Reliable airsoft gun

[idrivetractors]

Re: RELIABLE airsoft gun

Because i've got one:

Get a G&P, get the shop to swap out the piston for a TM (the G&P "sometimes" fall apart) and depending on the ammo weight you use you may have to "tweak" the hop. The G&P hop's are fine but can work loose and because of the way the arm apply's pressure to the nub you may find you cant run heavier ammo (if you so choose).
My G&P M733 is a prime example of this and these are "tweaks" recommended in shop. Tweaks that generally wont cost extra and will save your gun going back in to have the gearbox taken apart because it destroyed itself.

But thats just me...

Ben

[TS_Welshy]

Re: RELIABLE airsoft gun

With a budget of £250, would you buy a TM M4 though?

Well I certainly wouldn't buy an ICS if I had any choice.. so many better M4s out there. Not saying that they're bad, but they get overrated - probably because of zeroone.

If I was going for RELIABILITY, like the OP, then yes, I would buy a TM M4.

If I wanted the nicest M4 for the money, I'd get a second hand G&P. And when I say nicest, I mean the one that feels and looks the nicest, but left stock, I don't think the G&P would last longer than a TM without breaking.

[Fizzy]

Re: RELIABLE airsoft gun

I don't think the G&P would last longer than a TM without breaking.

The internals, no, but the bodies are prone to snapping receiver lugs (or at least were)

[Stargazer]

Re: Reliable airsoft gun

I have to say if you dont want to upgrade the externals then go for the ICS, I know someone with an ICS M4 and he absolutely loves it, also a member of out team has an ICS MP5 (Metal Body) he left it on the bonnet of a Jeep which then drove off throwing the gun off in the process, the only damage was snapping the sliding stock (easily replaceable) the metal body was absolutely fine and the gun still fired with no issues. Also the ICS gearboxes are pretty easy to work on if you are of a techie mind. Although they aren't perfect you dont have to replace anything out of the box unless you want to.

Stargazer

[strettman]

Re: RELIABLE airsoft gun

"sigh" As soon as TM starts to take a hammering these 2 guns are rolled out. I agree with the opinions of these guns. Both are excellent, both internally and externally. But why is it that whenever an OP asks for something, ie the guy gives a remit for a gun under 250, he gets offered 2 guns which are way over of his price request. One is £80 over what he wants to pay and the other a whopping £200.

So, if you want to go down that road Stuff the SOPMOD, and get an Inokatsu AK for the extra cash, because that gun would beat the living daylights out of a sopmod, but wait, oh bugger, it costs more than £250.

slight miss understanding, i ment TM M14 SOCOM not SOPMOD which i put by accident, my mistake. Anyway, i got my M14 of these forums from a guy that had used it a couple of skirmishes, it came with 2 very high quality batteries, 1 TM hi-cap and 1 KA hi-cap all for the excellent price of 200 quid. now, i'm not saying the same opportunity will come up again to get one that cheap but by ALL means i would recommend getting a stock TM M14 SOCOM or normal M14 of these forums. even if it does mean you have to wait for the right one to pop up you won't regret it.

[jfox61]

Re: RELIABLE airsoft gun

slight miss understanding, i ment TM M14 SOCOM not SOPMOD which i put by accident, my mistake. Anyway, i got my M14 of these forums from a guy that had used it a couple of skirmishes, it came with 2 very high quality batteries, 1 TM hi-cap and 1 KA hi-cap all for the excellent price of 200 quid. now, i'm not saying the same opportunity will come up again to get one that cheap but by ALL means i would recommend getting a stock TM M14 SOCOM or normal M14 of these forums. even if it does mean you have to wait for the right one to pop up you won't regret it.

Again I am not arguing over the quality of the TM M14 as it is definitely one of their best stock guns out of the box, and certainly the best standard M14 out there.

But I still maintain, it is more than £80 over the guys budget!! Buying secondhand as you did, I would agree it would be well worth the £200 and £50 left over to spend.

But, as far as I am concerned the TM M14 is the exception to the rule when it comes to their external quality. Apart from the SOPMOD that is, but then that is twice the price of what he wants to spend.

[t0astie]

Re: Reliable airsoft gun

if you want an armalite, read KWA reviews, then read reviews on KWA's 2g Bucking.

I don't own a KWA but any gun that has a warranty even if you use 11.1v lipos, supposedly has a shimless gearbox and a hopup bucking that is better than firefly out of the box has to be a winner.

At the end of the day though, any AEG in that price range is going to break, unfortunatly 250 is still the lower end of the market if you discount china clones then 250 is not far off the minimum you need to spend to buy an AEG. What does that tell you?

If you want something truly indestructable you're better off getting a company to machine everything for you out of strongamantium at a cost of thousands, even PTW's have faults and fail from time to time, and so do VFC Inok KA etc etc.....

Read objective reviews preferably by someone technical enough to pull it apart in the review, they are hard to find but they are out there.

[gijohn2]

Re: Reliable airsoft gun

One day....

I will buy every brand of M4A1 AEG
And do a complete bash out of all of them.

PS: Tm....Some guy used his for the first time at my site and it blocked up *Magic hands me* Fixed it.

Also his carry handle was nice and snapped in half

Loveeeely

[Mattplus]

Re: RELIABLE airsoft gun

Someone said something about upgrading the TM gearboxes

The point is, they don't need it. Just leave them be, and they will run for ages, and be perfectly skirmishable. You want get some uber l33t rate of fire, you will only be doing 290fps but your hop will be win! And left like that it will just run and run. The only things you may need to consider are metal bushings and a stronger spring (if you want to use 0.25s, 290 may be a little low), but a TM gearbox certainly isn't too 'soft' for those things. That also means that you can have some confidence buying second hand, which will bring a lot of TM guns into your price range. And they might even have some better external put on them.

I don't trust ICS...

Why don't you trust ICS? You've made it clear you don't like them but haven't given a valid reason... And being 280-290fps from stock is the point, they don't have much hitting power and they don't have that great range from stock so why wouldn't the point be to upgrade at some point? And you said yourself that to do this you would probably need to upgrade not just the spring but the bushings as well. When I upgraded my TM G36c it was recommended to me by 3 different "tech" guys that I should also upgrade the gears, piston and cylinder... I think that speaks for itself...

Another advantage ICS has over TM however is the split gearbox system, they make changing a spring incredibly quick and easy. If you don't have the full upper gearbox to replace, and only the spring though it still doesn't take that long and it's much easier to upgrade just the top half of a gearbox than the entire gearbox.

[The Keeper of Secrets]

Re: Reliable airsoft gun

Waltzinblack and I have the same issue with ICS, and it's the split gearbox design.

So you get to hot swap the spring. But TBH, once you've put a 1J inside it, you're never going to need to change it ever again. Having an M100 spring ready to put in for woodland is going to add all of about 20fps, which makes utterly f**k all difference to your gun's range. So given that most people will use the hot swap design once, you might as well have a standard gearbox that is compatible with other bodies and other parts.

Second reason, and it's more personal. It'll be very, very difficult to get an ICS gearbox to run as smoothly as you could get a TM/CA/G&P, because the top of the thing is held on by just two lugs and one pin. You can't cut a gearbox in half and expect it to run as smoothly as one you haven't cut in half. Hence the shrieking noise heard from even the most well shimmed ICS gearboxes, which it's possible to eliminate on a TM/CA/G&P etc. As I said, it's more of a personal thing, I spend far too long trying to get every AEG I (and Waltzinblack for that matter) own to make the healthy, low purring/thumping sound asscosiated with a good shim job and well adjusted motor height, and an ICS split gearbox is just never going to run that smoothly.

Back to TM.

If you leave a TM gun stock, it'll run for a good ten years. About two months ago I had a stock TM FAMAS come to me, it'd been a (well used and abused) rental gun for nine years and was still working fine. After opening it up, cleaning, degunking and shimming it it was thumping away just as new. That's just not the sort of reliability you can expect from other makes.

If you don't leave it stock, all you need to do really is a 1J spring and some metal bushings. Easy to fit, and with the money you saved over getting a G&P/CA/ICS you can probably buy a metal body as well, So you have a metal bodied AEG, shooting at a good fps, and if you didn't totally arsefart the gearbox whilst inside it, it'll run for years.

[B.E.N.]

Re: Reliable airsoft gun

Waltzinblack and I have the same issue with ICS, and it's the split gearbox design.

So you get to hot swap the spring. But TBH, once you've put a 1J inside it, you're never going to need to change it ever again. Having an M100 spring ready to put in for woodland is going to add all of about 20fps, which makes utterly f**k all difference to your gun's range. So given that most people will use the hot swap design once, you might as well have a standard gearbox that is compatible with other bodies and other parts.

Second reason, and it's more personal. It'll be very, very difficult to get an ICS gearbox to run as smoothly as you could get a TM/CA/G&P, because the top of the thing is held on by just two lugs and one pin. You can't cut a gearbox in half and expect it to run as smoothly as one you haven't cut in half. Hence the shrieking noise heard from even the most well shimmed ICS gearboxes, which it's possible to eliminate on a TM/CA/G&P etc. As I said, it's more of a personal thing, I spend far too long trying to get every AEG I (and Waltzinblack for that matter) own to make the healthy, low purring/thumping sound asscosiated with a good shim job and well adjusted motor height, and an ICS split gearbox is just never going to run that smoothly.

Back to TM.

If you leave a TM gun stock, it'll run for a good ten years. About two months ago I had a stock TM FAMAS come to me, it'd been a (well used and abused) rental gun for nine years and was still working fine. After opening it up, cleaning, degunking and shimming it it was thumping away just as new. That's just not the sort of reliability you can expect from other makes.

If you don't leave it stock, all you need to do really is a 1J spring and some metal bushings. Easy to fit, and with the money you saved over getting a G&P/CA/ICS you can probably buy a metal body as well, So you have a metal bodied AEG, shooting at a good fps, and if you didn't totally arsefart the gearbox whilst inside it, it'll run for years.

Fully backed. Plus one.. etc.

So many people "upgrade" things just to be able to list the custom components, when really, it's not having any effect.

[Mattplus]

Re: Reliable airsoft gun

Ok very fair points, but I disagree about the 'range' comment- perhaps I was just lucky (or unlucky with the original spring) but upgrading my G36c from stock to 1J has made a good 5-10m difference in range (I can roughly measure this as when I tested it I was able to measure when .2g bbs were initially starting to fall and where they did after the upgrade). I can't explain it, but all I know is with mine it did make quite a considerable difference.

[The Keeper of Secrets]

Re: Reliable airsoft gun

Well, I was commenting on going from 1J to M100, so about 20fps increase. Going from stock TM to 1J (50-60fps increase), with a good hopup unit (as you'll have with a TM) could easily result in 5-10m further.

[guard-sniper87]

Re: Reliable airsoft gun

get the picture :p

BUY A DAMN TM AND LEAVE IT ALONE UNTIL YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING WITH THE GUNS

[GhostDivisionAirsoft]

Re: Reliable airsoft gun

thanks again guys for all the helpfuls responses, good to see a debate going rather than just one guy going 'USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION U N00B'

thanks guys, i'm leaning more towards TM as I haven't had any problems involving externals on a gun really.