[RonSwanson]

Nice work it's good to get some verified info on the platform and work out a good upgrade path as a lot of beginners pick up this rifle as it's cheap and iconic.

Possibly you might be able to use an Aps2 piston and 90' second sear?

Wonder if it's possible to drill new screw/mounting holes in a vsr trigger housing to fit the rifle. As they look very similar.

Also 44cm3 as the volume has to be wrong that's tac41/SRS levels of volume most aps2 stuff is around 30cm3 did you calculate it using the entire cylinder length or just where the piston head would sit from when cocked and the cylinder head?

 

[RonSwanson]

Thanks! That was my thinking too.

Regarding the trigger - I believe one or two people have done this, although none of them went into detail on the process. I aware of a few people who bought an APS2 Piston and sanded it down to a 45 degree to work with stock trigger too.

Regarding mounting screws - I've wondered the same. It seems possible, but I'm not familiar enough with true VSR trigger assemblies to say for certain.

Regarding cylinder volume, I too thought this was too high. I used the stroke length and the inner diameter of the cylinder (so 4.5in and 20mm). I used an online calculator to convert and do it all for me. I was surprised at the number being so high so I ran the calc several times on different days. One would think if the volume is that high overvoluming the rifle would be trivial.

A quick Google comes up with 35.6cm3 volume which sounds more realistic but that still mean that extra volume must come from a shorter piston Bor longer cylinder.

I don't have access to my rifle right now so can't measure the stock type 96 parts. Might be able to get them for next Thursday though possibly to compare for parts support for cylinder and piston.

If the piston is aps2 spec with a 456mm barrel and a good enough hop rubber i would have thought it should be capable of launching .43 and possibly .45 bb's. But that's theoretical anyway let's stick to facts.

 

[RonSwanson]

Bad cylinder o-ring?

 

[RonSwanson]

So stock type96 plastic piston is 12cm by 19.5, so the m40a3 does use type 96 pistons.

You can get the type96 pistons in 7/11mm & 9/13mm spring versions depending on brand.

My type 96 piston is also 9.5 inches aka 24.3 cm (not including cylinder head or bolt handle/mount)

Type96 cylinder head is 20mm long (not including threads).

So cylinder and internals all appear to be aps2/t96.

Really it's only the trigger left to solve and I do wonder if drilling mounting holes in a vsr trigger could work in which case it changes the rifle from meh to a good upgrade base.

 

[RonSwanson]

The receiver is plastic? well that ruins it. Why do nearly ball Airsoft companies have to make at least 1 dumb design decision on every gun they make?

Could still potentially mod a trigger housing but than your waiting for the failure of the trigger housing and the gun is in the bin.

 

[RonSwanson]

The receiver is plastic? well that ruins it. Why do nearly ball Airsoft companies have to make at least 1 dumb design decision on every gun they make?

Could still potentially mod a trigger housing but than your waiting for the failure of the receiver and the gun is in the bin.

 

[RonSwanson]

Yeah, that was an extreme downer, same with the barrel being a slip fit with no threads at all.
Tbh the Double Bell VSR-10 I had for a week had the same slip fit outer barrel, but at least that had a metal piston, full piston seal, 500 FPS, and a nice bolt pull with a GOD DAMN METAL RECEIVER.
For the $130 or whatever it was, it's definitely worth paying the extra $30 for it due to the stainless cylinder and all the other things that made it better.

Most of the review s online state the receiver is metal wonder if they changed it to plastic recently?

Tankcom what's your reciever made from?

 

[RonSwanson]

The stock piston is APS2, but not 90 degrees like I understand the rest are. Thus, the piston is a custom 45 degree piston, designed to fit in the APS2 cylinder. The only successful changeouts I'm aware of were APS2 pistons that were shaved down to 45 degrees.

The stock piston and trigger unit have had no problems with two SP170 springs for over several months now, and a 500fps (supposedly) spring before that. Upgrading this is irrelevant at this point, given that two SP170 springs have proven incapable of bringing the power up.

The issue is that the gun does not produce more than 2J of energy, despite improvents to every area that would impact this. I realize that since the gun is APS2 spec cylinder, shortening the barrel to 430mm from 465mm probably lost me some power, but surely full seal and a beefy spring would substantially offset this? Apparently not.

Previously, the stock oring was insufficient to prevent leak by with my original SP170. With the new oring (Same size best I can tell) the piston is pretty snug. I wouldn't say it is hard to move but it does give full seal like it is supposed to.

The only other thing I can figure is that the cylinder head has not been aligned with the barrel correctly, which caused me to think my previous barrel was bent (it was, but the new one has the same problem)*. I'm going to rectify that, play a game or two with it, and maybe after that toy with piston weights until I purchase a SSG96 or SSG10A2.

As it stands, the gun's stock performance at $80 makes for a great starter gun, but despite dropping $170 into it at this point it shoots only marginally better than it did before. Why I cannot get the energy higher than 2J is beyond me, but from what I've seen nobody else has managed this either.

*Maybe that's not entirely true. I put a second o-ring in a extra groove for testing purposes. It may be causing extra drag. Still, aren't 170s supposed to give 3.3J min? Surely that's not causing a full joule to be lost, especially since this was not an issue previously

What BB weight are you using? 430mm should be .45.or .48g I think, anything lighter and it's wasted air volume.

Also the stock piston is so light I would assume more weight would only help.

 

[RonSwanson]

Tested both .4g and .45g bbs. Using the latter, anything past 250ft requires a lot of hop. A half setting on my Mr Hop, the bbs will drop 20-30ft starting around 265ft. Crank that up and they might reach 310ft - maybe.

As for the piston - that was my thought too, but so far it has only made things worse. I've yet to get anything but reverse joule creep out of the gun. All of the springs tested with added piston weight (including the first 170) were shooting in the 400-460fps range with .2g bbs, so it appears they were not generating enough energy to compensate for the added weight.

Your using a vsr spec spring aren't you?

Might be why power is hitting a limit around 2j, aps2 springs are longer to keep the piston under a more even amount of pressure, action army t96 springs are 7/11mm so would work, aps2/t96 rifles can reach high joules so the issue appears to be the spring used.

 

[RonSwanson]

I was wondering about this. How long are APS2 springs? The VSR10 Laylax SP170 spring is about an inch longer than the stock spring prior to install, and the same length after break-in.

An unused action army m150 for type96 is 23.8cm. Luckily I have a spare one in my gun bag.

 

[RonSwanson]

Action army make an M170 type 96 spring, haven't seen any in UK but that's likely due to our 2.3j limit so anything over an m150 is overkill.

I do think their is a place in the market for a cheap, taster rifle as the amount of people that buy snipers and sell them once they realised sniping isn't for them.

Currently it seems to me (and this is my own opinion)

Budget/just want to test if I like shooting slow and will consider buying a better rifle if I like it
-M40
-A&K M24
-(Honourable mention MB02/03, just don't like you are tied to AirsoftPro parts as not available in every country but great for Europe)

Upgrade base
-VSR
-TYPE 96

Mid budget good
-Nov SSG's

Money is no problem
-Silverbacks