CSI XR-5 futuregun AEG

[Rogerborg]

http://www.csiairsoft.com.tw/xr-5.html

 

 

What we have here are some very basic V2/M4 components inside a chonky plastic futuregun shell that comes in 8 variants (2 each of stock, lower handguard, and front end) and a variety of colours - although you'll be hard pressed to find any still in stock in the UK other than Dayglo Blue from a BBGnuz seller.

 

Good stuff:

A nicely finished gearbox with what seem like decent gears, and mine was shimmed perfectly.

A well sealed cylinder head, and a reasonable piston with a partly-metal rack (but no bearing) and decent compression out to the cylinder head nozzle.

A huge battery compartment in the front stock, accessible just by sliding the lower front rail forwards then the entire bottom handguard opens up.

The cheek rest is designed to be removable, to get a better sight picture.

The hop nub is an H style (but read on).

The motor height adjustment screw has a second grub screw on top of it, which will help to lock it in place. A small touch, but a welcome one.

Rails for days.

 

Meh stuff:

The motor turns well enough on 11.1V, but is anaemic on 7.4V. CSI themselves recommend 9.6 - 11.1V.

A light barrel, I suspect aluminium, although decently anodised and smooth inside. Aside, mine is ~325mm, not the advertised 363mm. The stock flash hider is a lonnnng boi that extends well inside the shell, so I think a 363mm would just about be hidden.

An old dial-style metal hop unit, decently finished with little slop (... but read on...)

There's a hop bucking, I guess, with a tiny contact patch. I managed to foul mine out of the box, so I can't speak to the efficacy, although one reviewer reports effectively no hop.

The trigger has a stiff semi fnar, although mine is starting to soften up after some finger blasting.

Plastic spring guide with no bearing, just a flat washer.

QD mounts on either side at the rear, but not the front.

The spring is progressive, although I remain unconvinced that this is more than a gimmick.

 

Bad stuff:

Despite being mostly plastic, it's a heavy sod.

Plastic 6mm bushings. Yes, plastic, in CURRENT_YEAR.

No radiusing on the gearbox.

No lubrication in the gearbox, at all.

Thin, weedy wiring to a mini-Tamiya connector. The +ve spade connector on mine was loose and needed crimped.

Teching is an absolute sod, needing near-complete disassembly and the gearbox, hop and barrel removed as a unit. I can count at least twenty-three screws and pins and bolts that need removed and replaced just to get the gearbox, hop and barrel out, and I may have forgotten some.  You will not be doing any adjustments on-site beyond motor height.

The H nub is hard plastic, and glued in to the hop arm!

The plastic (21mm) nozzle has no o-ring, and compression is poor with it extended.  Despite the full size cylinder and 325mm barrel, I was seeing slightly under 1J with no hop, dropping to 0.8J with full hop (but very little hop effect)

Lots of slop between the inner and outer barrels, that begs for shimming.

Feeds OK off the supplied small-capacity hi-cap (jumbo shrimp!) but I've had to file the rear of all my other mags to get them to fit and feed, and they need donkey-punched in hard.

 

tl;dr:

Would I recommend it?  Strong no, the out of the box performance is poor, and there are too many red flags in the construction.  It's a really old fashioned no-frills G&G Raider or CYMA M5xx style build but without the G&G performance or CYMA robustness, and with none of the features that you'll find in Specnas or Lancer Tacticals today that sell for £30 less.

 

So, it's a project gun, but one that requires so much disassembly to access any component that tuning will be a nightmare.  You do not want to be paying someone for their time to work on these, and you'd better triple check every component in isolation before you re-assemble.

 

Do I regret it?  Nah, I wanted the looks, and the project, and it's fixable with a lot of time and a little money.  An AK2M4 order is already ordered, to address the worst culprits.

[gavinkempsell]

Will it take other mags or just the one's supplied?

[EDcase]

Yeah it will take most AEG STANAGs

[Rogerborg]

On 14/05/2024 at 11:20, gavinkempsell said:

Will it take other mags or just the one's supplied?

 

V

V

V

 

On 14/05/2024 at 11:55, EDcase said:

Yeah it will take most AEG STANAGs

 

... possibly with some persuasion.  All of my other M4/STANAG mags were a tight fit, and needed half a mm or so filed off the rear. The feed tube on the stock mag is set 1mm or so further back than any of my other mags.  Some of my mags still don't feed and will need modified further.

 

As I said, it's a project gun.  It does work out of the box, with the supplied mag, but anything beyond that will need some time and fettling.

[EDcase]

Yeah, my PTS mags won't fit but I have a shorty and full size STANAG that are fine.  Not sure of the make but I think they're CYMA

[Rogerborg]

12 hours ago, EDcase said:

Not sure of the make but I think they're CYMA

 

Oh, good call. The original hi-cap mag from my CYMA CM.516 feeds fine.

[sp00n]

I see somethings never change … there still not lubing the mech boxes, at least my original one had bushings iirc

[Rogerborg]

3 hours ago, sp00n said:

I see somethings never change … there still not lubing the mech boxes, at least my original one had bushings iirc

 

I bought in the full knowledge of what was in there, after watching this torture test and strip-down.  Minimal lubrication, decent gears, but one of the plastic bushings melted and failed.

 

I have to pull him up on complimenting the air-seal though. Testing with the nozzle pushed hard onto the cylinder head isn't what matters, it's the seal with it forwards that counts.

 

Barrel, bushings, o-ring nozzle and a bearing spring guide are going in now. I shudder to think how many time I'll need to have it apart to tune the energy though.

 

 

 

[Rogerborg]

Followup:

 

Should be sorted now with a smallish AK2M4 care package.  The gearbox shell continues to surprise, it seems less Chinesiumy than most, and was quite resistant to being radiused. What a bizarre decision to fit crappy plastic bushings with a decent (but unradiused) shell, gears and piston.

 

The shell also has some helpfully-annoying posts intended to keep the very thin stock wiring in place that need removed in order to use anything chonkier.

 

The notchy semi trigger (also reported by other owners) is down to the safety lever that blocks the trigger tending to stay very slightly raised when the selector on (or around) semi. It should wear down, or just nudge the selector a tiny fraction more towards auto.

 

As an aside for the "wut spring 2 get maxumin powar?" question, with the stock spring, plus a new bearing guide, o-ring nozzle, Specna rotary hop (I think), Maple Leaf bucking and a ~330mm 6.00mm[*] barrel, the no-hop power with 0.28g went from <1J  to >1.25J (adding some hop brings it under 1.2J for my regular woodland sites, although I may not get under 1.13J with properly hopped 0.2g for CQB  ).  Air seal is king.

 

But good God, it's time consuming to work on, with so much take-down and put-back to do anything. I nearly wept when I realised that I'd put the gearbox back for the eleventeenth and what I thought was the final time before fitting the hop and barrel, despite repeating to myself "Put them back as a unit" over and over.

 

[*] An XT from AK2M4, labelled as 6.02mm from a sample batch that came out under-sized and was sold as such for a bargain price - it is indeed a proper tite-boi.