the far end not get torqued on.

Were I running a suppressor, then yeah it might've been a worthwhile exercise to try to dremel out the adapter and keep the spacer intact. I suppose it'd be doable; I just don't have any metal bits for my dremel, and it didn't occur to me for some reason, plus I did still need it shorter.

All in all, worked out well. The 363mm inner barrel ends a little over 1/8th" past the end of the adapter threads. Since all I could find that was in stock was a CW adapter, I had to get a + to - thing to get the flash hider on (not wanting to muck with re-threading it, something else I lack the tools at hand for). The fact that ehobbyAsia sent and charged me for three of the silencer adapters when I ordered one and have ignored my emails was the only hitch

I'm pretty content.