Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Bengali's First Review :unsure:

 

when the first Pictures of Airsoft SCARs started being banded about the net i was unimpressed to say the least, i thought it was just another M4, just a bit uglier, but as time passed i grew to love its looks, its just another M4 yes, but its better, its more interesting.

 

DSC02140.jpg

 

anyway, i took the plunge and went for the JLS, being as the CA wasn't out yet, about a week later it arrived. the box is hardly as interesting as the gun. its a plain brown cardboard lid upon a polystyrene lower. i opened the lid and looked inside. joy. it was beautiful. i was initially suprised at how a plastic gun could be so solid, and i found out later why. inside the box was the gun, a high cap mag, a battery and the Gripod, Airsoft Scotland were also kind enough to have swapped the 2pin charger for a three pin one so i could charge the battery without an additional adapter

 

the grip/pod/gripod

now this tasty little thing is getting sold as soon as i have a replacement, why? well its nothing to do with the catactualem its just every man and his SCAR has a gripod, and i want to cuscustomizene, also i dont think the CA SCAR will be coming with it so it will help out those who have more money than me :D . the build quality is very very good. its tough and very solid. push the button at the top with youyourumb and thrack, the legs whack out. gentle push and they go back in, simple, useable, but very badly designed. not the airsoft one, the real one. if i were to design a gripod you would press a button and the whole handle would split in two and become the legs, not some piddling tiny legs that dont really work on anything other than a perfect level floor. my grip is not with this product, but the one it copys. this item is indeed of a very high standard

 

the first thing i tried was the stock. i had heard bad things about the stock but was impressed by the solid clack the stock made when it hit each posposition it was extended, at full extension there is a little play in the stock. its annoying when your fondling the gun but it doedoesn'tfect shooting, once the stocks pressed into your shoulder the movement stops. then i tried folding it, i had also heard that the catch to hold it on the side is very weak. so much so that it can be released by gravity alone. indeed this had been proven by Flanker Tankers video review on Utube. but it held solid for the gravity and shake test. nice. the rubrubberizedtt plate adds to the wieweight the stock but it still held firm

 

with the stock firmly locked to the side i put my hand on the pistol grip. oh dear. i have very large hands and its not great to use folded. you can use it. its just not comfortable. apparently the real SCAR wasn't designed to be fired with the stock folded but it was to be transported this way. a strange design then for them to angle the stock so it diddidn'tver the ejection port. the other thing i noticed was the mag catch is covered by the stock. even with the smallest hands its imposiimpossiblee with the stock folded. however this is where the weakness on the stock catch was displayed, and attempattemptcess the mag catch WILL set the stock loose.

 

DSC02146.jpg

 

on to the body

 

the body is very solidly made. with a textured upper and a smooth lower. the lower is just good quality plastic very reminireminiscent M4's. id say identical if it wasn't tan and the fire selector wasn't backwards. now this has caused problems for me. while i understand the reasoning behind the change, and it is easier to move from semi to auto without moving your hand, many years of M4 use has left me in safe during an emeremergencyturns out that you dont tend to think too much on the field and on a couple of occasions i have found myself safe when i need to fire and on auto in the safe zone. more prcapracticel be the key here.

 

the charging handle is a metal lump screwed into a plate, its not a great feature, it pulls back okay but it does feel like its going to snap. it pulls back to reveal the Hop as per most AEG's but there is no locking mechanism so it needs to be held back to ajusadjust hop.

 

as the plastic of the upper recireceiverdn'tfeel as good quality as that of the lower i gave it a squeeze, not a flex at all. i squeezed it harder, nothing. for all intintesiverposes it may as well be a solid plastic upper. theres no give at all. very impimpressivepecially considering the way its designed as i shall get too later.

 

the iron sights on the gun are not your standard M4 sights, they are flip up front and rear. the front is built directly onto the outer barrel and cant be removed, and folds forward to lay flush with the top rail. the rear sight was a disdisappointmentts not a SCAR rear sight at all, its the rear sight from the MP7. even to the point that when you fold down the rear sight you have the two whiwhitets of pistol rear sights, now this wouwouldn'tve annoyed me so much if there had been a useless front pistol sight on the front end but there isnt. isn'thats the point?

 

Metal content is about as high as your going to get on a Scar without the Lower recreceivering metal. the entire front section including Outer barrel, flash hider, ambidextrous sling loops and front sight is metal as are the RIS rails, the rear sight, the Stock hinge and mag catch. now the outer barrel is actually two bits, theres an inch or so that the front sight mounts to, and then its threaded, then theres a barrel extentiextensionut 3/4 inches with the flash hider on it. theory being that you can take the flash hider off and put it on the first thread, making your SCAR better and shorter for CQB. but there are two problems with this. first the threading is so poor on the front section i wouwouldn'tcomerecommendng the barrel extentextensionyway since the slightest knocks are going to start to weaken the thread and you will just end up loosing your barrel somewhere, the second is the flash hider doesntdoesn'tLLY come off. its supposed to, but no amount of pushing and pulling with any number of hand tools would budge it (its supposed to be anti clockwise but i did try both ways) i solved the problem by binning the extension and flashider and permanently fixing a flash hider from a Fa-Mas on, it looks the mutts now with its bigger beefier shorter front end

 

DSC02143.jpg

 

Firing.

 

well i pulled out the Pin at the front which holds the front section in place. it was very stiff which is always a good sign, and i slid the front end off revealing the connectors for the battery, the battery sits in the top of the recreceiverts an AK style stick battery and theres plenty of room in there. i stuffed the battery in and then attached the connectors. it was at this point i realisrealizedthe PINK battery was clearly visible through the vents in the gun. as in VERY visible. need some black tape asap. then i put the front end back on. this is very quick and very simple. would be easy to do in the field if stick batterys werentweren'tng and awkward to find pockets for

 

i stepped out into the garden and started loading up the high cap that had come with the gun, this was another thing that suprised me. the high cap is actually in my opinion better quality than any TM or CA high cap i have used. it has a very nice light grey finish and feeds superbsuperblyotted it in and there was a metalimetallic as it locked in place, i wound the wheel, then aimed. it fired smoothly, ddidn'tsound too bad, i had heard a few horror stories about them sounding like sewing machines on helium but it sounded much like the CA M15 my friend owns.

 

BB's were flying straight, decent rate of fire, nice one i thought, very happy with my new toy i went inside after about 100 rounds. im ski'mmishing with you tomorrow so we shall see how you perform then i said to it and placed it back in the box

 

disaster

 

so we get to the skirmish and set up, my baby comes out to get chronchronoed while im wai'ming i fire a few off. hmmm. not much range, so i tried ajustadjustinghop. still no range, whats going on? i got to the chrono and fired... 114 fired again 72 fired again 38. 38 FPS? thats gotta be wrong, i put it into full auto and hosed the bushes then went back for another go, single shot, and the bb barley rolled out of the barrel, it never made it to the second sensor... :(

 

so i took it inside and sprayed silicon in the barrel and around the feed on the mag and some into the BB's for good luck, took it out again, fired a few into the bushes to get that lube working, then chronoed, 180, so i loaded up a 100round mid cap and lubed the bbs in that, then emptyemptiedchronoed it again and we are up to 270 basically on the dot every time. and after a hard days skirmishing it was still at 270. when i got home i decided i should clean out the barrel and did so to find black stuff on the cottecottonarried on cleaning til no black remained, i havenhaven'tnoed it since but im hopi'mg its now closer to the 310fps advertised.

 

i will state that even while it wasn't performing at its best, it still achieved avery accurate shots, not by way of target shooting which i havehaven'ted with it yet, but with field test, each shot seemed to go exactly where the last went, even at the full extent of its range

 

right oh, the strip down.

 

the gun is basically 4 sections. the stock which comes off first. theres two screws in the hinge that you take out and it slides off. next is the lower rreceiver this comes off in the same way any armalight would. take out the two large pins and pull down. the rear pin was so tight it took a hammer to get out and then back in again. its not going anywhere and ending up lost. the front one was asloalsoht but easier to get out.

 

once you have removed the pins be careful. there are wires in there remember, and they are locked in place. next you need to remove the rear sight with a screw driver as there is a screw securing the top rail hidden underneath it. remove the four screws holding the rail and pull it up and off. this rail acts as a cap holding the two halfs of the upper rreceivertogether. next you need to take off the side rails and the two black gubbins situated further along the body. not quite sure what these do on the real one. but here, they, like the front side rails, screw into the metal barrel support inside the gun helping to hold the whole thing together.

with these removed from both sides you can pry the two halfs apart. be careful here as there asrearets that sit in between the plastic parts in pockets that screws screw into. do not loose these. now you can remove the barrel support and lower rail section and this releases the wires to the gearbox.

 

it is at this point you will get a good look at the hop chamber. its plastic. its ######. no wonder i needed to have the hop fully on for skirmishing, its a big pile of doo doo. the rubber however is very high quality (except it was covered in a black sludgy grease), as is the bucking. which begs the question, why would they put such a nice rubber and bucking in such a *suitcasey* hop unit. the things barley capable of pushing down on the bucking, the barrel isnisn'tld well at all and i was quite capable of twisting the barrel inside the chamber with no effort at all, and infact it may have managed it by itself given time rendering it useless. unfunfortunatelys a two piece hop and i need to spend a little while figuring out what i need to do to get a half decent metal M16 style one piece in there.

 

next up the gearbox, externally looked good. very greasy externally i opened it up. the first and last time i opened a gear box it exploded on me, bits went everywhere and i didn't have a clue what went where, and that was on a gun i never fired and had to then sell the parts off. i did actually cry over that, so i had seen what the inside of a gearbox looks like, but i was still scared stiff about opening this one. but i did while following several guides.

 

WTF

the inside was greased, and i dont mean grease had liberally been applied to the parts, i mean someone took a laladlef engine oil mixed with silicone and just sloshed it in there, i removed (with a spoon :angry: ) about a matchboxes worth which still left everything coated in about 10 times as much as was needed. so i pulled everything out, wiped it down and left them to soak. i cleaned everything up a little later and set about re-lubing properly and re building the gearbox. at least now i had discovered the cause of the black stuff in my barrel and all over my hop

once everything was together i coconnectedhe battery and voila, it worked, oh glorious day, infact it fires smoother and sounds better than ever before.

 

Conclusion

I love my JLS SCAR to bits but there are a few things niggling me like the inaccuracy of the vents and charging handle mostly, but then theres a few other bits like the shell deflector is from a G36, the rear sling loop is missing on the left, the rear sight is an MP7 rear sight, its a Scar, but its certainly not the FN Scar. i dont think ill ever get rid of her, but if the grenade launchers due for release dont fit her than i will need to buy another SCAR. for all of its problems i still love this one though. i wouldn't rrecommendit for n00bs as a fair aamountof work need to go into it, and i wouldn't recommend it for die hard SCAR fanatics as its just not close enough to the real deal. but i do highly recommend it for anyone looking for a cheap sexy secondary AEG.

 

Looks 7/10 lost marks for unrealistic replica, but its still damn sexy

Build 8/10 Could have done with a metal lower receiver

upgradability 5/10 gearbox is version 2 so the world is your oyster, but other than that, nothing

Value 9/10 easily marui quality, for less than marui prices, great value

Overall 7/10 a lot of problems and issues but sexiness and build quality makes it a worth skirmishable gun for very little money ;)

 

 

I will be adding some pictures once i can get them on the PC :D any questions feel free to ask :P

Link to post
Share on other sites

No way is this gun Marui quality, saying so is utter nonsense, the barrel is the lowest quality pot metal that strips quicker than....... well. The ones i have seen look like they have been around the block a few times due to the poor quality of the metal and the paint used on the rails and other metal parts,

 

My conclusion and score:

 

Quality: 3/10

 

One of the worst Chinese clones/ACM on the market, gear box and hop unit are junk best replace it stgraight away with a marui or a more repetable clone gear box

 

Looks: 3/10

 

Not even close to the quality of Echo1, JG, AGM and other Chinese companies, bipod is a puke green not a tan like the rest of the gun, lots of blemishes and seam lines

upgradability 10/10

 

But you have no choice, if you want a gun you can skirmish then you are going to have to basically rip out all the internals and replace them

 

Value 1/10

 

No way is this worth the money you have to pay for this, parts are made from the lowest quality on the market, you are going to have to drop more money to get it to work skirmishin, save your money and get a JG, AGM or and Echo1

 

Overall: 2/10

 

Its a wall hanger, and not even a good one at that, even if you dropped the moeny on it to uprade all the internal its not even on par with the current release from JG or other high end Chinese made replicas. And by the time you have dropped the extra cash on the internals and trying to make the outside look half decent youre on your way to getting the classic army version.

 

Concluision

 

Its the type of product that leaves a bad taste in your mouth and gives the more repetable Chinese clones a bad name, stay clear of it at all cost unless of course you are that desperate to own a SCAR

Link to post
Share on other sites

being desperate to own a scar was the reason i bought it. and i would easily compare it to the TM guns ive owned. not the M14/type 89 etc newer guns that raised the bar for TM as far as quality goes. my ratings were based on my own experience, and quite frankly if you can find me another gun brand new at this price (£75) ill listen. i know the JG guns that are around £100 are better yes but from my experience in handling them dont seem worth the money too much. (M733 has barrel wobble for instance, and the G36C need internals replacing too before you can skirmish legally here)

 

as for buying Dboys? the thread about best clone manufacturers Dboys didnt get a single vote. so im not even going to contemplate them, i will be adding a JG G36C and AGM M14 to my collection asap though

 

remember, this gun is possibly the first AEG designed and produced in China. it is NOT a clone. and i like it. mine needed a load of cleaning before it was useable, but now it fires fine, gearbox IS as solid as a marui and yes, i agree the hop is *beep*. im looking at how i need to go about modding it to fit a one piece CA Hop i have layin about into it.

 

i would also like to add in that mine may be a version two of the gun as there are a few differences between mine and the one Flanker Tanker has reviewed on YouTube. most noticably the charging handle doesnt go all the way back. looking at the internals its not supposed too either. but my stock is a lot more solid and the gearbox screws as well as the screws throughout the body were threadlocked as standard. its possible the gun has been worked on since first release. maybe you could find out DL, since im guessing you had a feel of them when gunner first got them in but might not have looked at them again recently.

Link to post
Share on other sites

There is no way that A JLS SCAR could ever be compared to a Marui. I own 12 Marui AEG's even a 1st generation M4. I own 1 JLS SCAR and to say that I wasted my money on it would be an understatement. The metal on it is cheap. The outer barrel for one stripped out the first day and I had to rethread the barrel just for it to stay on. The gearbox is garbage as well. The material that the gearbox is made out of feels cheap and will easily break if you upgrade the spring. The gears themselves are pot metal, the piston appears worn before even firing a shot. The bolt handle (if you can call it that) is a screw with a small chunk of metal on the end. The ejection port where you access the hop is a piece of tin and is unfinished bright silver metal. The upper and lower receiver are two different colors. The very first thing I had to do was strip the gun just so I could paint it so I wouldn't be too embarrassed using it. After a short test the gun does not perform at all. It barely shoots more than 10 meters and needs a lot of work and adjustments to fire straight. The hop is a waste adjusting does absolutely nothing.

In conclusion the only;y way to get this gun working properly was to strip it down remove the entire gearbox and swap it out with a new one (Marui), change the hop unit (Marui), repaint the gun to cover up the bad lines and seems on the body and throw away the cheap plastic grip pod. Also the magazine that comes with the SCAR will not feed bb's properly into another armalite. I highly encourage and recommend anyone who wants a SCAR to save their money and buy a CA one instead. Unless you are willing and experienced/knowledged enough to repair an AEG stay away for this clone.

Link to post
Share on other sites
The upper and lower receiver are two different colors.  The very first thing I had to do was strip the gun just so I could paint it so I wouldn't be too embarrassed using it. 

 

nice input their from someone who really knows their scars :P

 

word of warning mate, dont bother getting the CA one, theirs have an evem more noticable difference in colour on the upper and lower recievers, cant think why all airsoft scars have that though?

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey even the FN one has badly mismatched uppers and lowers, weird huh!

 

Yes the JLS is cheap, but it was first out, and the tappet plates don't fail on them. Got a Marui Box to go in mine, will replace it when someone does a SCAR H, hopefully with the battery in the stock like the CA. Had a Rico on mine at Global Recon and with the front battery and the Rico the balance was a pain in the *albartroth*.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Ok the reason that there is a difference in the colour is because on te real SCAR there is a difference. The upper receiver on a SCAR is actual Polymer while the lower is made from metal, thus the colour difference. (Or is it the other way around??)

 

I actually have BadSailors SCAR at my house undergoing serious upgrades and repairs, and already the amount that he would have had to spend on parts alone could have got him a CA (Fortunatly we have enough spares between us to build several guns)

 

I'm sorry Bengali, but I have to say that the JLS SCAR is the biggest pile of crud I have seen. I'm glad you like and are happy with yours as I hate seeing poeple pour money down the drain.

Link to post
Share on other sites

id still like to find out if anyone who used/bought one of these when they came out finds them different or better now? because neither of mine have suffered any of the problems people have moaned about. (other than the pot metal front sight/barrel assembly)

Link to post
Share on other sites

Having stripped/cleaned/regreased/kryloned a friends new SCAR earlier this week, and having 5 odd years of experience with TM/CA boxes, and a variety of other manufactuer's bits, as well as a few clones (M14, MP5k, MP40), I'll stick my oar in for once.

 

Stop moaning about the colour, while you're stripping it to clean out the mechbox, give it a coat of krylon... the metal work is poor, yes, that's why it's cheap. Move along.

 

Apart from re-greasing it, i kept everything stock, and will see how it performs at the end of the month. So:

 

Initial testing:

 

RoF was ok out of the box with a 8.4v batt, but consistancy down range (tested at 25m) was poor (worse for instance than my Galaxy MP5k pdw clone). cleaning the barrel helped, but still suggested the hop was junk...

 

Stripping:

 

Outside - Lots of long rails and the plastic is of good, if not amazing quality. Sub TM, but not by a million miles.

 

Inside - Internally, it wasn't too bad, apart from the sheer amount of nasty sticky grease. The gearbox shell is a non-reinforced TM clone, the gears were the usual chinese XYT set (hear about anyone moaning about these in the M14s...?). Strangely, only two of the gears (sector and bevel? i forget...) run on bearings, the remaining gear runs in nylon bushings...most odd. The bearings are an extremely tight fit on the ends of the gear axels, but relatively loose in the mechbox shell.

 

I must admit, the clear plastic spring guide/nozzle/tappet plate don't inspire confidence, but I may be completely wrong here, again, being no worse than ones from other clones. The piston head is vented, the cylinder/head and piston seem alright, if nothing special. Personally, I'd run it until something fails, then replace bits to personal preference.

 

The HOP unit does seem to be the weak link, i found that the bucking was slightly too wide to be pressed against the rubber effectively. trimming a slither off worked nicely. The next problem was that the 'c' clip that hold the barrel in place didn't 'click' securely, and the barrel was free to rotate, which could expalin some hop faults. I wound some PTFE tape on the the barrel end of the hop rubber to stop it moving so much. We'll see how it goes, but chances are, it'll get replaced for a spare TM unit from my spares box.

 

Retesting gave a smoother sound from the mechbox and a bit better downrange consistancy. Not brillant, but it really needs a few thousand round through it before I decide to replace the hop unit or not.

 

P.S.

 

A nice coat of tan & black on the rails with kylon helped the apperance no end, as did painting the fake bolt with a gunmetal-ish car paint.

 

Will update if i find any more problems...

 

...and I HATE the 'backwards' fire selector!

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

Took one apart today.

 

OOTB, the gun wasn't feeding and that wasn't good.

 

Basically most of you have listed most of the pros and cons of this gun, but with 11 years of airsoftsmithing experience I would like to point/reinforce a few points.

 

- The design was done very well. Structurally very sound/rigid.

 

- The plastic is tough, much tougher than marui but the finish is poorer.

 

- Metal is a direct cast with straight painting but no postprocessing.

 

- Missing the spring that pushes the hop unit back, hence not sealing the air against the mechbox.

 

- The mechbox is a JLS reinforced mechbox, with its own homegrown reinforcement designs. The cylinder head was designed to act as a buffer against the mechbox.

 

- The O-ring is terrible, as with most JLS AEGs, using soft condom latex rubber as O-rings...what are they thinking?

 

- Most of the internals are good quality; the polycarb tapplet-spring guide-air nozzle-one way piston head-reinforced piston, bearings in mechbox, hi-torque motor, heavy duty low resistance wiring and contacts.

 

- The lower quality parts are mainly the cylinder, O-rings, and gears.

 

- The shimming is poor. The bevel was pressed against the pinion gear making it cycle very slow. After reshimming, the gun powered 150% upgrade with its stock battery at a healthy REF.

 

- The front battery retention cap/front sight/barrel thing wobbles so much that the lengthened outer barrel's movement interfered with the B's trajectory. However because it is a convertable barrel system, one can remove the lengthened barrel and just thread the flash hider straight to the front sight block.

 

 

----

 

Overall for JLS's first attempt in an AEG it is a very fair and decent effort. While $100 US is a lot to ask for something that barely works and looks like it came out of a 1970's cultural revolution backyard casting facility, with a bit of knowhow it can be a diamond in the rough. The design shows that it has been well thought out and much of the internal components have been well QCed, just still some work needs to be done on assembly procedures and dimensionalising the parts right.

 

The thought has really come into the design, though cheaping out on the metal casting really made what could've been a B grade replica into a C grade replica.

 

Certainly I have spent less time on the SCAR than most CA M4s OOTB (even my CA Steyr) to tune it up.

 

It has potential to be a very cheap/accurate and effective airsoft gun. I would actually give JLS a "hats off" for being innovative and while its not quite there, its almost there.

 

Certainly some of the improvements have been seen in the metallurgy of the HK33 but the airseal and O-rings are still an issue on that. GET RID OF THE CONDOM RUBBER FOR O-RINGS FFS!

Edited by 3vi1-D4n
Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and the use of session cookies.