Airsoft-Ed

TL;DR? Well you're lucky then, because I've now made 2 videos:


 
Behold The Rundown Of Ed’s EPIC ICS L85A2

Out of the box rifle specifications:

FPS: 345, 370, 410 – spring tension is adjustable. Values may vary for each gun.

Barrel length: Supplied with a 480mm brass barrel, of 6.05mm in diameter. However, up to a 510mm (M16, AUG, M14) length barrel will fit without protruding into the flash hider.

Supplied with: Two high capacity magazines (470 rounds each) unjamming/cleaning rod and a pot of ICS .20g BBs

Rails: Top rail – 19mm

Hop: Unique design, no aftermarket hop units available for this rifle. It has its issues but it works well enough.

Gearbox: Again, unique to the ICS L85, supplied with very solid gears, bushings, factory shimmed and all around, pretty darn good to be honest, it's also heavily reinforced.

Motor: Comes with the godly ICS Turbo 3000. This thing can pull any spring you gear it to.

So let’s get started.
I bought the rifle back in December 2011 with the intention of making it look exactly like the one currently issued in Afghanistan.

The first things to order were the replica Daniel Defence RIS made by Madbull, as well as the adaptor for fitting to the ICS L85, I then bought a grip-pod made by god only knows what company, I can’t even remember where I bought it from, but it’s a nice high quality product for the price, works flawlessly and looks great.

Once those parts came and were fitted I needed the correct ACOG mount, so I ordered that from Ant-Supplies, as I was a little weary about ordering from RSOV in Hong Kong because of all the horror stories I’d heard about import tax and such.

I already had an ACOG at the time and back when I started the project I thought that would do, later on I decided it wasn’t accurate enough to the real steel, so I decided to order a new ACOG, but that wasn’t until about 5 months into the project when I went to the Arms Fair in May.

So at this point I had the gun set up with the DD RIS, grip pod, ACOG mount and an ACOG, but not the right one.

Since the RIS was fitted I needed to start running LiPo batteries, issues arose at this point, the connector that comes with the gun is for a large Tamiya and there’s so much extra wire that I couldn’t come anywhere even close to fitting the battery in with a connection conversion lead. So I rewired to small Tamiya and cut short the cables so everything fit.

I was happy with this set up for a fairly long time until I ran into issues at a skirmish at The Stan. The gun just died, like there was no battery connected and the trigger mech kept making a strange clicking noise. I finished the day using my MP5.
Once I got back I looked into it and found that from all the stripping and reassembling I’d been doing to change bits and alter the spring tension for different site rules etc. had caused the connection pins that break the circuit when the receiver is split as a safety feature, to be pushed away from their contacts. They didn’t complete the circuit once the gun had been re-assembled, as they should have.

So I bent them upwards, which seemed to fix it.

To fix the trigger mech clicking I dismantled it, couldn’t understand what the issue was, re-assembled it, and now it’s fine… That seems to fix a lot of things in my experience. If something doesn’t work, take it to bits and reassemble it before you plan to do anything else to it.

Since I’d been looking into the internals, I decided I’d start doing some actual work on them, this is the first AEG I ever dismantled, so that’s testament to how easy to work on it is.

I knew I wanted a Tanio Koba Hop-Twist barrel, but I couldn’t find the right one anywhere on earth, so I ended up getting one for an L96 from Land Warrior for about £70.

Since the barrel cut was for a sniper, the barrel retention pieces in my gun didn’t fit the barrel, so I had to decide to either mod them, make some new ones, or remove them altogether. I realised they weren’t needed for anything other than a better air seal, which I didn’t realise the importance of at the time, so I opted for full removal.

This meant that the barrel had to be held in by friction alone, so I wrapped insulation tape around the barrel so that it was a super tight fit in the outer barrel, it was damn hard to get in and out after that.

Now the barrel was done I went for the hop unit, I’d been advised to get a Madbull Blue rubber, and so I did. I also experimented with different nubs, eventually choosing to use the biro ink tube mod, so I cut it to size and used that.

I ran with this set up for about 2 months until I noticed Red Wolf had the correct twist barrel in stock, so I immediately ordered one. This gave me back the bug for adding stuff again…

I asked for advise on how to make the gun the best it could be (thank you Mr. Finius) and was told I needed a better hop nub and a new piston head (amongst other minor, home grown internal modifications that so far I haven't attempted). So I ordered a big-out H nub and a Lee’s Precision Engineering piston head, which has an air brake on it to increase the life of the internals. In retrospect the piston head wasn’t really needed, the only change I’ve observed is that it’s more difficult to tell when the gun is dry firing because it sounds similar to when it’s firing rounds, and it’s ever so slightly quieter.

At this point I was running the same externals as before but with a new piston head, proper twist barrel allowing me the correct barrel fitting and the H nub. This is possibly the greatest combination of parts for any rifle if you want immense accuracy and even more immense range. I have my rifle set on the middle spring tension, which is about 350fps on .20s, I run it using .25s and I can comfortably hit a man sized target at up to 50m.

Twist barrels are said to work best at under 330fps, so if you want to stick one in a sniper running 500fps, it’s fine. Just use .40g or .46g BBs to bring the fps down and your sniper will become a laser rifle… Well, minus the projectile speed.

After adding those parts I started researching into the real steel a bit more, I found out that the real steel L85 was now fitted with a new flash hider, a different ACOG to mine that's equipped with a docter site, I also noted that the L85 was now issued with Magpul EMAGs and an LLM01.

So I ordered all of that, and some rail ladders for good measure. Shortly after making this order I realised that the docter sight on the ACOG I'd ordered didn't look like the proper one on the L85, so a quest began to find one. I eventually found it thanks to a tip off from CKinnerley about BritKitUSA, so thanks to CK for the final, finishing touch.

A lot of this stuff was in the post for absolutely ages, I ordered the ACOG from G1098Airsoft and they messed me about for over a month, so I re ordered most of it from RSOV.

Whist it was all in the post I thought I’d improve the internals. My aim was to increase the trigger response, as it was the only thing letting the gun down.

I looked into changing the motor, but decided that the ICS Turbo 3000 was actually an amazing motor already, which troubled me somewhat, how can I increase the trigger response time if I can’t just get a new motor?

I decided to look into shimming the gearbox, the idea being that if the gears are more properly aligned, the motor won’t have to work as hard to turn them over, giving me a more efficient use of battery and motor power. I’d been practising taking guns apart and getting to know and understand gearboxes over the last couple of months, so I ordered a few packs of shims from Patrol Base and managed to shim the gearbox pretty well, it did give a noticeable improvement, but the trigger response still wasn’t good enough.

So I’m stuck now. The gun’s absolutely flawless in every way, externals, internals, accuracy and range. But the trigger response is still terrible. I would say it’s the only thing I can hold against the ICS. I think the G&G L85 has a pre-cocking system, which would make the trigger response literally instantaneous. I’d pay a lot if there were a way I could have that in my ICS.

Since I can’t think of any solution to this that can be realistically achieved I’ve decided to let it go.

I’d considered getting an even better motor or switching to higher voltage LiPos but I don’t want an unrealistically high rate of fire and I don’t want to have to buy stronger gears. The ICS L85 also has a proprietary piston, there are no after market pistons available. Meaning if my set up shred one, I can never run the set up, because that’s the only piston I can ever have.

My current thoughts are that if the target is far away I have the range advantage about 90% of the time. If they’re up close and personal, I’ll just have to switch to auto to deal with them, as that’s the only way to overcome the trigger response issue, I’ll just have to learn better trigger control and not get greedy. Running real caps means auto is rarely a good idea.

Edit:

Motor packed in today, before the ACOG, docter sight and wing mount have even arrived! So I guess we'll see if changing the motor can get me a better trigger response, I've got a Systema High Torque motor on the way, from Zero One... £85. Gulp.
Still planning on swapping to Deans connectors and at some point completely rewiring it with low resistance wiring.
If possible I'll also fit a Mosfet.

My quest for better trigger response has begun!

The first step on the quest was successful, the Systema motor came today and the trigger response has improved noticeably. The gun actually feeds more powerful, you can really feel the shake of the internals in your shoulder when you pull the trigger. I tried turning this motor over by hand before installing it and it was damn difficult. I used to think my ICS motor was difficult to turn over, this thing must be at least twice as powerful. The power of it makes me feel like I have to do something to reinforce the circuitry a bit better.

Edit:

Trigger response has been massively improved by getting a new trigger mechanism. There's a small pin in the trigger assemly that acts as a guide rod for the trigger contacts and mine had snapped in half somehow, but I didn't realise it wasn't supposed to be like that until the new trigger mech arrived. Trigger is absolutely spot on now, response is perfect, ROF is perfect.
New hop hasn't really made any change, even with an AEG cut barrel the barrel retention bits still needed modding, so I just used the pre-modded ones from the old hop.

The gun is shooting straight as an arrow though, accuracy is above average, it could still do with a few hop tweaks, but I'm going to skirmish it on Sunday and see if the parts don't just all bed themselves in a little better. I imagine consistency will increase through use.

I also now have all the parts, so after I've skirmished it and have a bit of spare time I'll get some photos added... Though I might not do it until something buggers up. Once I've set the gun up I don't really like taking it apart to do anything apart from change the spring, 'cos the barrel assembly is an utter arse to get back together properly. It's really hard to seat the hop rubber correctly because of how tight the unit is.

I've recently decided that I'm going to get an M140 spring for this to whack the fps up to 450, then use .36s or .40s and field it as a DMR. I'm pretty certain the internals can take it and I've already shimmed it to perfection, the systema motor could probably pull an M9billion so that won't be an issue either. I'll let you know how it goes.

Anyone know how to disable auto? 'Cos to me it looks like you NEED the fire selector mechanism to be able to use semi, without it there's no way to engage the cut off lever... Might have to just hope my site trust me. Which I think they do.

Edit:

DMR plans fell through, somehow the motor is unable to pull even an M130 (I couldn't find an M140 in stock anywhere) so for the time being I've decided to just use it as a regular AEG, it running at about 360fps at the moment because my new spring is yet to bed in, but with .25s it's running around 320fps.
If I take up the DMR plans again I think I'll start it by changing the ratio of my gears, as it stands I can't really be bothered to work out what ratio I'd need, or which gears will be compatible.

I'm also planning to make an L129A1 DMR at some point over the next year or so, so there'll be no need to have my L85 at DMR specs.

Edit:

Currently it's August 2012, the gun is about 8 or 9 months old and has had approximately 20,000 rounds through it since I bought it, so various parts have been added and removed etc. I don't think I'll be making any vast changes from this point forward, other than replacing parts as and when they break.

I'll write an update for this around this time next year and see how everything's holding up.

Edit:

Just a little update on how the gun's performing. It's now December the 11th, so within 10 days of the gun being a year old.
At approximately 3000 rounds, or one pot of ammo per month, that means it's fired something in the region of 36,000 rounds.
Everything is still solid and showing no internal wear at all on any of the internal parts - Except, the motor gear and whatever the name of the gear that the motor meets, don't mesh 100% perfectly, the angle of the slope on the motor's gear is slightly steeper than the corresponding slope on the 3rd gear from the piston in the gearbox. This is causing wear on the 3rd gear and the motor's gear, resulting in tiny little metal chips building up in the gearbox and a very, very slow rate.
I've only cleaned it out once in about 4 months and the little bits I had to remove were akin to sand, or very fine iron filings. It does not appear to have any effect on performance.

Currently I'm running it with a 6.01mm barrel which I initially bought for a 16-17inch barrel M4 project but it was too long (455mm) so I tried it in the L85 and I've actually been seeing much better results.
I don't know whether it's because my twist barrel has been used too much and the "threading" I'll call it, in the barrel has been knocked by BBs too many times to be effective anymore, perhaps twist barrels can expire, or wear out... Well either way, running a Version 1 Madbull 6.01mm by 455mm tight bore barrel I have been seeing better results than with the twist barrel.

In the hop I'm still using a Madbull blue rubber. I keep meaning to experiment with different rubbers, but so far the Madbull is a signifiant improvement over the standard rubber. Additionally, when using the Madbull a smaller nub is required, otherwise even with hop off, the rubber will obstruct the barrel to such an extent that it will overhop literally everything you shoot through it. The nub I use to overcome this is the same as I had before, a Big Out H nub.
I've changed the spring to an M100.

I'm now seeing the fps sit at around 360 in the middle setting using .20s and as per usual, I run it using .25s.
The rifle is effective out to around 40m. By effective, I mean I could hit a target with one shot. As for hitting a target at all, the max range I've ever hit someone was round about 70m and required me to aim around 6 feet above the target and just spray on auto when they were unaware of my position, so as not to see the BBs coming in and move out of their path.

For reference to its effectiveness there's my YouTube videos (link to my channel in my signature), all of which, bar one (or two if you count the one that isn't airsoft related) I use the L85 in.

Aside from the barrel change, I also bought a new charging handle and tappet plate. The charging handle replacement was bought because the standard one had become so wobbly that I just couldn't deal with it anymore, tightening it to the point where the screw wore away could be completely undone by simply racking it once.
Interestingly, the replacement charging handle was different in this respect, instead of the bolt handle being screwed into the fake bolt, it was screwed in and then welded in place, so it physically cannot move. I've had no issues since then, and regularly rack it back and let it go for the fun of it.

The tappet plate was bought more as a spare because the part is proprietary and I didn't want my current one to break for me to then be stranded without one. Again, interestingly, the new tappet plate was of slightly different design. Testing it in the rifle showed no performance difference from what I can see, but what ICS seem to be doing, is in some way or other improving all the individual components, separate from the rifle itself. So you buy the gun and it comes with all the standard bits.

But, should they fail and you buy a spare or replacement, the part you get is different to the one you broke, despite it being by ICS and for the L85. So it seems that ICS are making up for the fact that these parts are proprietary, by making the replacement parts better than the ones supplied with the gun, so that replacing parts when they break, is akin to getting an upgrade.

I also readdressed the DMR idea. I haven't skirmished it with this set up yet, but I bought a new Madbull M120 spring and put it on the highest spring tension. This put the fps up to 380 (average over 5 shots) with .20s
Couple this high fps with .30s - the same 6.01, madbull blue and H nub as with my regular set up and this thing shoots an untold distance. As I said, I've not skirmished it yet. But I did test it when I took it to chrono at another site (they wouldn't let me use it because they don't have a DMR rule... ) and the BBs were flying out of sight before I saw more than 1 foot of drop and I could clearly see them for at least 60m.

So in short, should I ever skirmish this with this DMR configuration, everyone I see will be within engagement range the only downside, is that there is no way to lock this gun to semi. The fire selector which is linked mechanically to the trigger mechanism is required in order for semi auto to work and the only conceivable way to remove the auto function is to remove the fire selector. Since I can't remove the fire selector without losing semi and not auto, there's simply no way to lock it to semi only. Which in all likelihood will make it impossible to field as a DMR legitimately.

I'll also update the parts list and overall cost to account for me now using a different barrel and having 12 Emags.
 
UPDATE - 13th April 2013
 
Since the above posts, my motor's pinion gear shredded itself to pieces. Rather pleasingly, the ICS gears and piston are still completely fine, so that's some evidence that ICS parts are of comparable quality to Systema.
 
I worked out Sherlock Holmes style that the reason the motor gear imploded was because the angle it met the gears wasn't right, and since there's sweet FA I could do about that, I thought I'd use this opportunity to buy some new bits and bobs.
 
So in the post I had some Ultimate High Torque gears - in the hope that they'd meet the Systema Magnum motor's pinion gear at the right angle, a new pinion gear of the exact kind I'd had before, a Systema version 2 cylinder head, some new shims and probably some other stuff. It's getting too much to remember all the stuff I've done to this rifle now.
 
In short it took roughly 50,000 rounds for this part to fail (discounting the ICS motor burning out) and it wasn't even a standard part.
 
I now have it fitted with:
A Madbull Ultimate aircraft aluminium, 6.01mm tightbore, of 510mm in length. The hop unit has a Systema standard AEG hop rubber in it, and a Big Out H Nub. I also managed to grab an aluminium hop arm off someone on these forums.
The air nozzle is the stock part, the cylinder head is a Systema V2, for the piston head I've recently gone back to the standard one, as the Systema cylinder head's shape renders the LPE air brake piston head pointless. The piston itself, piston head and cylinder are therefore all as they came when I initially bought it.
The gears are Ultimate High Torque gears, I think the ratio is 28:1 and the gears are helical.
The gears have been shimmed.
Lastly the motor is a Systema Magnum High Torque.
 
I use it with a 9.9v 1000mah LiFe battery, Blaster .25g BBs, Magpul PTS Emags and an M100 (I forget which make, but I don't think that matters)
 
With spring tension on full, this is possibly the most accurate, long range, skirmishable AEG I've ever known. Hitting a man with one shot at 50m? Piece of piss. I can see it reaching out to up to 70m with the barrel pointing up a fair bit of course.

Anyway, here's a list of absolutely everything I've bought to add to the gun, externals, internals and generic parts, as well as parts I've replaced due to wear, or fault.
If you want to know where I got any of it from, just ask and I'll help you find a place to get it.

Update - 30th July 2013:
So the helical 1:28 ratio gear plan didn't last very long in the end. Since the motor had to turn so many more times for me to get one shot off, rate of fire and trigger response suffered quite a lot and since my batteries are only 1000MaH, they were running out pretty quickly as well.
So now I'm running with all the same parts as the last update, except I've got the original 1:18 ratio gears installed and I also picked up a Systema V2 piston head, to better compliment the Systema cylinder head.

I've also bought and sold a few ICS L85s and L86s since the last update, and one of them went to a collector who just wanted it as a display model; so now I've got a complete set of internals spare in case anything goes arse over tit.

The only thing I really have to keep tabs on is the motor's pinion gear, since the angle of the gears don't mesh with the pinion gear, they do gradually wear each other down. I might have to buy a load of pinion gears in bulk just in case it packs in unexpectedly.

But aside from that, I'm happy with it.

Maybe I'll think about getting some high speed gears just to make the trigger response even more epic...
Still need to rewire it all to Deans connectors as well =/

I had an art teacher at school who used to say, "You can't finish art"
It's TRUE! Argh!

Base cost:
Rifle £320

Externals and related:
RIS £130
RIS adaptor £16
Grip-pod £20
LLM £70
ACOG and docter £110
ACOG mount £26
Docter wing mount £11
Rail ladders £60
Flash hider £25

Total: £788

Current Internal upgrades:
Barrel Madbull (6.01x510mm tb) £30
Hop rubber Systema £6
Hop nub Big Out H Nub £10
Systema High torque motor £85
Systema V2 Cylinder head £10
Systema V2 Aluminium piston head - Left it too long to update this... I think it was £12, not sure.
Aluminium hop arm £10

Total: £173

Grand total: £961 (Minus postage and additional costs below)

Additional costs:

Magazines:
Magpul PTS Emags x14 = £280

Batteries:
9.9v LiFe x4 - £60

Charger:
Basic LiPo/LiFe charger = £15

Generic internal parts:
Shim set x3 = £12

Replacement parts due to wear or other fault:
Trigger mechanism = £23
Hop unit = £19
Charging handle = £14
Pinion gear = £10
Butt plate (lost the screw from the back that stops the motor adjustment screw from altering through use) - £22

Overall costs, including everything apart from postage costs and ammo = £1,432

Oh and here's a photo of a real Afghan spec L85:



And here's a photo of mine:

Make and model:
As per the title, the manufacturer is WE and the gun in question is their L85A2 gas rifle.

Build quality:
I think this is a thing most people will be curious to know but won't think to ask, so I'll stick it at the top of the review.

I have to first state that I haven't handled the real rifle, so my comparison will be more against all (as I have handled all) the other airsoft L85 models on the market, all of them are AEGs of course, but I have owned the ICS for a long time, I've owned the Ares for a brief stint, I've picked up the odd G&G for a fondle at shows and I know a few people with Army Armament models too.

The WE is more or less what you'd expect, it's full metal, sturdy construction with a good amount of heft to it and made of the right materials in all the right places. I don't think there are really any L85s on the market that don't deliver on that front, to be honest. Even the Army Armament, being the cheapest L85 on the market, does a good job of living up to all the others on an externals only basis.

EDIT:
One thing of note that was brought to my intention in the comments which I completely forgot about, is that the WE L85 has an 18mm top rail. The real rifle, as well as many, perhaps even all of the other versions on the market have 19mm rails as per the real thing.
This means you'll have to be careful with buying optics, as well as rail adaptors. Definitely go for a try before you buy approach. SUSATs are designed for the 19mm rail, so you might only be able to fit certain brands of SUSAT.
I don't want to say this with 100% certainty, but I do think you should be safe with anything that fastens with screws and is designed for a 20mm rail though.
I myself am using an ACOG mounted on a Hornbill cantilever riser mount, which is essentially an ACOG mount designed for the L85's 19mm dovetail rail and that fits on my WE. It doesn't fit on there perfectly, you have to balance it out carefully with a screw that anchors it to stop it sliding forwards and backwards (same as with the rear iron sight that comes with the rifle) but it does fit.
End of edit.

With the WE being gas though, the moving parts come into it a little bit. Racking the bolt on the L85 is the most satisfying of the GBBRs I've handled (GHK G5, WE M4, WE MP5, KWA MP9, TM MP7, WE SCAR L and WE AK PMC being the others I've tried), the charging handle wobbles a little bit but that's because it's held in place by the ejection port's edge overlapping the edge of it to stop it coming out. I've no idea if that's the same as on the real rifle, and I'm aware it sounds bad, but trust me when I say I trust it to never fall out even with heavy knocks, or even a direct bash from a hammer. The rifle is solid. If it wasn't like a child to me then I wouldn't think twice about using the front grip as a ladder to help me through windows lol.

As for being true to the real rifle, it's not the best on the market, Ares probably takes that trophy. The WE is externally modelled off the ICS design from what I can tell, the barrel threading is the same (14mm CCW), it shares the same quick detach system on the polymer hand guard, (though if you want to fit the Madbull RIS, the ICS adaptor won't work, you'll need the WE specific one) and it's the same incorrect shade of green. Unlike the ICS however, the WE actually has the (functional) bolt release in the right place and also has markings on the fire selector. Though it does lack the trades on the right side of the magazine housing that the ICS does have, and the bolt lock on the right side of the rifle is non-functional on the WE, whereas it does work on the ICS.

The only other thing I can think to mention on this front is that the WE, being a gas rifle, field strips in exactly the same way as the real rifle. The only clear differences are that the trigger mechanism is obviously set up to work with an airsoft gun, so there's a hammer to hit the back of a magazine, and the guide rods for the recoil spring have small buffer springs at the back end of them to help return the bolt slightly faster.
 
Speaking of the bolt, it doesn't travel the full distance, which is to say, when it locks to the rear and when firing the gun, the bolt only cycles to around the back end of the large rectangular ejection port, on the real rifle there's a good inch or more of travel left to go past that point, but the WE stops short. It's probably for the sake of gas efficiency and to help the rifle cycle faster, it is only powered by compressed gas and not mini explosions after all, given that this is the only gas L85 on the market though, it would be a shame to hold this against it, especially since all the AEGs, even the blow back models also lack full travel of the bolt.

The bolt is also constructed differently to the real thing, which again is obvious, but it looks very similar, the nozzle is even modelled to resemble an actual bolt, complete with locking lugs.

So on the whole it's a very well presented, realistic feeling rifle, with noises that excite your downstairs parts.

Moving on...

Performance:
When buying a gun you want to know it's a solid shooter, right? Well that's a difficult thing to really approach from a scientific perspective when it comes to gas guns. I can't just say it shoots X distance at X fps because it's a little more complicated than that.

If you're reading this as a gas gun user, then I'm sorry for mentioning all this, but my reviews are designed to give people every ounce of info I can pass on to anyone who wants to read them, so I don't like to skimp out on the more general details for the sake of keeping things short and sweet.

By its nature, gas as a propellant is... Unpredictable, let's say. The pressure gas is held under depends on the temperature and how much of it there is, couple this with the fact the parts accepting the gas move around (the bolt) meaning they don't mesh in exactly the same way every time, and by the nature of them moving, have gaps between them, through which gas can escape; gas rifles make for pretty inconsistent shooting platforms.

Don't expect AEG performance from any gas blowback rifle, the WE L85 is no exception to this rule. However, that's not to say you can't get god-like range and accuracy from them, it just means you won't get it all the time on a repeatable, game day to game day basis.

It is unlikely that you will see this gun performing the same on every skirmish you take it to, the temperature is never going to be the same, so you're going to need see your fps alter slightly from game to game, fps differences mean the hop needs re-setting often, and perhaps even ammo weight changing to account for lower power in some instances.

What this means is that sometimes you might have it performing so bad that you just can't deal with it, whereas others it will be so totally flawlessly on the money that you'll want to marry it and take it to bed. Such is life with gas rifles. You have to take the rough with the smooth, and I think this ambiguity, combined with the higher than usual price tag is what puts a lot of people off getting gas rifles.

You can help the consistency by buying an NPAS (negative pressure adjustment system) kit, which replaces the valve in your nozzle for an adjustable one, this allows you to alter the time gas is sent down the barrel for. Longer for more fps, shorter for less. Generally it allows for adjustment between the low 200s and the high 400s but I haven't honestly tested mine to its extremes. Just remember it's like a screw, you tighten it for more fps and loosen it for less, they cost about £15 so definitely buy one otherwise the rifle will more than likely chrono too hot for UK limits. Especially in the summer, and especially with heavier ammo, which I recommend using with any gas rifle.

Realistically though, it's a very capable rifle, on a good day it will reach out and touch people at 70m, and being gas you can easily up it to DMR limits, use super heavy ammo and just have at it. With it being entirely mechanical, if you understand how it works then playing around with the power settings and fitting different barrels and such can be half the fun on its own.

Fun factor:
High. Very high... Oooohhh, buy one.
I may be biased... But seriously, I have had issues with this gun, which I'm going to stick in their own section later on, but they're not bad enough to out weigh how amazing to use this rifle is.
The bolt is large and heavy, this thing has a really nice kick to it, it's loud and the sound is awesome, all the metal on metal noises when reloading just round it all off nicely. It's so nice to fire that I honestly wouldn't mind if the actual shooting performance was a lot worse than it is, because it's just so fun to shoot.
I joke about being biased, but if I'd had a bad time with the rifle there's no way I'd be able to be this positive about it, is there? Haha.

I can't personally recommend it though, and it's not because I'm hiding anything from anyone, it's just that I acknowledge that I am weird. =/ I'm seriously picky when it comes to picking guns, and personally I'm more into it for the realism side of things than anything else. Like I said earlier, if it shot half as well as it does, I'd still love it, just because how it works is mechanically orgasmic to me lol. But! Considering the cost, I'm not sure many people would want to deal with the downs as well as the ups. Everyone's going to love the ups, but the fact that there are any downs at all, let alone the fact that you can't really control them that well, is just going to be too much for some people, and since I can't run a psych evaluation on everyone who reads this, I think it's safer to just say I don't recommend it, in case someone buys it, has nothing but bad experiences and then blames me lol.

You need to know what you're doing, you need to have money to burn (or good patience), you need to have contacts in the airsoft world who can supply you with spare parts and I would say it would help hugely to actually have an interest in the mechanical aspect of the gun, rather than just wanting it to shoot people with.

It's more about the joy of the recoil and the sound than the actual performance, it just so happens that the performance can be incredibly good. So if you are looking at buying it, buy it for the awesome recoil, noise and the realism, not the performance.

It's like having an awesome conversation with a girl in a bar and falling over yourself because of how amazing she is, that's the fun factor of this gun. The silver lining, is that she's also hot as balls, which translates into shooting good in airsoft gun terms lol.

Issues, fixes, and things to be aware of:
Right, the first thing you need to be aware of, is that the version of the gun that I have, came with the trigger mechanism and barrel pre-upgraded with steel, RA Tech parts. As such, I have no idea how long the stock gun's trigger will last, or what the stock barrel will be like.

However, when it comes to upgrading parts in gas rifles, they are generally more to increase reliability than performance. My steel trigger set doesn't make the trigger perform better, it just makes it last longer and as of today I have owned the rifle for about a year and a little over a week and I have had precisely 0 trigger related issues. The trigger mechanism also houses the bolt lock, which has also been flawless and is still showing no wear at all, even on the stock bolt where it meets. Very impressed, very satisfied.

The barrel obviously is a performance related part, but I do also have a gas WE SCAR which has a stock barrel and that is more accurate than the L85 on its good days and that's with a standard barrel, so just forget about the barrel point for the sake of the review. I actually wish I had a stock barrel to try with my L85, because given how well the SCAR shoots I think it might actually be better without a barrel "upgrade".

Anyway though, the first issue you will probably encounter, is the bolt seizing. You'll be firing and then the bolt will just jam and not return to its forward position. This is a known, and very common fault with the WE L85, so common in fact that I can 100% guarantee it will happen to absolutely every WE L85 that's ever been made, unless it's been fitted with a steel bolt - which as it happens, I do not recommend you buy. Total waste of money, unnecessary and they've also been discontinued, so also very hard to get.

So, what causes this bolt jamming issue?

The bolt is made of cheap metal and it moves around very violently. As it travels back upon firing, it hits against a pair of very short, very stiff buffer springs. These springs then fire the bolt forwards again.
They hit the bolt so hard that they cause the metal to mushroom around the impact point, you will more than likely experience this issue within the first 3000 shots fired, might be more, might be less.
The metal deforms from the impact and it causes it to close the holes around the guide rods that the buffer springs are sat on. So when the metal deforms enough, the holes close to the point where they just grip the guide rods and the bolt jams.

How'd you fix it then? You just need to get some steel washers, just the simple little, metal rings, and fit them between the buffer springs on the recoil rods, and the bolt. Sounds like a joke it's that simple, right? Well it seriously is. The washers take the brunt of the impact force and completely stop the bolt from deforming. I've been running a stock bolt for a little over a year now without that issue occurring one single time since I fitted the washers.

I have a video on my YouTube channel detailing this and how to fix it if you need clearer instruction. I'd stick a link here in the review but then there'll be a massive video box breaking it all up. I might add it as a comment, maybe. Send me a personal message or check my profile for ways to get hold of me for more info if you need a hand with anything.

Next thing to keep an eye on, whilst we're on the topic of the bolt, is the screws for the guides that hold the nozzle inside the bolt. There is one guide on the top of the bolt, and one on the left side. The top one is held in with two screws, the left one is held in with one.

These screws are TINY, but they're also very important. Important, and a little bit annoying... If you tighten them all the way, then they can restrict the movement of the nozzle inside the bolt. The nozzle needs to freely move back and forth because it's what causes the blowback, you need the blowback to work for the gun to work. So you need these screws to be loose enough for the nozzle to move freely, but tight enough to not fall out, because they can and will come out. The recoil force will work them loose over time. So you need to keep an eye on them before and after every time you get the gun out for a shoot. You might want to think about holding them in place somehow, but if you're thinking of using loctite be VERY careful you don't get any on the moving parts because that shit is like glue, and moving parts that don't move, don't work.

You need to be aware of the pistol grip. This is held on with a single self tapping screw that is both very short, and very thin. As such, swinging the gun around and holding it by nothing but the grip may very well strip this screw at some point, or work it loose, until you eventually end up with the grip either coming off, or physically breaking off.

If you buy the rifle from Milspec Solutions then Iain actually carried out a very simple mod that fixes this issue before shipping the rifles out. Which is to simply remove the screw the gun comes with, and fit a slightly wider, and much longer self tapping screw. This grips better and just generally more, by nature of being a longer screw. If you can't fully eliminate all the wobble, then stick some washers between the screw head and the rifle body on the inside of the gun.

The only other thing I can think to mention is that you need to keep an eye on the ejection port/dust cover. This is the green piece that flaps up and down just behind the bolt. It's designed to stop dirt and dust from getting inside the gun through the little slot behind the bolt which the charging handle slides through.

The dust cover is held on with a pin, this pin is free to slide back and forth to the point where it comes right off the gun if it wants to. The dust cover isn't essential, the gun will work without it, but standard practice is to close it when not firing to stop any dirt magically jumping in through the hole. Firing the gun automatically opens the cover, but it's firing to open the cover that persuades the pin to start escaping, so if you don't want to have to worry about it, you can either glue the pin in place, or alternatively, just leave the dust cover open all the time, as if it doesn't move, the pin won't either.

Maintenance:
I think this is a bit of a dirty word that gets thrown around a bit too much in the wrong ways. I often see people mention maintenance as an excuse, or argument against getting a gas rifle, but at least with the WE L85, it's really not a maintenance heavy rifle.

You just need to make sure all the parts that need to move, can move freely, and if they can't, open the gun up and see if you can figure out why.

Similarly, if the performance seems to have taken a hit, or if full auto doesn't work, or whatever, then have a look on the inside at the parts in control of that function and see if there's any signs of wear. This is where knowing how the gun works comes into its own, if you understand how it works, diagnosing issues is very simple and easy.

So, making sure everything works as it should, and checking for wear. Bob's your Uncle, Fanny's your anut and WE's your significant other because L85's your new baby lol.

Cold weather performance:
Another thing that people hold against gas guns, though with a little more reason this time.

I have used my L85 in temperatures as low as 2 degrees Centigrade and the performance was no different to using it in the height of summer, I could still get off a full mag, it would still lock on the last shot and the shot trajectory, accuracy and range was no better or worse than on any other day. I've also used it in torrential rain, and I do mean literally like standing in a cold shower levels of moronically, monsoon-esque rain and it still worked fine then too. Accuracy did suffer because the hop rubber got wet, but it still cycled flawlessly, still got a mag off, still locked. Can't fault it at all.

There are CO2 mags available for sub zero temperatures, but I honestly wouldn't waste my money on them, CO2 mags are highly prone to leaks because of the higher pressure of the gas and they're much harder to maintain and fix once leaks occur. They also cost more to buy, and significantly more to run, with CO2 being about 60p per CO2 capsule. CO2 is also a lot less versatile, you can't just top your mag up with CO2 if you only fire 20 shots through it in a game, you have to just keep going until the gas runs out, and rather inconveniently, you can't get 60 shots off one CO2 capsule... So that means you get one full mag of 30 shots off, then at some point before you're through with the next 30, your gas runs out. Not ideal.

Costs involved - Running costs:
As I mentioned earlier, I bought mine with the trigger and barrel pre-upgraded, this cost me £500 for the base rifle, which comes with one 30 round gas magazine.

I then bought another 5 mags, to the tune of £35 each, bringing the total to £175 + 500 = £675. Not a cheap initial outlay. But, I haven't had to spend a single penny on any internal parts since then, so I would personally say the extra money you pay for a steel trigger is a very good investment if you don't want to have to take the gun apart further than simple field stripping.
Without any upgrades the base gun generally retails for around £370 last time I checked, so the upgrade parts add about £130 to the price. You could choose to buy the base gun and then upgrade as parts wear out, which if I had the chance to buy the gun again, that's what I'd do. I had previously had bad experiences with gas rifles because I didn't know what I was doing, so when I bought this I wanted to bomb proof it just to be on the safe side. Having played with it quite heavily for a year I now feel confident enough to dismantle it fully down to individual components and put it back together in working condition, and I'm fairly sure a lot of the stock trigger parts would have lasted a year before needing any replacements anyway, so it probably works out cheaper to buy the stock gun and then upgrade when you need to.
Especially considering I highly doubt the barrel upgrade is necessary, and that probably makes up £50 of the £130 I paid extra for the upgraded version of the rifle.

Running costs though...

A lot of people assume this is going to be insanely high because there's gas to buy as well as ammo, but the costs involved are down to the player really.

I use Coleman's propane to run mine. Canisters cost about £9/10 from Go Outdoors, which is a camping shop, or there are a few select airsoft retailers that sell propane as well. Patrol Base being the one I know definitely do.

£15 gets you an adaptor to put on the cans, which you use to fill your mags, and then each can lasts me a little over one full game day. Bear in mind though, Propane canisters hold a little more than double the amount held in a green gas can, so if you stick with standard green gas cans - those 750ml ones - you're going to need 2, probably 3 to last you a day, so that £9 becomes more like £30.

Propane is definitely the way to go. Green gas actually is propane, just purified (which really doesn't matter, it just makes it cost more) and with silicone oil added. So if you choose to buy propane you'll need to add the silicone yourself. The adaptors come with a little bottle of it that seems to last forever, you just add a few drops to the top of the canister at the start of every game day and you're golden. Just helps keep all the rubber seals in the magazines in check, stops them developing leaks.

As for ammo, you only have 30 round mags, so you don't get through much in a day. The mags are heavy as hell too, and at £35 not many people are going end up with more than about 8 unless they get them for free in trade deals or something, so that's less than 300 shots going into each game with you.

I personally have 9 mags but I only use about 700 shots a day. I use Bastard BBs, the .28s, which come in bags of 2000 and cost £12 a bag. They're very, very high quality. That bag will last me 3 game days, minimum, every time.

So £9 for the gas which lasts a little more than one game day. Call it about 1.3 game days. So about £6.50 on gas per game day + £4 on ammo because a £12 bag lasts 3 days. Costs me just over a tenner per game day. That's about the same as your average AEG user buying a pot of 3000 .25s, so running costs really aren't anything to hold against gas rifles. You could even use some much cheaper ammo and then it'll cost you even less.

Conclusion?
I would say that it is an expensive rifle with performance worse than the price would suggest. You could spend that much on an AEG and get much better performance for your money, as well as the ability to use mid and high capacity mags, but this makes up for it in the fun of the blowback and the noise.

If you want to buy one, do it for the kick, the sound, the realistic weapon controls and functionality, and the pure mechanical brilliance of the internal mechanism. The performance isn't bad by any means, but it is bad for the money.

Ever since I started playing airsoft, and got involved in the whole game and science behind the guns and all this and that, to a deep enough level to understand it all, I have noticed joule creep.

But it's only as of late that I've started to see it earn a name, and a gathering of people who actually seem to understand what it is.

I first noticed it when I had an ICS L85 AEG, it was fitted with a 6.01mm tightbore barrel, 509mm long and fired .20s at about 360fps.
I noticed that when I loaded heavier ammo, my fps wouldn't drop by as much as the conversion charts said it would.

If you look at the equation used to work out muzzle energy, which involves the figures pertaining to ammo weight and speed, you'll notice that there's no mention of the length of the barrel, the bore width, or even the amount of pressure applied to the shot. Because it's just an equation, it isn't designed to be used in relation to airsoft guns, but it can be applied to them. As a result there are myriad variables it doesn't take into account, and this means that the conversion charts can be wildly inaccurate.

The conversion charts are simply that. They convert the muzzle energy into different weight and fps amounts. It's like an on paper reference to using scales. Adding more of one thing here will balance out this thing here.

The reality of it isn't so clear cut. Back when I first noticed it, the conversion charts said that loading .25s ought to reduce my fps by around 40, but I was seeing it drop by about 20. At the time I didn't realise that this would mean my muzzle energy was increasing, but it effectively meant that I was firing hot by around 20fps once I'd loaded the .25s. I was just counting my lucky stars that I was able to get away with having higher fps than the charts said I ought to be.

However, now I've owned gas guns for a year, and I've seen it happen a lot more extremely, I've come to realise that the ignorance of not understanding it could lead to someone getting hurt someday, so my aim with this is to try and help bring attention to joule creep, and bring attention to... not how to counter it, but how to play with it safely.

First, I'll try to better explain what it is and give an example of it.

Joule creep is the name given to muzzle energy which increases when the gun is loaded with a heavier weight of ammo. The name, joule "creep" is given because the energy, measured in joules "creeps" up without it necessarily looking as though the muzzle energy has increased.
It is common knowledge that adding heavier ammo reduces your fps, and many make the assumption that this drop in fps is a counter balancing effect which results in the muzzle energy remaining the same. You load .2s and chrono at 350, you load that same gun with .25s, you chrono at 315, muzzle energy remains the same. Right? Well, yes, sometimes.

Joule creep is caused by guns sending more pressure down the barrel than the barrel can contain. Let's set up a hypothetical scenario:

Gun A has a barrel which is long enough to contain 100% of the pressure that the mechanism sends down it in order to power the shot. So its cubic, volumetric capacity is large enough for all the pressure being sent down it to fit inside it.
If you fire a .2g BB through gun A, all the pressure will be used on the .2, the .2 will leave the barrel and there'll be no excess air leaving the barrel once the BB's free of it.
Adding heavier BBs to Gun A will see the conversion charts ringing true.

Gun B has a barrel which can't contain all the pressure sent down it to fire the shot. It's only big enough to contain about 50% of what gets sent through it to fire the shot.
So when loaded with a .2 it'll chrono at 350fps, but when the .2 is free of the barrel, it'll be followed out of the muzzle by 50% of wasted air.
This is a gun that will see a lot of joule creep, because now when you add a heavier shot, due to it taking longer to accelerate out of the barrel, it is present in the barrel for longer, which means some of that "spare" 50% can be applied to the shot, and because more pressure is building up behind the shot, it is actually increasing the power of it.
A .25 might use 60% of the air, a .30 75% a .46 95%... These are all just made up numbers to demonstrate the point, but can you see how a gun could gain power, that's muzzle energy, measured in joules. Kinetic, impact energy, that physically increases through the use of heavier ammo, all because the gun sends more power than required down the barrel.

Joule creep is therefore significantly more prevalent in gas guns than AEGs. This is because AEGs use pistons and cylinders. Cylinders can only contain x amount of air, and they can be ported to reduce the amount of air they send down the barrel. Generally a factory AEG will be fitted with a barrel and cylinder combo that more or less match the barrel and cylinder's volumetric capacity, which will prevent joule creep from happening.

Gas guns on the other hand, send significantly more gas down the barrel than required, simply by nature of the mechanism. It isn't something that can be reduced without it impacting the other performance characteristics of the gun.

The longer and tighter a barrel is in gas gun, the worse the effects of joule creep will be. A longer barrel means there's more enclosed space for the gas to expand in, and the tighter the barrel means there's less space around the BB for the gas to escape.

So I said I'd give some real world examples.

A few months ago I set up my gas L85 to chrono at just under 370fps on .20s, because that's my regular site's limit. My L85 at the time was fitted with a 509mm long, by 6.01 wide tight bore barrel.
Once set I changed to .28s which are what I generally run through it, and decided to chrono it again, just to gauge how much the fps dropped by.
To my amazement, it didn't drop. I got more or less the same reading. In the ballpark of 370fps on .28s... I thought I might've got my ammo or my mags confused, so I double checked, but nope...

According to conversion charts, a gun that chronos at 370fps on a .2 ought to drop to 312fps when loaded with .28s... But as I touched on above, this is because the equation assumes the same amount of pressure is being used to fire every weight of shot, but in gas guns, the heavier the shot, the more power gets applied to it. So My L85 therefore sends so much more pressure than it needs to down the barrel, that my fps remained the same because all the excess was making up for the drop caused by the weight increase.

So if I'd gone to field this, I would have been firing hot by around 60fps, which is a joule increase of about .40.

Today I thought I'd run the same test through my gas SCAR, so I chrono'd it on .20s, an average of 5 shots gave me a mean of 331fps.
Loaded it up with .3s and did the same again, mean average of 290fps.

According to conversion charts, 331fps on .20s ought to drop to 279fps, so that shows an increase in power of about 11fps from adding heavier ammo. Pretty significantly heavier too. My SCAR barrel is tiny too, I think it's 10" and it's not even a tight bore.
That's a joule increase of only .08 or so, so it's pretty damn insignificant, but it proves the point that longer and tighter barrels, as per my L85 can take much greater advantage of it.

Imagine if someone had a gas sniper, they set it up to fire at 500fps on .2s, it was fitted with a very long, tight as tight can be tightbore, and then they switched to .46s to play with...

Ouch.

So to be safe with your gas guns, ensure you look up the conversion charts, find the site's fps limits before you go, and work out what the limit will be on the weight you intend to use. Then when it comes to chrono, use the weight you intend to use, and set your fps to the limit you worked out. Conversion charts might not work with regard to the fps drop from adding weight being correct, but they are still correct in that x fps = x joules.

So as long as you're setting your fps using the ammo weight you intend to use, you'll be safely within the limits.

If you've read and understood everything I've just written out, or if you already knew about it, then help me spread the word. There are sites that ban the use of gas rifles because they don't understand the science behind the muzzle energy, or simply can't be bothered to deal with the need for people to chrono on the weight they say they're chrono-ing on. There are sites that force people to chrono using .2g BBs. This is ignorance, and it's potentially unsafe.

Given any opportunity joule creep needs explaining in a way that people can understand and pass on, because the more people know, the less silly rules and regulations they'll be stopping us from using the guns that we love, for the hobby we enjoy.

You can all thank me later lol.

I bought from them a few times as I was getting started. They really don't make you feel valued at all if you have any kind of direct contact with them.
 
Phone and emails.
 
They became very blunt and rude with me after a short time, maybe 5 emails at the most and a phone call or two. I was a noob, I was trying to get more info, I was unaware of the forums at that point as I wasn't a big internet user or anything etc etc. I was trying to get an idea of what I was buying and they just couldn't have given less of a shit, was my impression.
 
Whenever I emailed them and the email contained more than 3 questions, they would never answer more than 1 of them and even that wouldn't be in any detail.
 
They also have that automated response thing that says, "As we get hundreds of emails a day... blahblahblah" yeah right. Hundreds? That's got to be bollocks. Why don't they get more people working on responding to them?
 
I'm actually fairly sure I've been added to some sort of block list, as I've not received a single reply to anything I've ever sent them since they were rude all those years ago.
 
I try to avoid buying from them unless they're the only place stocking what I'm after.
 
I experienced the fps issue you did as well, Adam. It was shooting around 390 and they'd said it was in the 350 region.

Just got back from Portsmouth with a Rather bad Illness, Found this flung over my Back gate
it's just a Base, Still needs Cummerbunds and Pouches But it was New, £40, and the only Osprey Mk.IV left in this size. Now, Where'd all my Money Go?

I don't think they're worth it at all unless the limit is 425 or higher, having minimum engagement rules just totally kills them for me unless I'm going to be able to get a significant range advantage.

My regular sites allow full auto up to 370fps and DMRs are right up there with bolt actions at 500, so the scope of effectiveness for DMRs is ridiculously vast assuming you can tune an AEG to be consistent and reliable at 500fps. That said, most people will keep them around the 425 mark anyway just to allow themselves the luxury of visiting numerous sites in the area, since DMRs at 500fps is fairly rare, and as you can probably imagine, no one wants to dismantle a well tuned V2 to change a heavy as fuck spring... I think I'd certainly rather shoot myself in the ball sack than have to piss around with heavy springs in version 2s on a regular basis.

I think if I were going to get a DMR I'd base it around a P* system, or possibly a GBBR, since it's easier to set the fps when you don't have to deal with springs.

Currently creaming myself over Tremonti's new single:

TL;DR? Well you're lucky then, because I've now made 2 videos:


 
Behold The Rundown Of Ed’s EPIC ICS L85A2

Out of the box rifle specifications:

FPS: 345, 370, 410 – spring tension is adjustable. Values may vary for each gun.

Barrel length: Supplied with a 480mm brass barrel, of 6.05mm in diameter. However, up to a 510mm (M16, AUG, M14) length barrel will fit without protruding into the flash hider.

Supplied with: Two high capacity magazines (470 rounds each) unjamming/cleaning rod and a pot of ICS .20g BBs

Rails: Top rail – 19mm

Hop: Unique design, no aftermarket hop units available for this rifle. It has its issues but it works well enough.

Gearbox: Again, unique to the ICS L85, supplied with very solid gears, bushings, factory shimmed and all around, pretty darn good to be honest, it's also heavily reinforced.

Motor: Comes with the godly ICS Turbo 3000. This thing can pull any spring you gear it to.

So let’s get started.
I bought the rifle back in December 2011 with the intention of making it look exactly like the one currently issued in Afghanistan.

The first things to order were the replica Daniel Defence RIS made by Madbull, as well as the adaptor for fitting to the ICS L85, I then bought a grip-pod made by god only knows what company, I can’t even remember where I bought it from, but it’s a nice high quality product for the price, works flawlessly and looks great.

Once those parts came and were fitted I needed the correct ACOG mount, so I ordered that from Ant-Supplies, as I was a little weary about ordering from RSOV in Hong Kong because of all the horror stories I’d heard about import tax and such.

I already had an ACOG at the time and back when I started the project I thought that would do, later on I decided it wasn’t accurate enough to the real steel, so I decided to order a new ACOG, but that wasn’t until about 5 months into the project when I went to the Arms Fair in May.

So at this point I had the gun set up with the DD RIS, grip pod, ACOG mount and an ACOG, but not the right one.

Since the RIS was fitted I needed to start running LiPo batteries, issues arose at this point, the connector that comes with the gun is for a large Tamiya and there’s so much extra wire that I couldn’t come anywhere even close to fitting the battery in with a connection conversion lead. So I rewired to small Tamiya and cut short the cables so everything fit.

I was happy with this set up for a fairly long time until I ran into issues at a skirmish at The Stan. The gun just died, like there was no battery connected and the trigger mech kept making a strange clicking noise. I finished the day using my MP5.
Once I got back I looked into it and found that from all the stripping and reassembling I’d been doing to change bits and alter the spring tension for different site rules etc. had caused the connection pins that break the circuit when the receiver is split as a safety feature, to be pushed away from their contacts. They didn’t complete the circuit once the gun had been re-assembled, as they should have.

So I bent them upwards, which seemed to fix it.

To fix the trigger mech clicking I dismantled it, couldn’t understand what the issue was, re-assembled it, and now it’s fine… That seems to fix a lot of things in my experience. If something doesn’t work, take it to bits and reassemble it before you plan to do anything else to it.

Since I’d been looking into the internals, I decided I’d start doing some actual work on them, this is the first AEG I ever dismantled, so that’s testament to how easy to work on it is.

I knew I wanted a Tanio Koba Hop-Twist barrel, but I couldn’t find the right one anywhere on earth, so I ended up getting one for an L96 from Land Warrior for about £70.

Since the barrel cut was for a sniper, the barrel retention pieces in my gun didn’t fit the barrel, so I had to decide to either mod them, make some new ones, or remove them altogether. I realised they weren’t needed for anything other than a better air seal, which I didn’t realise the importance of at the time, so I opted for full removal.

This meant that the barrel had to be held in by friction alone, so I wrapped insulation tape around the barrel so that it was a super tight fit in the outer barrel, it was damn hard to get in and out after that.

Now the barrel was done I went for the hop unit, I’d been advised to get a Madbull Blue rubber, and so I did. I also experimented with different nubs, eventually choosing to use the biro ink tube mod, so I cut it to size and used that.

I ran with this set up for about 2 months until I noticed Red Wolf had the correct twist barrel in stock, so I immediately ordered one. This gave me back the bug for adding stuff again…

I asked for advise on how to make the gun the best it could be (thank you Mr. Finius) and was told I needed a better hop nub and a new piston head (amongst other minor, home grown internal modifications that so far I haven't attempted). So I ordered a big-out H nub and a Lee’s Precision Engineering piston head, which has an air brake on it to increase the life of the internals. In retrospect the piston head wasn’t really needed, the only change I’ve observed is that it’s more difficult to tell when the gun is dry firing because it sounds similar to when it’s firing rounds, and it’s ever so slightly quieter.

At this point I was running the same externals as before but with a new piston head, proper twist barrel allowing me the correct barrel fitting and the H nub. This is possibly the greatest combination of parts for any rifle if you want immense accuracy and even more immense range. I have my rifle set on the middle spring tension, which is about 350fps on .20s, I run it using .25s and I can comfortably hit a man sized target at up to 50m.

Twist barrels are said to work best at under 330fps, so if you want to stick one in a sniper running 500fps, it’s fine. Just use .40g or .46g BBs to bring the fps down and your sniper will become a laser rifle… Well, minus the projectile speed.

After adding those parts I started researching into the real steel a bit more, I found out that the real steel L85 was now fitted with a new flash hider, a different ACOG to mine that's equipped with a docter site, I also noted that the L85 was now issued with Magpul EMAGs and an LLM01.

So I ordered all of that, and some rail ladders for good measure. Shortly after making this order I realised that the docter sight on the ACOG I'd ordered didn't look like the proper one on the L85, so a quest began to find one. I eventually found it thanks to a tip off from CKinnerley about BritKitUSA, so thanks to CK for the final, finishing touch.

A lot of this stuff was in the post for absolutely ages, I ordered the ACOG from G1098Airsoft and they messed me about for over a month, so I re ordered most of it from RSOV.

Whist it was all in the post I thought I’d improve the internals. My aim was to increase the trigger response, as it was the only thing letting the gun down.

I looked into changing the motor, but decided that the ICS Turbo 3000 was actually an amazing motor already, which troubled me somewhat, how can I increase the trigger response time if I can’t just get a new motor?

I decided to look into shimming the gearbox, the idea being that if the gears are more properly aligned, the motor won’t have to work as hard to turn them over, giving me a more efficient use of battery and motor power. I’d been practising taking guns apart and getting to know and understand gearboxes over the last couple of months, so I ordered a few packs of shims from Patrol Base and managed to shim the gearbox pretty well, it did give a noticeable improvement, but the trigger response still wasn’t good enough.

So I’m stuck now. The gun’s absolutely flawless in every way, externals, internals, accuracy and range. But the trigger response is still terrible. I would say it’s the only thing I can hold against the ICS. I think the G&G L85 has a pre-cocking system, which would make the trigger response literally instantaneous. I’d pay a lot if there were a way I could have that in my ICS.

Since I can’t think of any solution to this that can be realistically achieved I’ve decided to let it go.

I’d considered getting an even better motor or switching to higher voltage LiPos but I don’t want an unrealistically high rate of fire and I don’t want to have to buy stronger gears. The ICS L85 also has a proprietary piston, there are no after market pistons available. Meaning if my set up shred one, I can never run the set up, because that’s the only piston I can ever have.

My current thoughts are that if the target is far away I have the range advantage about 90% of the time. If they’re up close and personal, I’ll just have to switch to auto to deal with them, as that’s the only way to overcome the trigger response issue, I’ll just have to learn better trigger control and not get greedy. Running real caps means auto is rarely a good idea.

Edit:

Motor packed in today, before the ACOG, docter sight and wing mount have even arrived! So I guess we'll see if changing the motor can get me a better trigger response, I've got a Systema High Torque motor on the way, from Zero One... £85. Gulp.
Still planning on swapping to Deans connectors and at some point completely rewiring it with low resistance wiring.
If possible I'll also fit a Mosfet.

My quest for better trigger response has begun!

The first step on the quest was successful, the Systema motor came today and the trigger response has improved noticeably. The gun actually feeds more powerful, you can really feel the shake of the internals in your shoulder when you pull the trigger. I tried turning this motor over by hand before installing it and it was damn difficult. I used to think my ICS motor was difficult to turn over, this thing must be at least twice as powerful. The power of it makes me feel like I have to do something to reinforce the circuitry a bit better.

Edit:

Trigger response has been massively improved by getting a new trigger mechanism. There's a small pin in the trigger assemly that acts as a guide rod for the trigger contacts and mine had snapped in half somehow, but I didn't realise it wasn't supposed to be like that until the new trigger mech arrived. Trigger is absolutely spot on now, response is perfect, ROF is perfect.
New hop hasn't really made any change, even with an AEG cut barrel the barrel retention bits still needed modding, so I just used the pre-modded ones from the old hop.

The gun is shooting straight as an arrow though, accuracy is above average, it could still do with a few hop tweaks, but I'm going to skirmish it on Sunday and see if the parts don't just all bed themselves in a little better. I imagine consistency will increase through use.

I also now have all the parts, so after I've skirmished it and have a bit of spare time I'll get some photos added... Though I might not do it until something buggers up. Once I've set the gun up I don't really like taking it apart to do anything apart from change the spring, 'cos the barrel assembly is an utter arse to get back together properly. It's really hard to seat the hop rubber correctly because of how tight the unit is.

I've recently decided that I'm going to get an M140 spring for this to whack the fps up to 450, then use .36s or .40s and field it as a DMR. I'm pretty certain the internals can take it and I've already shimmed it to perfection, the systema motor could probably pull an M9billion so that won't be an issue either. I'll let you know how it goes.

Anyone know how to disable auto? 'Cos to me it looks like you NEED the fire selector mechanism to be able to use semi, without it there's no way to engage the cut off lever... Might have to just hope my site trust me. Which I think they do.

Edit:

DMR plans fell through, somehow the motor is unable to pull even an M130 (I couldn't find an M140 in stock anywhere) so for the time being I've decided to just use it as a regular AEG, it running at about 360fps at the moment because my new spring is yet to bed in, but with .25s it's running around 320fps.
If I take up the DMR plans again I think I'll start it by changing the ratio of my gears, as it stands I can't really be bothered to work out what ratio I'd need, or which gears will be compatible.

I'm also planning to make an L129A1 DMR at some point over the next year or so, so there'll be no need to have my L85 at DMR specs.

Edit:

Currently it's August 2012, the gun is about 8 or 9 months old and has had approximately 20,000 rounds through it since I bought it, so various parts have been added and removed etc. I don't think I'll be making any vast changes from this point forward, other than replacing parts as and when they break.

I'll write an update for this around this time next year and see how everything's holding up.

Edit:

Just a little update on how the gun's performing. It's now December the 11th, so within 10 days of the gun being a year old.
At approximately 3000 rounds, or one pot of ammo per month, that means it's fired something in the region of 36,000 rounds.
Everything is still solid and showing no internal wear at all on any of the internal parts - Except, the motor gear and whatever the name of the gear that the motor meets, don't mesh 100% perfectly, the angle of the slope on the motor's gear is slightly steeper than the corresponding slope on the 3rd gear from the piston in the gearbox. This is causing wear on the 3rd gear and the motor's gear, resulting in tiny little metal chips building up in the gearbox and a very, very slow rate.
I've only cleaned it out once in about 4 months and the little bits I had to remove were akin to sand, or very fine iron filings. It does not appear to have any effect on performance.

Currently I'm running it with a 6.01mm barrel which I initially bought for a 16-17inch barrel M4 project but it was too long (455mm) so I tried it in the L85 and I've actually been seeing much better results.
I don't know whether it's because my twist barrel has been used too much and the "threading" I'll call it, in the barrel has been knocked by BBs too many times to be effective anymore, perhaps twist barrels can expire, or wear out... Well either way, running a Version 1 Madbull 6.01mm by 455mm tight bore barrel I have been seeing better results than with the twist barrel.

In the hop I'm still using a Madbull blue rubber. I keep meaning to experiment with different rubbers, but so far the Madbull is a signifiant improvement over the standard rubber. Additionally, when using the Madbull a smaller nub is required, otherwise even with hop off, the rubber will obstruct the barrel to such an extent that it will overhop literally everything you shoot through it. The nub I use to overcome this is the same as I had before, a Big Out H nub.
I've changed the spring to an M100.

I'm now seeing the fps sit at around 360 in the middle setting using .20s and as per usual, I run it using .25s.
The rifle is effective out to around 40m. By effective, I mean I could hit a target with one shot. As for hitting a target at all, the max range I've ever hit someone was round about 70m and required me to aim around 6 feet above the target and just spray on auto when they were unaware of my position, so as not to see the BBs coming in and move out of their path.

For reference to its effectiveness there's my YouTube videos (link to my channel in my signature), all of which, bar one (or two if you count the one that isn't airsoft related) I use the L85 in.

Aside from the barrel change, I also bought a new charging handle and tappet plate. The charging handle replacement was bought because the standard one had become so wobbly that I just couldn't deal with it anymore, tightening it to the point where the screw wore away could be completely undone by simply racking it once.
Interestingly, the replacement charging handle was different in this respect, instead of the bolt handle being screwed into the fake bolt, it was screwed in and then welded in place, so it physically cannot move. I've had no issues since then, and regularly rack it back and let it go for the fun of it.

The tappet plate was bought more as a spare because the part is proprietary and I didn't want my current one to break for me to then be stranded without one. Again, interestingly, the new tappet plate was of slightly different design. Testing it in the rifle showed no performance difference from what I can see, but what ICS seem to be doing, is in some way or other improving all the individual components, separate from the rifle itself. So you buy the gun and it comes with all the standard bits.

But, should they fail and you buy a spare or replacement, the part you get is different to the one you broke, despite it being by ICS and for the L85. So it seems that ICS are making up for the fact that these parts are proprietary, by making the replacement parts better than the ones supplied with the gun, so that replacing parts when they break, is akin to getting an upgrade.

I also readdressed the DMR idea. I haven't skirmished it with this set up yet, but I bought a new Madbull M120 spring and put it on the highest spring tension. This put the fps up to 380 (average over 5 shots) with .20s
Couple this high fps with .30s - the same 6.01, madbull blue and H nub as with my regular set up and this thing shoots an untold distance. As I said, I've not skirmished it yet. But I did test it when I took it to chrono at another site (they wouldn't let me use it because they don't have a DMR rule... ) and the BBs were flying out of sight before I saw more than 1 foot of drop and I could clearly see them for at least 60m.

So in short, should I ever skirmish this with this DMR configuration, everyone I see will be within engagement range the only downside, is that there is no way to lock this gun to semi. The fire selector which is linked mechanically to the trigger mechanism is required in order for semi auto to work and the only conceivable way to remove the auto function is to remove the fire selector. Since I can't remove the fire selector without losing semi and not auto, there's simply no way to lock it to semi only. Which in all likelihood will make it impossible to field as a DMR legitimately.

I'll also update the parts list and overall cost to account for me now using a different barrel and having 12 Emags.
 
UPDATE - 13th April 2013
 
Since the above posts, my motor's pinion gear shredded itself to pieces. Rather pleasingly, the ICS gears and piston are still completely fine, so that's some evidence that ICS parts are of comparable quality to Systema.
 
I worked out Sherlock Holmes style that the reason the motor gear imploded was because the angle it met the gears wasn't right, and since there's sweet FA I could do about that, I thought I'd use this opportunity to buy some new bits and bobs.
 
So in the post I had some Ultimate High Torque gears - in the hope that they'd meet the Systema Magnum motor's pinion gear at the right angle, a new pinion gear of the exact kind I'd had before, a Systema version 2 cylinder head, some new shims and probably some other stuff. It's getting too much to remember all the stuff I've done to this rifle now.
 
In short it took roughly 50,000 rounds for this part to fail (discounting the ICS motor burning out) and it wasn't even a standard part.
 
I now have it fitted with:
A Madbull Ultimate aircraft aluminium, 6.01mm tightbore, of 510mm in length. The hop unit has a Systema standard AEG hop rubber in it, and a Big Out H Nub. I also managed to grab an aluminium hop arm off someone on these forums.
The air nozzle is the stock part, the cylinder head is a Systema V2, for the piston head I've recently gone back to the standard one, as the Systema cylinder head's shape renders the LPE air brake piston head pointless. The piston itself, piston head and cylinder are therefore all as they came when I initially bought it.
The gears are Ultimate High Torque gears, I think the ratio is 28:1 and the gears are helical.
The gears have been shimmed.
Lastly the motor is a Systema Magnum High Torque.
 
I use it with a 9.9v 1000mah LiFe battery, Blaster .25g BBs, Magpul PTS Emags and an M100 (I forget which make, but I don't think that matters)
 
With spring tension on full, this is possibly the most accurate, long range, skirmishable AEG I've ever known. Hitting a man with one shot at 50m? Piece of piss. I can see it reaching out to up to 70m with the barrel pointing up a fair bit of course.

Anyway, here's a list of absolutely everything I've bought to add to the gun, externals, internals and generic parts, as well as parts I've replaced due to wear, or fault.
If you want to know where I got any of it from, just ask and I'll help you find a place to get it.

Update - 30th July 2013:
So the helical 1:28 ratio gear plan didn't last very long in the end. Since the motor had to turn so many more times for me to get one shot off, rate of fire and trigger response suffered quite a lot and since my batteries are only 1000MaH, they were running out pretty quickly as well.
So now I'm running with all the same parts as the last update, except I've got the original 1:18 ratio gears installed and I also picked up a Systema V2 piston head, to better compliment the Systema cylinder head.

I've also bought and sold a few ICS L85s and L86s since the last update, and one of them went to a collector who just wanted it as a display model; so now I've got a complete set of internals spare in case anything goes arse over tit.

The only thing I really have to keep tabs on is the motor's pinion gear, since the angle of the gears don't mesh with the pinion gear, they do gradually wear each other down. I might have to buy a load of pinion gears in bulk just in case it packs in unexpectedly.

But aside from that, I'm happy with it.

Maybe I'll think about getting some high speed gears just to make the trigger response even more epic...
Still need to rewire it all to Deans connectors as well =/

I had an art teacher at school who used to say, "You can't finish art"
It's TRUE! Argh!

Base cost:
Rifle £320

Externals and related:
RIS £130
RIS adaptor £16
Grip-pod £20
LLM £70
ACOG and docter £110
ACOG mount £26
Docter wing mount £11
Rail ladders £60
Flash hider £25

Total: £788

Current Internal upgrades:
Barrel Madbull (6.01x510mm tb) £30
Hop rubber Systema £6
Hop nub Big Out H Nub £10
Systema High torque motor £85
Systema V2 Cylinder head £10
Systema V2 Aluminium piston head - Left it too long to update this... I think it was £12, not sure.
Aluminium hop arm £10

Total: £173

Grand total: £961 (Minus postage and additional costs below)

Additional costs:

Magazines:
Magpul PTS Emags x14 = £280

Batteries:
9.9v LiFe x4 - £60

Charger:
Basic LiPo/LiFe charger = £15

Generic internal parts:
Shim set x3 = £12

Replacement parts due to wear or other fault:
Trigger mechanism = £23
Hop unit = £19
Charging handle = £14
Pinion gear = £10
Butt plate (lost the screw from the back that stops the motor adjustment screw from altering through use) - £22

Overall costs, including everything apart from postage costs and ammo = £1,432

Oh and here's a photo of a real Afghan spec L85:



And here's a photo of mine:

here's all the evidence you need for 'time to target':
 

 
at 170' (51 metres!) the difference in time of travel between 0.2g and 0.3g is nearly half a second... in favour of the HEAVIER BB.

Usually play at the Stan, or Tac House Spartan and both those sites are okay. That said I am not afraid of parking it and walking a bit further to save the (already battered) splitter!

Bank of M&D?

Yeah - thanks for the report. I guess from the lack of replies, no one else went! There were a couple of shows last year that got terrible reviews and were not worth attending, so I guess it put people off.
 
I was intending to go - it wasn't a million miles from me - but unfortunately some work came up and ruined that plan.
 
I'd recommend looking at The Midlands Airsoft Fair at the Gaol in Rutland. That's run a couple of times a year and is dedicated to airsoft, rather than being tacked onto a larger show. There are a selection of retailers who go. There are also usually several private sellers - which is where you'll get the bargains.

Politicians and the public will think what they want, seeing airsoft next to what is available on the civilian market in the UK won't really make an impact. They already think we're all evil lunatics who bathe in childrens tears. The point I was making is that rather than fighting essentially the same argument (guns are bad m'kay) as two separate groups, we fight the same argument as a single voice. Many members of the public see shotguns as something people in tweed use to hunt gamebirds and claybusting as something they 'might like to try one day' but don't really care beyond that. What we do, by dressing in camo and running around using full-auto weapons and using real-world tactics? To most people, the claybusting is less likely to harbour lunatics/terrorists/whatever
 
Excellent Ad Hominem, allow me to ask permission to add 'you're probably, like, 12' to my excellent list of internet comebacks.
'I shoot proper stuff' was added to show I use and understand both sides of this current topic. The real point I was trying to make was that the skills are mutually beneficial to each other and mostly transferable.
 
Ahh, the good ol' appeal to authority. Now, don't get me wrong, if you were/are serving military I have respect for what you do. However, I deal far too often with service personnel who 'know it all' and then immediately pick up a gun, finger on trigger and point it at me. Great, cheers for that.
Regardless of you being military/police or 'just a civi' You're just as squishy to a bullet from a firearm as me and your eyes are just as squishy to a BB.

When l used to shoot air rifles a lot l used to find that having one eye zoomed in at around 5x power where the other one was at 1x would severely screw up my eyes after a while.
 
l always close an eye when using magnified optics so that l don't have each eye at a different zoom level because it hurts my brain trying to adjust for it lol.

When l used to shoot air rifles a lot l used to find that having one eye zoomed in at around 5x power where the other one was at 1x would severely screw up my eyes after a while.
 
l always close an eye when using magnified optics so that l don't have each eye at a different zoom level because it hurts my brain trying to adjust for it lol.

Both eyes open.
 
Aimpoint clone, similar style to the one in pic but with the mount the right way round.

Imo if it don't go bang then it's not a hit
 
All sites I've played at so far so say paper pyros can be thrown over arm (if they hit you then it won't hurt) reusable grenades are thrown under arm long as it's not towards someone's head
 
So simple fact for me is player B is a cheat for not taking it, wether it's below knee or not
 
However, some sites may have that rule & you should not assume other sites play with the same rules so "if in doubt, ask a Marshall" use of grenades etc should always be explained in the safety brief & if you weren't listening for any reason then it's your problem (and I'm not referring to you personally mate lol)

News to me as well

HPA has problems in winter?
 
To OP though: If you're unsure of the details then stick with electric. Anything outside of that costs a lot of money to get up to scratch - be it spring (with perhaps the exception of springer shotguns), CO2, green gas/propane/refrigerants or HPA.

Alright dudes I'm Ben just joined. Played airsoft years ago had a TM M4A1 with G&P grenade launcher. Use to play at Cobham. Just starting up again Apocalypse is my local site but will obviously be venturing out to other sites. Once I've got my ukara sorted I'll be getting a GHK M4 GBB been looking at so many reviews on YouTube was originally going to go for a WE M4 until I came on here and people said about GHK looked it up and that was it I was sold. Will also need a 1911 pistol but still unsure what one to get its gotta be full metal and ideally current gen tactical style with rail. I've got a list of stuff I want already and obviously need to buy full kit aswell so bank will be getting a hammering over the next couple of months but can't wait to start playing and meeting some like minded folks and making some new pals in the process. Thanks for all the advice so far it's a great forum.

Got myself a WE MP5 Apache. Traded for my SCAR.

Mechanical GBBR burst trigger is awesome.

l finally have my own transport!