TM L96 Upgrade parts - No stock ANYWHERE?

[LazzurusMan]

A friend has offered to sell me his unused, unupgraded TM L96 for £100, so I'm trying to figure out how much it'll cost me all together with the parts needed to get 500fps or near, and I can't for love nor money find parts ion stock ANYWHERE.

Have airsoft pro stopped making them?

Do Laylax still do parts?

Also, if anyone can tell me what I should be upgrading most on a stock TM L96 that'd be great. So far I'm going off a Norvitsch video.

[Hudson]

Try outdoor & tactical.

 

https://www.outdoorandtactical.co.uk/product-category/accessories-parts/sniper-upgrade-parts/l96-upgrade-parts

 

Admittedly, they're not the most easy model to get parts for nowadays, as they were never as popular as the VSR or the Maruzen style L96s.

 

Imo, I would leave it and go for something else.

A cheap VSR clone will be cheaper and easier to upgrade & source parts for.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Hudson

[LazzurusMan]

2 hours ago, Hudson said:

Try outdoor & tactical.

 

https://www.outdoorandtactical.co.uk/product-category/accessories-parts/sniper-upgrade-parts/l96-upgrade-parts

 

Admittedly, they're not the most easy model to get parts for nowadays, as they were never as popular as the VSR or the Maruzen style L96s.

 

Imo, I would leave it and go for something else.

A cheap VSR clone will be cheaper and easier to upgrade & source parts for.

I've always been told to avoid the cheaper snipers. Would a well vsr clone be any good? Patrolbase says they're around 400fps, so maybe a little less upgrading needed?

[alxndrhll]

1 minute ago, LazzurusMan said:

I've always been told to avoid the cheaper snipers. Would a well vsr clone be any good? Patrolbase says they're around 400fps, so maybe a little less upgrading needed?

Main thing you loose with a clone is the half decent QA Marui do, but if you’re ripping all of those parts out then you’re paying extra for no reason.

 

When it comes to bolties the only upgrade I’d put down as a performance increase is a TDC modification to the hop, simply ensures you can use higher weight ammo (0.45g or 0.48g) with better consistency.
 

Outside of that swapping parts is often more a matter of longevity rather than an increase in performance or to make them quieter etc, not actually making your BB go any further or any more accurately. It’s at least worth noting there is a degree of diminishing returns when it comes to throwing money at a bolt action rifle shaped wall. You could get that TM L96 running at 500fps simply by swapping the spring out, but I imagine those internals would shit the bed long before they would have at stock FPS.

 

To sum up, it’ll wind up as expensive as you want it to either way. My advice is to consider how much you’re planning to use the thing and go from there. If you use it most weekends for the whole day then go nuts, gut the whole thing and ‘enjoy’ the process of fettling all the aftermarket parts to get them singing together. If you’re only going to use it now and then (or have never tried the whole ‘sniping’ thing before) clean the barrel, slap a TDC on it and put a spring in that gets you at the joules you want to be at with the ammo weight you’ll be using and call it a day there. In either case, the clone VSR is a better choice in my eyes simply on availability of parts.

[LazzurusMan]

53 minutes ago, alxndrhll said:

Main thing you loose with a clone is the half decent QA Marui do, but if you’re ripping all of those parts out then you’re paying extra for no reason.

 

When it comes to bolties the only upgrade I’d put down as a performance increase is a TDC modification to the hop, simply ensures you can use higher weight ammo (0.45g or 0.48g) with better consistency.
 

Outside of that swapping parts is often more a matter of longevity rather than an increase in performance or to make them quieter etc, not actually making your BB go any further or any more accurately. It’s at least worth noting there is a degree of diminishing returns when it comes to throwing money at a bolt action rifle shaped wall. You could get that TM L96 running at 500fps simply by swapping the spring out, but I imagine those internals would shit the bed long before they would have at stock FPS.

 

To sum up, it’ll wind up as expensive as you want it to either way. My advice is to consider how much you’re planning to use the thing and go from there. If you use it most weekends for the whole day then go nuts, gut the whole thing and ‘enjoy’ the process of fettling all the aftermarket parts to get them singing together. If you’re only going to use it now and then (or have never tried the whole ‘sniping’ thing before) clean the barrel, slap a TDC on it and put a spring in that gets you at the joules you want to be at with the ammo weight you’ll be using and call it a day there. In either case, the clone VSR is a better choice in my eyes simply on availability of parts.

Ok, what is a tdc? I think I'll definitely be going with the well vsr clone, maybe do a spring swap, dependant on what the FPS is when I get it.

 

[Impulse]

43 minutes ago, alxndrhll said:

Main thing you loose with a clone is the half decent QA Marui do, but if you’re ripping all of those parts out then you’re paying extra for no reason.

 

And a tiny bit of compatibility. It's not the end of the world, since most differences are easily fixable, but having worked on both a TM VSR-10 and a JG BAR-10 I can say they're not quite the same. We're talking fractions of millimetres though, for things like the Action Army VSR magazines fitting the TM VSR perfectly, but can sometimes have issues with the JG if the stock is screwed on too tightly, or things like the cylinder heads having different threads, which I only found out when I was reading up on HPAing the JG.

 

1 hour ago, LazzurusMan said:

I've always been told to avoid the cheaper snipers. Would a well vsr clone be any good? Patrolbase says they're around 400fps, so maybe a little less upgrading needed?

 

Cheap snipers are fine. For me, hindsight is 20:20 and I'd always go for the TM VSR going forward due to the issue I explained above, and they're only £80 or so more expensive than the clones. When I'm thinking about spending around £800 on a rifle, an extra £80 on the base rifle isn't exactly going to be a make or break for me. As has already been pointed out, you're probably stripping everything out of it anyway, so the fact the parts inside are crap doesn't really matter. My first upgrades on anything is the hop up and barrel. They're usually the easiest parts to upgrade in terms of actually installing them and they don't cost very much. A 430mm Laylax 6.03 or a Maple Leaf Crazy Jet will come in at about £50 and a Maple Leaf autobot rubber and omega nub will cost about £15 all in. If we're upgrading a sniper, we're probably going to need either a new hop arm or, preferably, an Action Army hop up chamber for a VSR or a TDC mod. The VSR hop chamber is actually quite bad, and the TM one will struggle to hop anything heavier than .28s stock, and you don't want to be using .28s in a sniper rifle.

 

4 hours ago, LazzurusMan said:

A friend has offered to sell me his unused, unupgraded TM L96 for £100, so I'm trying to figure out how much it'll cost me all together with the parts needed to get 500fps or near, and I can't for love nor money find parts ion stock ANYWHERE.

Have airsoft pro stopped making them?

Do Laylax still do parts?

Also, if anyone can tell me what I should be upgrading most on a stock TM L96 that'd be great. So far I'm going off a Norvitsch video.

 

I think PDI do parts for the TM L96 if you're looking to go pricey. They're great parts, but you do pay a premium for them. I plan on doing a TM L96 build at some point and listed the parts I'd throw into it, but I don't quite know if it would work perfectly, as is the way with project guns. When it came to the power upgrades... I'd go HPA. Mancraft do a kit for the TM L96 and I'm loving my HPA VSR, and as I already have tanks, lines and regulators it would be a no-brainer for me.

[Hudson]

It stands for 'Top Dead Centre'

I.e. rather than the usual hop lever moving forwards and backwards to adjust the hop, you mod the rifle so that you press the hop down directly from above.

 

It helps with consistency and more.

 

When it comes to vsr clones, I'd go with the cyma 701.

It's a little better quality than the well, and standard 428mm length barrel rather than the Well's 500-something.

 

But personally, I'd go for an action army T11.

Same design, vsr compatible, but better build quality still, a more modern, funkier look, and comes with a 90 degree trigger as standard, so it'll be more durable when you put a higher powered spring in.

Plus, it's only a bit more expensive than a clone VSR, at around £160 or so (at last check).

 

Couple of mine below for reference.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Hudson

[alxndrhll]

22 minutes ago, LazzurusMan said:

Ok, what is a tdc? I think I'll definitely be going with the well vsr clone, maybe do a spring swap, dependant on what the FPS is when I get it.

 

I’ve heard two different ones, though both refer to the same thing. Either ‘top dead centre’ or ‘top down centre’, essentially you drill a small section out of the outer barrel and run some sort of bolt through that hole which applies pressure directly to your hop arm.

 

Truthfully I fear we might already be past how much thought you’ve put into what exactly it is you want to be achieving. In no way am I intending to dissuade you, but I get the impression that an opportunity for a cheap RIF has come up and that’s now pretty rapidly growing into something else.

 

Seems to me you think FPS (‘power’) is the be all and end all, which it absolutely isn’t. This isn’t exact at all because we want everything to be working together but as an extremely simple breakdown of what’s doing what:

 

Stronger spring = Higher FPS/Joules = BBs get where they’re going faster

 

Heavier weight BBs + Better hop setup + Clean barrel = Longer range + More consistency

 

Selecting the correct spring ideally needs the hop setup and BB weight settled on and installed, otherwise you may well end up at risk of hurting someone with a RIF running above the joules it should be (I’m not going to go into depth on what joule creep is, a Google search will get you there if you care to know… much like it would have for what a TDC mod is FWIW).

Edited January 3, 2022 by alxndrhll

[LazzurusMan]

Thanks everyone. I didn't realise how much of a money drain Airsoft snipers are, and as I've already got a money drain (king arms Sig 556 that I'm having to hpa as parts aren't made anymore and I can't for the life of me figure out the air seal issue I have) I think I'll give sniping a miss until I can afford to buy either a gas rifle or an upgraded spring rifle.

[alxndrhll]

45 minutes ago, LazzurusMan said:

Thanks everyone. I didn't realise how much of a money drain Airsoft snipers are, and as I've already got a money drain (king arms Sig 556 that I'm having to hpa as parts aren't made anymore and I can't for the life of me figure out the air seal issue I have) I think I'll give sniping a miss until I can afford to buy either a gas rifle or an upgraded spring rifle.