Celcius CTW

[Gee123]

I have been looking at getting one of these, mark 2
has anyone tried one, are they any good?

Thanks

[teabagmonster]

Re: Celcius m4

have got a team alpha.take out the 12 month warrenty £50 quid.only use celcius mags.after sales service is first class

[CK]

Re: Celcius m4

There is a very good review on a couple of other forums, not here for some reason.

Mines super duper.

Get a CTW, get an MDD hop unit (out this week), rewind motor. Jobs a goodun.

I'm a huge unofficial spokesman for Celcius and STTS, not to mention the retailers. (Literally I can't mention the retailers ) STTS have made massive improvements to the platform, and they aren't done yet, believe me

[CK]

Re: Celcius CTW

this is not my review, thanks go to mightyjebus

this is a direct copy of my review from ****. Though some people on here might like or dislike to see it. I've edited it slightly to make more sense.

a brief history: Just so that there is no misunderstanding i've never worked for stts, ******* or ********, in fact i've never been to their shop/factory and bought my one online. I've followed the team alpha project, on the forums, since it was first advertised as the price tag seemed pretty decent but surely there must be a catch?

Experience-wise i have none when it comes to the ctw but i have owned a few ptw's, built a few, fixed a few and continually tinker with the ones i currently own.

I'll break this review into a couple of sections:

The aeg itself
magazine compatability
problems
the future for mine


the aeg itself

ok well i find it's best to start with a couple of photos so here's a picture of the left and right hand side of the ctw.



externally it looks very similar to a ptw with the chrome stock pipe and grey/blue upper and lower receiver. External build quality is on par with the ptw however the paint finish on the trigger and trigger guard is easy to wear off. The black paint is flaking off mine to show the gun metal coloured metal below. The carry handle is a darker grey than the upper receiver but these small points aren't really a problem for me as the carry handle will be binned and the gun metal colour of the trigger and trigger guard looks better.

The trades are lasered i believe and each rifle has an unique serial number. The fire selector markings are safe, semi and go loud.


the only other external point to mention is that the inner barrel comes right to the end of the flash hider. This is unlike a ptw where the inner barrel stops where there the outer barrel meets the flash hider. Does it look bad? I'll leave that up to you but personally i would like to have seen the inner barrel stop at the flash hider/outer barrel joint.


internally the ctw uses a system very similar to the ptw 2008 versions. The 3 electronic boards are blue in colour and the blue led on the ecu is very bright but i believe this can be dimmed (i need to look into this). The gearbox is plain silver in colour and the gears look to be good quality (more on this later). The hop up unit is plain silver and the tight bore barrel is silver. The tight bore is 6.00 and gives a good grouping when fired through.


you'll notice the small o ring at the end of the hop unit. This helps with the tolerances inside the upper receiver and as far as i can gather allows most magazines to work properly (i could be wrong on this point). I'm also led to believe that this is only in the team alpha ctw and not standard on other ctw's.

The cylinder is cosmetically different that the ptw ones but internally it looks to be the same. The piston is blue plastic, the piston head looks to me aluminium and the rubber o rings seem good quality. I mentioned the external differences on the cylinder compared to a ptw and below you can see that the ctw has 3 rings milled into the main body. These look only cosmetic and i can't see any other reason for them but to tell you it's a ctw cylinder.


the battery connects inside the stock and unlike the ptw comes with a deans connector already attached.



things i need to check: Does a ptw cylinder/ hop unit/ inner barrel fit?

Magazine compatibility:
I tried 4 different magazines in the ctw and all worked flawlessly. No jams, misfeed or shredded bb's. Below is a picture of the 4 magazines in question i used.



problems

you might have noticed by now that i haven't mentioned firing the aeg. There was a good reason for this. When i fist got it i attached a battery, fired off 3 mags worth of bb's using the celcius magazine and when i went to try the other magazines the gearbox turned over but nothing left the barrel. So after a quick chat to the shop the aeg was boxed up and sent back. It turns out that the sun gear in the gearbox was the older 2 piece one which was known to have problems. In went a new 1 piece sun gear and the aeg turned up here this morning. Excellent service from the shop and the 3 month warranty looks to be a good idea. So it was time to test those magazines again and guess what another small problem. Once again the gearbox turned over but nothing fired so after a quick check i noticed the stts nozzle was sticking inside the hop unit. I might mention here that it's a bit of a bastard to remove the cylinder with the hop and barrel attached as the cocking handle needs to be in just the right position for them to come free of the upper receiver. After a bit of jiggerypockery i managed to get the nozzle moving freely inside the hop unit. At last i could test the mags and see how she fired.
As i mentioned the mags all worked fine and when i chrono'd it she was firing at about 315 fps which is a bit lower than advertised but it's something i will look into as this shouldn't be a problem. Accuracy from the tight bore is good as to be expected and surprisingly there where no "flyiers" which you sometimes get with a ptw. Every shot followed the same path and it looks like the hop is doing a good job. Talking of hops i will be getting one of the new type of hop when they are released as they look to be a better design than the original.

Well that's almost it for now so if you have any questions feel free to ask. I will be checking out the blue led thing and also the compatibility of the ptw cylinder/hop/inner barrel shortly and i'll post the results here.

And lastly, the future for mine:

Well i'd be silly to leave it cosmetically how it is. I've always fancied a very short cqb style aeg and so with the purchase of this ctw i'm going to make something a bit special (in my eyes anyway!).
Below you can see the bits i've already received to make this happen and there are a few more bits on there way to me as i type. Ultimately i'm looking to have a ctw with a 7 inch troy front end with a small gas block, black stock pipe (converted gbb stock pipe) and a bit of a fancy stock. I loath the a2 style pistol grip and find it uncomfortable to use over long periods so i'll stick on the one you see in the picture. Internally i will be fitting a etiny ecu to make more space in the stock but this can wait until the 3 month warranty has expired.


edit - i thought i better edit this and give you my opinion of the team alpha ctw. Do i like it? Yes, is it cheap? Yes, does it have problems? Yes, is it worth it? Yes i think it will be. If you buy one and have problems then the 3 month warranty is going to be your friend. Ideally you shouldn't need to use it but at least it's there if you do. Do i have any concerns? Yes - long term use will see if this is a winner or not. Before i take it out to a skirmish i'm going to tighten everything and give it the once over. I've heard of someones fire selector falling off and this indicated that it's worth checking out all the screws/nuts and bolts before taking it outside.

As i continue to tinker:
Ok, i've had a look at the lower than expected fps and came across a strange problem and a possible fix.

If you load any magazine up with more than 50 bb's then the fps drops right off and goes as low as 150 fps. It's only when the mag has around 50/60 bb's that the fps increases to 335 and stays constent. I tried this across the 4 different magazines and all showed the same symptoms. I tried lubricating the ctw magazine to see if this had any effect but still the same. You can hear a difference in the aeg firing when it has low fps and there is a marked change to the noise when it starts to fire correctly.

I took a ptw hop fitted with a vanaras tightbore barrel ( i had to remove the flash hider for it to fit as it was a m16 length inner) and a ptw cylinder. This fired fine (confirming that ptw parts will fit and work) and it fired all bb's from the magazine with a constant 330 fps.
Next up i tried the original hop and barrel with the ptw cylinder but the nozzle gets stuck in the stts hop unit.
And lastly i used the ptw hop/vanaras inner barrel with the ctw cylinder and this fired really well. So well in fact that the fps jumped up to 360.

So the fix for mine right now would be for me to fit a ptw hop unit to the ctw tightbore inner barrel which i will try tomorrow and see what happens. If other people are having problems with the mags then it might be worth trying the mags with different loads to see if the fps results match mine.

I'll also mention here that the pistol grip gets quite warm (similar to a ptw) and after approximately 1200 bb's the metal base plate on the pistol grip was very warm. At around this time my battery started to flag so i've now swapped it over but this hopefully shows that the ctw will run through around 10/12 midcaps before the battery needs changing. I'll mention that this is for my ctw and might not be the same on all ctw's.

Investigating the hop unit. I'm going to measure it later and compare it to a ptw one to see if there are any differences. Whats strange is that with 50 ot less bb's in any mag it all works fine but as soon as you go above this then the fps drops off. It's not a gradual drop but a complete drop of 150 fps. The only force, that i can think of, that is changing with more or less bb's is the spring compression. As this compression builds up the pressure exerted by the bb's inside the hop is increasing which maybe forcing the ctw hop upwards inside the receiver breaking the airseal somewhere. I thought it might be between the top of the mag and the bottom of the hop but pushing the mag up with my hand whilst firing still produces the same results. The next thing to check will be the seal between the nozzle and the hop. If this is getting an air gap causes by the spring compression then the air is escaping here instead of pushing down the barrel (least path of resistance and all that).

On another note it really doesn't like lipo's that aren't fully charged. I put a couple of lipo's on it today which had about 3.8v in each cell and it didn't fire in single and sluggish in auto. Put a fully charged lipo (12.2v total) and it works like a dream.

Ok time to get the lab coat on and have a look at the hop.

Another slight update:

(i had to rebuild a tm ebb today as the metal bushings decided to disintegrate at the weekend so not spent hours on the ctw).

I tried 3 tests tonight:

1. Ctw cylinder with ptw hop and vanaras inner barrel
2. Ptw cylinder, ptw hop and vanaras inner barrel
3. Ctw hop and barrel with ptw cylinder

i used the ctw mag throughout with 90bb's of blaster 0.2g.

1. First 20-25 shots averaged 305 fps and then the rest of the mag averaged 340
2. 355 average for all 90 bb's
3. Nothing as nozzle jams in the ctw hop.

Conclusion - god knows! Naa actually it looks like a straight ptw setup inside will work (more on this in a bit). The 1st combination got me looking at the ctw cylinder and i noticed that there is a fair bit of play in the side to side movement of the nozzle compared to the ptw cylinder. I think the ctw nozzle can move around 30 degrees side to side compared to the ptw's 10 degrees. Why this is i don't know but i'll look into it. I think this could be the cause of the air leak as the pressure from the bb's in the mag pushing on the nozzle is breaking the air seal inside the chamber. Once the pressure drops as bb's are fired the nozzle tension is strong enough to keep the air seal. In test 3 the ptw nozzle gets stuck in the ctw hop which also suggests the nozzle ring on the ptw is very slightly larger which in the ptw setup means there is less room for air to escape inside the ptw chamber.

As for using ptw parts then i think i might investigate which parts on the ctw i need to change with ptw parts to get this firing bang on. Instead of sticking in a whole ptw cylinder and hop unit i think i might get away with a ptw chamber base (about 10 quid) and possibly the cylinder head assembly (about 30 quid).

If i get time tomorrow i will strip a ptw for the bits to make a trial and post the results here.

Btw i still think the ctw is good value for money and if i need to spend 40 quid getting it sorted and firing like a ptw i will be more than happy with it.

[CK]

Re: Celcius CTW

It's worth noting that Mightyjebus did a fair bit of work to this, and the review does go on through several posts. I also think his was a bit of a lemon, and I believe the retailer he bought it from has attempted to help out as much as possible.

[seansamurai1]

Re: Celcius CTW

That sounds like a similar issue to FIBUA37s team alpha that me and him sorted through.
It turned out to be an O seal in the piston head for the nozzle that was at fault, so it could only cost a couple of quid in theory.

My MX2 was pretty faultless really, had the STTS mods already, the inner barrel needed to be modded to fit a PTW hop properly but it was an easy bit of file work. I found with mine if you took the lipo too low (well to the inbuilt safety cutoff) a couple of times it would blow the fuse, so it seems none of of the CTWs like less than fully charged batteries.
Mine fed CTW mags, Systema mags and Vanaras mags, only one mag let it down and that was a systema mag, it just didnt feed fast enough.

It was a bloody good gun, but for me it just didnt have that pazaz I want hence it got sold for a recoil.

If you want a good, accurate AEG with good trigger response and a nice sound, then get one.
For me personally it was just a fairly expensive AEG with an electronic bolt stop (also thats what I think of PTWs as well only they are really expensive) and didnt have what I was looking for.
Glad I never bought a PTW myself.
The celcius is cheaper, just about as good and holds its value quite well should you decide its not for you.

[mightyjebus]

Re: Celcius CTW

As CK mentioned I might have a lemon but others have had no problems. I've stopped working on mine as I can't at the moment but when I get a chance I will be swapping out the motor, fitting the new hop and this will hopefully sort out the airleak. If not then a new cylinder or cylinder parts will be fitted. The worst case for mine is that I will chuck in Systema parts to sort it out.

The shop has been pretty good apart from one disagreement and the 3 month warranty is worthwhile but be careful if you try to customise the externals as some bits will invalidate the warranty (CK knows more on this).
The problem facing the CTW is that a lot of people are interested in it as a cheaper PTW replacement and will be looking hard at any reviews, problems, etc. As with most things any CTW problem, like the one I'm having, can get blown out of proportion and tar all CTW's as bad. The bulk of CTW's sold haven't had any problems or the internet would be awash with horror stories. The few that have had problems have been fixed by the 3 month warranty. Mine wasn't as I invalidated the warranty but i'm comfortable that with 20 odd years electrical engineering experience and the qualifications to match then i can figure out most of the problems with the motor/electrics and with over 20 years messing around with airsoft I can figure out the other bits.

Would I recommend a CTW to anyone? it's a good question without a straight forward answer. I think what STTS and the 2 retailers are trying to do is a good thing and with more time then the CTW will probably be a 100% perfect AEG to rival the PTW and be a lot cheaper. The one I bought, shows to me, that they aren't quite there yet.

[KFK714]

Re: Celcius CTW

I have had the Team Alpha 1 type from first release and I have to say in 11 years of playing airsoft this has to be the best value for money you can get. 100% happy with mine and never missed a skip. 100% happy and all I have to say is buy one and see what you think...

[madwelshman]

Re: Celcius CTW

What ctw do you have then Mark? lol

[CK]

Who? Me? I'm eagerly awaiting the second wave of cpk at the moment

Sent from my KFOT using Tapatalk 2

[madwelshman]

Re: Celcius CTW

cpk? I missed something?

[happyal]

Re: Celcius CTW

cpk? I missed something?

Celcius Parts Kit, I'm guessing.

[ashley_bunker]

Have an mx3 and just about to get another one built up from a cpk. And say the place got it from have been spot on. Agree the mdd hop are very good.

[CK]

Celcius professional kit. Like a challenge kit.

Edit: Why do you ask Tony, am I the talk of the town? :D

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[TOBI]

Re: Celcius CTW

You wish...