1st Gun Advice please

[TrigaHapyTurner]

Hi people,

Im fairly new to Airsoft, still working towards getting my UKARA. Ive brought my face/eye protection and now wanting to find the right gun ready for when i got my UKARA.

Ive done alot of research and despite everything i have read i really like look of AK's . But alot of what i see is rated at 400fps and my local site only allows 345fps. Am i better of buying top

range AK and install low grade spring in order to meet the 345fps limit, or am i better of buying a mid range AK with 290 fps and upgrading parts to reach 345 fps ? because guide i have read always say 1st thing to do with new gun is upgraded to tight bore barrel and better hop up. I was hoping to spend around £200. Im not fussed if is wood or full metal. Am i right in thinking RS and G&G make best AK's and what AK models would you recommend to me and why ? also if anyone has had or still has a AK what advice would you give me ...

Thanks to anyone who takes time out to read and reply to this thread much appreciated..

 

[Monty]

Go for either Cyma or G&G if you want an AK on a budget.

 

[sp00n]

i agree with monty, G&G all the way!

 

[Mike1971]

I will third that G&G for a first rifle.

 

[AK47frizzle]

I was gonna say the G&P tactical ak... never mind

 

[Unrustle_Thine_Jimmies]

CYMA,Dboys or G&G for good cheap AKs.

If you go for CYMA,avoid the 031,028 and 048 are one of the best. 028 is a pretty good TM clone but the screws through out are on the shit side. 048 is mostly steel and pretty damn good. Q/C is a bit spotty so performance and gun quality varies. Some guns have great performance,some are on the meh side.

Dboys RK steel series are good,a bit cheaper than CYMA and better externals,however internals are pretty awful and might need upgrading or replacing. Q/C is pretty bad so quality is all over the place but externals are usually excellent for the price

G&G Combat machine RK47 is simple and reliable,Q/C is very good and performance is great,plastic,but uses that nylon fiber reinforced stuff that G&G love(And I do too!) There is also a full metal one but I'm not a fan of the magnesium receiver.

For more expensive AKs..

RealSword is the absolute king. The externals are made by Norinco,who may not be great real steel wise but for airsoft there is no better option. The externals are de-milled by RealSword in Hong kong to fit gearboxes and explode in your face if you jam a bullet in there. Internals are super duper strong and performance is on par if not better than TM. It can also take real steel parts so you can convert it into a russian AKM though I'm not sure customs would be too happy with real AK bit coming in.

Then there's LCT. Full steel like realsword,no pot metal like the ACM guys. Gearbox is simple and performs well,I'd say performs like the G&G one. Rock solid like realsword,wood is great quality and the steel is well made.

BE WARY WHEN BUYING THESE. There have been reports of retailers buying them in kit and gearbox form and assembling them and then selling them for the price of a factory one. It's better to buy them from Hong kong retailers or Gunfire.pl.

Another common issue is barrel oxidization which is caused by retailers not storing them properly,though I think that's sorted by now.

Only complaint I have is the gearbox motor is pretty weak and the piston does not like high power. But the gearbox shell is very very strong,gears and compression parts are excellent.

G&G have also recently released a new line of RK top tech guns,using bodies made by LCT. basically an LCT with a G&G gearbox,blowback and an integrated 11.1v lipo in the handguard.

 

[Ian_Gere]

I've got 2 AK's - my advice about them is this:

CYMA tactical AK47 CM.028U

cheap but not so easy to find these days (gunfire.pl still had them last time i looked), fantastic shooting straight out of the box, but a bit too hot for your site - downgrade the spring to an Element M105, leave the barrel and hop alone, be careful when disassembling/reassembling that you don't overtighten the screws into the plastic receiver or barrel base assembly and try not to break it down too often

ICS AKS-74U

fair price for an uber-robust gun which gets fair range even though it fires at 318FPS, it's a pain in the arse to break it down (you need a right angled posi screwdriver) - I'd put a tight bore barrel in it and possibly a 105 spring too (mine has a Guarder chrome 6.02mm barrel and Element M105 = 341-44FPS)

My current fav AK on the market (apart from the RS Type 56/2) is the CYMA CM.048M full metal and wood VFC clone AKM - £200 from Zero One. Ed recently bought a G&G intermediate AK47 - a Combat Machine in a metal body with polymer furniture and for £145 it shoots almost as astonishingly well as my CM.028U did for £125 but is a much nicer gun to hold and it doesn't need any messing about with out of the box - I'm jealous!

 

[TrigaHapyTurner]

Thanks for reply's especially last 2 for going into good depth. does anyone know what the stock spring in the CYMA CM.048M is ? and how hard is it to replace spring ? also like the cyma CM.028c but again will need to replace spring to bring down fps.

my main concern is how easy replacement parts are and how hard to replace parts will be?

 

[AK47frizzle]

replacement parts are pretty easy to find, you can find come CYMA ak parts on Airsoft-club, which is the website I normally get upgrades for my ak

 

[Ian_Gere]

The CM.048M factory spring is probably somewhere between 110 and 120 as it's highly unlikely that the compression is so bad that it is only getting 365FPS out of an M120 spring, but it's also unlikely to be so good that it gets 365 out of an M110.

Whatever it is though, out of the box it shoots far too hot for many British sites.

Changing the spring requires opening the gearbox, which you shouldn't do yourself unless you feel confident in your aptitude for fixing things, because there are a number of small components which can ping out and must be held in place as you put it back together. There are some good tutorial vids on yt

- some tips (which will not make any sense until you have watched):
after you remove the motor in its cage from the gearbox shell and before you so much as see how loose the two halves of the gearbox shell feel, reach inside with a bent paperclip and hook it behind the anti-reversal latch - you then pull it so that the gears do spin backwards releasing any tension on the main spring - this will drastically reduce the chances of things pinging out when you separate the gearbox shell halves and more importantly reduce the risk of teeth being broken off gears if/when the spring tension is released in a clunk! You make have to do it 2-3 times so that there is no tension remaining

it's not uncommon for parts to refuse to sit still in a way which allows you to simply drop the right hand half of the shell back on and you may well run out of fingers trying to hold everything in place and close the shell - put it together without the trigger, its spring, and the little rocker arm that fits onto it; fit the slide thingy on top of the gearbox to hold the halves together but not the screws - you can then prise the halves apart a little and put the trigger in left side first and then rock it up and back to get the right side in

imo plenty of grease is a good thing, but teflon grease is the way forward, not stuff which looks like dilute earwax - you should avoid putting silicon oil inside the cylinder because micro-droplets of it will end up being blown out into the hop unit, reducing the efficiency of the rubber

btw - putting a crane stock on an AK is like butterscotch syrup in coffee, if it's shite coffee it will just be more sweet and shite, whereas if it's good coffee it's better enjoyed for its own flavour... and that's before we get to the sacrilege, YOU HERETIC!