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Mine chrono'ed at an average of 410fps so think yourself lucky Battery in mine is fine though and works really well (almost as good as my component-shop battery); it's one of the best cheapsoft batteries I've had so far... There is no way the battery alone can affect the muzzle velocity though - only the rate of fire. The main factors affecting the power of an AEG are the spring and how good the seals are in the piston/cylinder assembly. With power varying as wildly as you say I'd strongly suggest stripping the gearbox and checking the piston/cylinder assembly.

Hmm, thanks... might have to get a 285 then and cut it down to size if it's too long

Revarnished the grips on my AKSU a few days ago & fitted a Guarder SP90 spring and Systema bearing spring guide. Grips turned out quite nicely I think (maybe a little too glossy, although the varnish was supposedly "semi-gloss"... I expect it will fade with wear though), the gun is putting out about 325fps with the new spring & spring guide. Think I'll fit a tightbore barrel to this, I forgot to check while I had it apart though. Anyone know the barrel length used for this gun?

I think the QC at Army may have slipped a bit since the first batch, I've heard of several guns (including mine) from the new batch having problems so far. I was expecting minor flaws (e.g. slight cosmetic faults) but not some pretty major manufacturing defects. At least I'll be getting the barrel & sights issue fixed, shouldn't be so bad when it's firing straight Semiauto will still be a bit of a pain though, maybe when the warranty expires I'll consider modding it. I understand about the longer barrel, the range and accuracy on my AKS74U seems pretty good so far though (althou

Well taking into account shipping costs and customs charges the L85A1 cost about £20-30 more than my Dboys AKS74U but in my view the AKS74U is a much more viable gun for skirmishing; it's reliable, reasonably accurate, uses standard stick type batteries and almost all of the flaws with it were minor (and most were very quick & easy to fix). Dboys AKS74U problems: Muzzle break and bolt/cocking handle can wobble slightly if you shake the gun hard enough -> not really that big an issue, I painted over the thread on the muzzle to reduce movement Hole in the back of the gearbox expo

Problem is I want to keep my warranty Especially considering all the other problems I've had (which I wrote about in my review) For now I've been using my 8.4V 1400mAh NiMH mini batteries with a mini-to-large adapter. The battery supplied with my L85 sucks (and I don't like NiCd anyway). I'm sure component-shop could get/build a battery to fit the L85, I'm planning to ask them about it myself once I have some money available

The advantage is it's supposed to make firing almost instant on pulling the trigger as you don't have to wait for it to turn the gearbox over before firing. Shame they didn't put some more work into the design to make it more reliable though [EDIT] Hmm, here's an idea: every time it locks up on semi press the magazine further into the magwell to engange the tension release lever. Only tried it once so far but it worked. It had to reset the piston afterwards though so the next shot did nothing but worked again after that

I got my L85A1 a couple days ago, have posted a review over on ASCUK, would be interesting to know if anyone else is experiencing the same problems I have.

The internals look ok (plastic/nylon bushings), heavily greased though. Not sure about the barrel. I put more specific info in my review over on ASCUK which I plan to update with some pics & more info when I have the gearbox open again (should be done in about a week or so as the new spring & spring guide are currently otw).

Third that Getting the gearbox out to replace the spring (lucky that I had a spare M100 lying around) would've taken a lot longer without your guide The gearbox internals don't seem bad at all, the gears seem to be of good quality and the rest of the components seem ok too. As well as a spring change the gearbox really does need regreasing though- mine was caked in grease. This gun is well worth the money in my view, it has it's flaws (like pretty much all ACM guns) but they're mostly pretty easy to fix. I'm very pleased with it so far