Dealing with Contreras quest issues

[ReservoirWater]

So how exactly do I start this quest? Isn't there supposed to be a dialogue option when talking to Contreras to initiate it? It's not appearing. I read something on the wiki that said you may get locked out of starting it with him if you've completed other quests related to Boyd and Hsu and I was wondering if that's true. If anyone knows how to fix this please let me know :P

[Mr_Faorry]

You start it by talking to Boyd during the Spy quest.

[Johnny Casey]

If you're talking about his quest related to acquiring This Machine, you have to be at certain level before initiating that quest.

[red255]

its also an unmarked quest so its not going to get a quest log.

[ReservoirWater]

Originally posted by Mr_Faorry:

You start it by talking to Boyd during the Spy quest.

Yeah, so I've heard, but I talked to Boyd about the shipments after I did it and I didn't get any new dialog with Contreras. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be able to get This Machine by helping him with his smuggling operation, but I'm having trouble doing it that way. I know you can just hack the terminal in the supply shack and bring the data back to Boyd, but I thought it would be more fun to do it the other way :P
Also, I'm lvl 45 so I'm in the clear for the level requirement.

[Doctor Go-Go]

I completely forgot about doing it the other way and hacked his terminal first therefore I wound up using console to spawn the Garand into my inventory since I didn't want to turn him in.

Awesome rifle btw, both in the game and the real world to this very day. Sure it holds 8 rounds but it reloads so fast it doesn't really matter. Not for a skilled shooter. Same goes for a 4+1 tube fed shotgun or rifle versus an extended tube. The more shells the tube holds the more you'll have to insert while loading it. Getting back into the fight is more important than fully loading the tube.