Leo Greer

The barrel is difficult to tell. I would work out the other issues and make sure everything is clean and stable before judging the barrel quality. A quick polish can do wonders. DIY stabilization of the unit, hop arm, barrel, etc, will do even more. And a new hop rubber is cheaper and more cost effective than a new barrel (In general. A bad barrel will still ruin your accuracy even if everything else is great.) POM piston head - good replacement. It'll be more durable than stock if you ever want to increase your power or speed. Double seal cylinder head - nothing wrong with this, but it's worth noting that being plastic does not make a cylinder head bad in any way. The seal makes it bad or good. In fact, plastic cylinder heads actually deal with shock from the piston better and help you avoid gearbox cracking. Double seal nozzle - this seal never comes into play. Whether the nozzle is actually better or not depends on how wobbly the stock one was on the nozzle tube. In fact, many "aftermarket upgrade" nozzles will have bad tolerances with various nozzle tubes (inconsistent specs) and be worse than the stock nozzle. 4/5 cylinder - for a very detailed discussion of cylinder volume ratios, head over to Airsoft Sniper Forum and start reading the "Long Range AEGs" stickied threads. For a quick explanation, there is no "best" answer here. If your cylinder has too little volume, you'll lose power due to barrel suck (vacuum forming behind the BB). However, if the cylinder has too MUCH volume, you lose nothing--the RIF is just louder. Ideal volume also depends on weight. Heavier BBs use up more air, because they absorb more energy to achieve the same velocity. For a 320mm barrel using .20g BBs, you could get away with a cylinder smaller than 1/2. However, your stock cylinder is just fine, as it gives you extra air, allowing you to run, say, .36g without losing power. Overall, there's not much point to changing your full cylinder unless you're trying to quiet the RIF's barrel noise. This is not an exact science, and we have leeway on what voluming choices to go with, hence why most carbine length RIFs come with a 3/4 cylinder, which both sounds reasonable and allows you to run .20g-.30g from 300mm to 380mm. As a general rule, anything Evike lists as theirs under "EMG" or their other house brands is bad or overpriced for some reason or other. Even the Cyma Platinum line, while in most cases excellent, has it's share of weaknesses, and inflated prices. I actually own a similar RIF with much the same internals, except mine has performed excellently through the fire and flames. It's one of the older Dytac models without all the fancy branding and receiver design, but the meat and potatoes are the same. As this model of gearbox has been made for years, it's very possible you have a years-old gearbox in a much newer shell. Ah, gotta love airsoft QC and inconsistency. You clearly needed some replacement o-rings on the cylinder head and piston head, but as a general note, testing compression with the nozzle on is a false test. Because pressure flows in one direction, an o-ring on the nozzle only comes into play in case of a blockage on the end of the nozzle. In this case, your finger. Otherwise, nozzles without o-rings seal perfectly fine (Krytac). O-rings were introduced because of bad tolerances between nozzle tubes and the nozzle causing wobble.

For detailed answers, we'd need to know your: battery, motor, spring, and any other mods or items done to this thing. Prometheus gears are extremely outdated and overpriced--they're not an upgrade over stock sintered gears, which are really fine the vast majority of the time (assuming QC was done and there aren't any cracks in the gears). 99% of the time, your best aftermarket gear choices will be Rocket/SHS. They work, and the amount of "bad sets" is a lot lower than other brands. (It's airsoft, so nothing's perfect...) You could also get a set of stock-style sintered gears that are 16:1, or even simply increase the motor speed and keep the stock ratio, both of which should achieve the desired effect. When you install a new gear set, make sure the motor is installed correctly, with two wires at the back of the motor grip, and the polarity is correct, so the motor isn't spinning backwards. Check shimming with the two halves of the gearbox screwed tightly shut, and check piston clearance as well, making sure the piston can drop freely in the shell when the two halves are screwed together. Also, if you happen to be using an aftermarket motor, PME can easily cause teeth to be lost. This depends on the rest of your setup, which you haven't shared. And a final note on the drive train, if this is the Bolt I'm thinking of: EBB systems are inherently fragile due to the vastly increased stress put on the motor, gears, battery, etc. If you really want your system to last, you should disable the EBB. Your motor has to pull that extra weight, and your gears have to feel that extra weight. On the Aster issue... Check your sticker positioning. And check it again. I can't remember if GATE allows you to recalibrate selector positions, but if so, do that as well.

My teen brother plays with a combo of a CYMA M14, and a spring pistol from a sporting goods store, spray-painted red and white. He won the QC lottery, and the spring pistol actually shoots straight. It's downright hilarious to see him getting kills on guys running 1K+ HPA rigs with it...

Yep. Turnigy, to be exact. I saw it on sale for about $35 and thought, why not.

Hop over to Airsoft Sniper Forum and do some searching. Those guys are obsessive, and there are members who have taken the time to perfect cutting their own patches. However, everyone still tends to agree that a properly built Maple Leaf setup will give you 95-98% of the performance of a properly setup RHop, though the RHop (kits included) are much harder to work with. I've used Maple Leaf rubbers to hop .38g and .48g at 3J and over--they'll easily do what you need them to.

No such thing as “too much”. Voltage controls the motor speed, discharge is the actual power the battery is putting out. In terms of voltage: A battery with too high of voltage can cause overspin or PME, but that G&G is designed for an 11.1v and should run it just fine. In terms of discharge: there is no such thing as “too much discharge”. A motor will only draw what it needs, unless there’s a short in the circuit. Thus, the battery can be too weak, but not too strong. I commonly run my loaner AEGs on a 5A 140C 11.1v.

Try 'em if ya got 'em. But no real reason to over LiPos.

I see. That seems incredibly annoying. my $50 Xcortech from Amazon handles full-auto anything just fine, so I'd assumed sites would at least have a chrono that functions as well as my plasticky thing from the A.

My man, it's not the piston that's the problem, it's the build design. As others have stated, PME is your issue. Mild PME to be specific, which is why it's eating your piston and sector and not destroying the rack. This is a common issue. However, the correct fix is not to short stroke, as it messes up timing in DSGs unless done extremely carefully, but to increase your spring power, shorten your barrel, and possibly play with the cylinder porting until you hit the correct balance. I can't read your parts list (a little blurry for my eyes), but if you can drop a list of the motor, gear ratio, piston weight, barrel length, etc, I can give you an idea of where to go. A well-built DSG will be just as durable (or even more durable) than an SSG. It just has to be built differently, and sometimes more carefully, than an SSG of similar joule output. The increased rate of fire causes the illusion of decreased durability, but in actuality a badly built SSG and badly built DSG will both crap themselves.

Looks a little rough on the inside, but other than that... shoot it and let us know how it works!!

My dude... 🤣 ...Not quite sure how I should respond...

Ah, the British Battery Experience Grand Tour Supreme! ...they sent mine from HK in about two weeks, and about a week from their USA warehouse. I live near a couple of major shipping centers, though, so I tend to get stuff quicker than the average bear.

Here's a better question: Has anyone ever seen an airsoft Li-ion that's NOT 18650s taped together?

Most chronographs should work just fine for your purposes, as the chrono will register each BB separate from its neighbors unless you have an error...

The closest thing I can think of to what you're describing would be caused by, as Iceni says, the spring. This can be related to a bad, soft spring that's bending out of shape (looking at you, SHS), a piston that's the wrong spec for your gearbox, or a few other reasons.

I have not... That may be on the list soon.

I'd say go for the DE--the pricing is a big deal. That DE will allow you to be competitive, skirmish away, and figure out how serious you are about the sport, and find out if it would've even been worth it for you to pay more money. I mean, heck, I have AEGs that cost $1000+ to build in my closet, and I'll still take out and play with something that cost $200 or $170. Just because it's expensive doesn't make it the right choice for you, or vice versa for that matter.

There’s a decent chance that your DE will never be the same again if you open it up. Airsoft gnus have strange and inexplicable magic that comes into play, making each and every time you open it create new variables. 😂

Make ‘em think they bargained you into a better deal…

Turnigy Nanotech packs from Hobbyking are probably the cheapest option I know of. They’re also far above average quality, since they’re not intended for airsoft, and you can find just about any pack size and shape you want.

Springs are easily the most overlooked part of a gearbox build—as others have stated, a proper spring will retain its power for years of use. For example: Arcturus, Krytac, and even some G&G stock springs. Or: PDI, Guarder, and Prometheus aftermarket springs. These springs will also be better in terms of FPS consistency. A well-built AEG can achieve ~0.5 FPS variance with a quality spring. This is what it should look like: Not all builds will be as consistent as this, but if your build is losing FPS even over the course of a day something is wrong with your compression system. Whether that be a faulty seal or grease in the wrong place.

I genuinely think people have been getting dumber, at least in the last ten years. This is evidenced by the huge amount of scenes that have audiences shouting things like “Run first, kiss later you idiots!” or, “Why didn’t you take his gun when you knocked him out?” I write as a hobby, so this stuff really bothers me…

We get to feel just like all the other blokes whose professions and hobbies are butchered by the jokes in Hollywood. 😂

You’re not wrong about a performance change existing, but it’s genuinely unnoticeable in any way. There’s no point in fighting what you can’t tell exists. The point is not to allow no air to pass. Comparing the physics of airsoft BBs with air gun pellets is apples to oranges. BBs make use of the Magnus effect, literally riding on a cushion of air through the barrel. In fact, many airsoft techs believe that a wider bore can increases accuracy, as it allows for more space between the barrel and the BB, so any inconsistencies that may exist are cushioned. This hasn’t been proven to be true, but tighter bores aren’t proven to be more accurate either. A good barrel will be precision made, same as good BBs are precise. Many good aftermarket barrels are made using cold forging by hammer and mandrel, same as many, many firearms. In fact, some stock barrels are now made to PCP standards, using PCP processes.

Never seen it. I kinda wanted to though… if only to figure out how they managed to fit real bullets into those hicaps. 😉