Leo Greer

The Novi US website just put up a cracked deal for the SSR63, and so, impulsively, fearing they made an error with the pricing, bought one. Maybe it’s the Lord telling me to become a G36 guy. In any case, they’re something of a rare bird in the States (I’ve never even seen a G36 at my local field), and I was curious what folks like to do with these or if they have any particular quirks. All info is appreciated! Also, any pics of loadouts for inspiration would be awesome.

I’m a little behind on my GBBP tech knowledge, but I believe you can also install a low pressure valve to mitigate this.

I have done it. Here in the land of cowboys and Indians, we have no rules, and no limits to our wankery Here’s Leo’s simple recipe for making the refs come over and stare whenever you test fire on the range… Traditional wisdom is that fast motors and fast gears are not friends. TRADITION LIED: Tienly makes the best brushed motors on the market, if not the cheapest, followed by Star Wei. Quality build and hand-wound armatures become increasingly important if you want your build to be functional in game without the motor grip turning into one of Gusteau’s Microwaveable Plasma Ultrabirritos. Oh yeah, and shredding your brushes while it’s at it. If built well, a 40K brushed motor can get you to 40RPS when paired with 13:1 gears and an 11.1v. Gears: any solid gear set will work for a while, as long as the bevel meshes well with your pinion of choice. To actually get high speed out of this thing without brute forcing it like some sort of wanker ape, we need to push up the efficiency numbers. To hit 40, you need 80% efficiency. 85% gets you to 43. And so on. SHS/rocket work alright. Siegetek are the best (but seemingly nonexistent in the UK). Solink have a good rep with folks that I trust, and are readily available, so I would go with those. Bearings. You can go bushings if you like with no issue, but real speed demons shell out for J-caged bearings, which can handle the increased stress of what we’re about to do to them. Be wary though, as many of these suckers are tall, and can interfere with selector activities. The “shortest” on the market are 2.5mm thick. Spring. To avoid PME, we need to punch that piston fast and forcefully. PDI makes the best, but Guarder comes in a close second. I would suggest buying at least equivalent of an M130 and M140. And to bleed off that extra spring power we… Shortstroke? No. Not before we have to. Short stroking damages both our tappet timing and our pressure spike, which I’ll discuss in a second, so we avoid it if we can. Instead we shorten our barrel. As any tech knows, all the spring strength in the world means nothing if it all blows out your o-rings and packing seal. This is the same for BB acceleration time. If there is no time to accelerate, it matters not what the ultimate velocity could have been. I would aim for 100-150mm and increase if you can. Cheap stock barrels from various manufacturers can be used to great effect in testing before any expensive parts are purchased. Did you know that most G&G ARP9s come with the equivalent of an M130 installed? Short barrel, fast cycle speed, strong spring. To make sure we can feed the frenzy we need a good stiff tappet and strong spring. This isn’t too complicated. Any stock or upgrade tappet that accomplishes the mechanical demand will do just fine. Guarder makes a good one. King arms does as well. Lube the rails and make sure it slides easily. O-ring drag is real. Double o-rings were invented to solve a design/manufacturing tolerance issue, not a design/airseal issue. Nothing wrong with it if it works for you… but Arcturus, Krytac, and I believe Guarder and Lonex make great single o-ring nozzles that may very well provide better fitment with your nozzle tube and less drag while you’re at it. Pick a strong, light piston with a POM head and ditch those bearings on the PH itself. They’re worthless. You need a total weight of about 15gs to be successful here. The easiest way is to use an SHS blue with the big holes and any decent POM head. Lonex, Gate, etc, etc. You can also remove material from any good quality one. Lonex Red FMRs and Arcturus poly pistons are prime for this. As long as the cylinder and cylinder head seal and don’t have any serious tolerance issues with your other parts, they’ll do just fine. You can easily polish stock brass cylinders to near mirrors of glassy perfection. But if you need to buy one… the Guarder Chromes are nice. As long as you have at least half the cylinder the porting doesn’t matter in the slightest for this. Don’t listen to Negative Airsoft, he does not understand the physics of ported cylinders; the port is not to let air into the cylinder, it’s to allow piston preacceleration. Which brings me back to why we don’t short stroke. When the piston accelerates before sealing with the cylinder, it creates a beautiful little pressure spike that effectively gives you a lot more oomph for less. Ask any HPA user if raising the pressure on their reg changes anything and you’ll understand. Less useful knowledge in this specific case, but great for general teching. Your shimming must be the shimming of Gilgamech and BBkidnu, the great shimmers of yore. We Americans look to George Shimmington. And to power this all, you need a good battery pack. Let’s face it, the vast majority of battery makers and sellers are liars. The packs aren’t IR matched, the capacity and discharge rating are blatant untruths, and the assembly quality is poor. Running your packs at above capacity KILLS YOUR PACKS. If you plug in a beefier battery and your gun gets faster, you’re doing this. You have two ways to combat this. #1 Overcompensate. Recognize the lies, and go so far above and beyond that even the lies place you easily in the green. Turnigy NanoTechs are good candidates. #2 Buy an actually good pack. Kypom are the best I know of. Gens Ace comes second. On the American Airsoft forums we happen to have a guy with a lot of mechanical engineering experience who can actually test cell IR ratings, true capacity, and discharge rates. He’s tested quite a few, and Kypom are consistently closest to advertised. Hopefully some of this is helpful to you! tech on -Leo

I think we’re all forgetting something here. When doing any Airsoft tech work, make sure to open the gun up and get visuals on everything before you start ordering! Not only could you save on shipping and time by ordering everything you actually need at once, you also might find that certain stock parts are fine and dandy and don’t need replacement after all. I speak from mistakes made—learn from mine! 😅

Yes. They don’t active brake. At all. Brushless motors don’t do active braking, as their circuitry is not built to have raw current flow backwards into it. This is also why it’s a bad idea to use Perun ETUs + brushless, as even the little startup beeping incorporates use of reverse polarity. I have to agree with the above suggestions to limit overspin mechanically, either via increased spring rate or increased gear ratio. These are sound ideas that will almost certainly remove possibility of blowing up your very expensive motor.

In short, the actual voltage of 11.1v (or 12.6v fully charged) will cause no more damage to your Aster than a 7.4v or 9.6v would. The increased speed doesn’t actually harm your bearings more. The gear rotating faster doesn’t put more lateral stress on the bearing cage, but instead it is your spring doing the damage there. However, the increased speed could cause issues with PME, which would then require a stronger spring to alleviate, which would end up putting more stress on your bearings and oh my now we are making the build less reliable! It’s different for every build (and if you’re using the stock G&G spring then you actually have a stronger than normal spring in there), but the typical “PME ceiling” for a build around this power level is about 25 RPS. I have pushed a 1J build to 30 before, and I’ve also seen 1.5J builds experience PME at 25, so take the time to test your own build and work out all the little details! In short, as long as you don’t knacker anything up and use good tech sense you’ll be totally fine.

I put together an “Airsoft Medkit” that’s basically a briefcase filled with tiny plastic shelving units. I can carry all my tools, adhesives, and enough spare parts for a complete internal rebuild of two RIFs. It’s saved my butt a few times. Just make sure you include the essentials; super glue, emergency crackers, a backup to your backup screwdriver…

I run an M170 (SP150) in my V2 DMR @ 2J exactly on .48gs. I run it on XYT 18:1s and a T238 33K @ 11.1v and it has no trouble cycling. You can also pair a good high torque with something like a 20:1 set or even 32:1 if you really wanna be careful.

Bootleg method: micrometer. Turn the BB and keep measuring.

Being from the USA, what would I bring over? Street tacos from Texas is probably No. 1 on the list. But as for airsofty things… you can actually bring a RIF. It just needs to be in checked baggage and inside a case (I believe PIN locked for Airsoft). Heck, it’s legal to bring your real steel pistols and rifles around in checked baggage. I have a TSA approved case for my Sig 365. on the other hand, depending on where they live, I’ll second the motion to find a surplus store. You can get just about anything if you’re in the right spot.

Honestly I'd use the Ifrit with 13:1s and 11.1 or 7.4 and call it a day.

Lower TPA means higher RPM (generally). That SHS "High Torque" (not really) has about 35,000 RPM with an 11.1v, or 66% on 7.4v

I haven't listened to the video yet, as my laptop hates Imgur, but as a note, if that build is running properly, you should be in between 25 and 28 RPS, which is really approaching the PME point. Make sure to check the FPS to see if there's any drop in full auto, or if you have lower RPS than 25! Either one is a sign of PME.

The one question I have (and this is hearsay, so mind yourselves), is that I've heard most airsoft brushless motors actually incorporated a ramping program specifically to slow down the startup, as early models had a habit of snapping their shafts. No clue where I heard this, but maybe something to look out for...

I clean the inner barrels once a year with my tears

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I'll keep the museum and activity ideas close and do some research. I know we're going to be in Inverness, but I think we'll be all around the area for a week or so. We were in the Hounslow area by London-Heathrow for a couple days, and we've actually hopped to Madrid for a bit, but we'll be back in the U.K. in a few weeks. Definitely taking advantage of the food. I come from an area of the USA that offers a lot of culinary variety, but the best part about new countries is always the eating, and London seems to have a lot of great ethnic cuisine. We already grabbed some Indian food the other night, and I suspect there will be more to come.

I'm in London currently, and I'll be back through Scotland in a couple weeks as well as the north of the country. Unfortunately I can't swing any airsoft days, but is there anything else I shouldn't miss?

As a note to the original question... When in doubt, Retro Arms low profile bushings are the way to go. I've run them from 60 RPS to over 2J.

He still hasn't mentioned the Mah and discharge rating, so we really have no clue what kind of amps he even has to work with. If it's something like an 800 Mah 20C that's realistically more like 450 Mah 10C that's only 5A to work off. Most stock AEGs need about 15A. edit I've been through a fair lot of LiPos in the "1450 Mah 30C" range that turned out to be more like 800 Mah 10C when tested. Voltage means nothing.

I should add, all this is discounting the strong tendency of airsoft battery manufacturers to lie about the capacity and discharge ratings they advertise. You could very well be using a battery that has only 60% of it's advertised capacity and 50% of the discharge, thus skewing the apparent performance of your RIF far away from accurate. My personal pack I spoke of in the above post (Kypom 3S butterfly 2200mah) has actually been tested at 2106mah, so the capacity is pretty close to advertised by airsoft standard. And this is by far one of the best packs in this range, which may contribute to a higher apparent "shots per man" rating.

I'm gonna have to tell this one to my father...

The FPS itself will change by a margin of maybe 1-1.5% depending on humidity, altitude, and temperature, but by and large the consistency I can achieve is the same. That build was built and chronoed at ~800 feet above sea level, 75 degrees F, 50% humidity. I recently put together a new DMR build shooting 300 FPS on .48g w/ ~1 FPS variance, and tested at ~8,000 above, 20 deg. F, and 75% humidity. I do a rigorous set of stabilization mods designed to create an extremely consistent hop rubber to nozzle seal, and I think that really makes the difference. Basically, I make sure the barrel and hop unit can't move whatsoever, and that the hop unit is pressed solidly to the gearbox. Hop unit springs are the enemy, cork and plastic shims are the best. I'll see if I can try some "varied environment" testing with the same build and report back. I'll make it into a separate thread though!

As stated, this is heavily subjective. I'd suggest establishing an approximate baseline for your own build through testing and work off that. For example, I run my primary off a single 2200mah 11.1v pack, which lasts me for approximately 5,000 shots before I hit LVC ranges. (brushless, well shimmed, etc, etc) Other builds are a lot less efficient...

This is true. My advice is to simply make your head less of a target, or wear a full chainmail suit underneath your eyepro. Personally I use a simple mesh face mask that covers my ear area and a set of Esse military surplus goggles that seem to attract BBs... which works great.

I will point out that, in practice, HPA can often be less FPS consistent than a properly set up AEG. This is because HPA guns typically have more seals inside the engine than an AEG, which has two major seals. I typically tune my AEGs to either ~1 FPS variance or ~0.5 FPS variance. And even better can be done, I'm just not quite picky enough. The true mad lads will be sorting their BBs by the hundredth of a gram to get even better consistency. In THIS thread, scroll down and I have a pic of my primary (AEG) shooting at 27 RPS with an FPS consistency of about +-0.8 FPS. edit And just to speak to general reliability, a properly set up HPA RIF will be more "reliable" than an AEG simply due to needing less maintenance (you really only have the seal to maintain occasionally), however a correctly set up AEG (SSG, DSG, DMR...) should only need gearbox maintenance maybe every 100K cycles, or even more. I try to do maintenance on my rifleman style builds around every 200K rounds, and stock guns are simply run until they break, which for some might mean something like 500K cycles. Heck, some TMs are known to last past 1 million cycles with no work done on them.