ICS L86 Light Support Weapon

[Hatchet]

L86 LSW

"What the *fruitcage*'s that?"
"It's me Bren gun"
"Don't you think you could have brought something a little bit more practical?"

The L86 LSW is, in my mind, the Bren gun of the modern age. Supposedly fulfulling a light support weapon role, but limited to 30 round magazines and without a quick change barrel. Who but the British would still think this a good idea in the 1980s? Now it sees use as a marksman's rifle, making use of the longer, heavier barrel and the stability of the bipod to deliver accurate fire out to around 600m.

All of this is somewhat academic in airsoft however, as 6mm plastic death is the order of the day regardless of the "real steel" facts and figures.

This gun was bought for the usual variety of reasons, primarily - I had the money and I wanted a new gun. I am a fan of bullpups, probably the British trait of rooting for the underdog (which kind of explains the L85/L86 actually...) but haven't really liked any of the recent offerings enough to buy. The AUG is nice, but doesn't take standard M16 mags of which I have about 10 already. The Tavor doesn't really grab me, the P90... well, the less said the better. The L86, on the other hand is uncommon on the skirmish field around my way, takes M16 magazines, standard optics and is well balanced due to the bipod on the front and gearbox at the rear. So a quick order from Fire-support.co.uk later and the gun arrived. I should take time to mention here Fire support's impressive delivery. Despite being ordered on the 22nd December, it arrived on Christmas eve. Not bad for the busiest postal time in the year.

The ICS L86 is, as far as I'm aware, merely an extension of their L85 line. It shares the same box, manual and a large portion of the internal workings. The differences are primarily in the front section, with a longer internal and external barrel, bipod, shorter front handgrip and additional rear grip. Like its little brother, it has the same rear mounted gearbox with motor cage, adjustable spring tensioner and quick change spring. The gearbox is not a split design, although the chassis of the gun is.

Externals

The quality of the metal seems sufficient. Like a lot of ICS metal, it's not heavy duty but it is robust enough to do the job without weighing a ton. Even with the longer front and bipod, this gun only comes in around the 4.4kg mark, and balance is good. The bipod seems well made and sturdy, and the promotional material on ICS's Website shows the entire gun being stood on it, nose first. Other promotional material also shows a small oriental woman supporting her entire body weight on the gun. Sadly I am unable to test this myself, but if someone would care to lend me a small oriental woman weighing 45kg in the name of SCIENCE! then I'll give it a go. Rather than just being a straight "legs up, legs down" bipod, it has a ball pivot, so you can track left or right when it's deployed - something I was able to do to good effect from a bunker position last week. The metal on the bipod attachments has started to scratch up relatively quickly and time will tell if this is just surface marking or low quality metal.

Deploying the bipod seems somewhat fiddly initially and I have been told (albeit by a 14 year old) that it is not identical to the real steel. It is necessary to pull back a small lever under the front barrel whilst simultaneously squeezing the legs together and pulling them out. The whole thing is reminiscent of trying to get a Vulcan Nerve Pinch right. I'm lead to believe that the real L86 just requires you to squeeze the legs together. Once the legs have been put down, they can be further adjusted for length. They use a reverse spring system, so it's necessary to pull them out and lock them into position, but it does mean they snap back to the short length when pressed so that the bipod can be quickly stowed.

Observe the position of the front legs vs the barrel. That's about 45 degrees rotation there, giving you an idea of how you can traverse your fire arc during an engagement.

The plastic seems well finished and of a good colour. I have never handled a real L86 so I couldn't tell you for certain, but this is no shiny springer finish. Additionally it hasn't become brittle and shattered in the cold yet either. Markings are good with "MG 5.56mm LIGHT SUPPORT L86A2" on the front. The metal body is also marked with a unique serial number matching the one on the box. The fire selector is unmarked, but the safety has S and F on the post as you might expect. The front sight and rear sight/carry handle are both adjustable and removable and it's possible to mount a screw tight sight straight on (as you can see in my pictures). The standard rail can also be replaced with the more conventional RIS type for extra security. I have mounted a G&P TA31 on mine and it doesn't feel like it's going anywhere. Eye relief is spot on for me mounted in the position you see.

Battery installation is extremely easy, with the front hand grip unlocking and swinging open. It's an easy fit for a 9.6 1400MaH in there, and with a custom battery I'm sure greater capacity could be achieved. I plan on installing a lipo soon but the delivery truck has been snowed in... The first day out was zero degrees with NiMH batteries that had a two week old charge, so I ended up changing 4 batteries in the middle of firefights. Happily this was easily accomplished. The fuse is a car type mini blade fuse at 30 amps and should be simple to replace either in the event of damage or if you require a higher or lower amperage. Next in sequence is the trigger mechanism which uses all manner of electrical magic I'm not familiar with and claims that it will not burn out. This, coupled with the ability to use higher gauge wire (as it doesn't have to go into a gearbox) may make this a good choice for those wishing to minimise resistance for improved performance. Then again, I know nothing at all about electricity apart from that's it's fun to hold onto electric fences, ignore the pain and tell other people they're turned off. Mind you, I did this on one keeping a gorilla in in France once and it stung like buggery.

The trigger response is good for full auto, but seems a little questionable in semi. It certainly doesn't seem as easy to quickly repeat shots as it is on a normal trigger mechanism. This may change with a different battery of course. The fire selector is located on the rear left. Unmarked, with Up for semi and down for full auto. It's a little strange having the safety and the fire selector in seperate locations and this seems to lead to walking around with full auto on most of the time as it's a hassle to change. Then again, it *is* a support weapon...

It's a shame that the gearbox and wires are visible through the metalwork, but there's not a lot that can be done about this without covering them up.

The battery storage area in the front handguard. A little stiff initially, but it will open.

Internals

Internally it's business as usual for ICS. The gearbox sounds like a bag of spanners being thrown down the stairs when fired, which is fairly typical for ICS. If you want silky smooth buy a Marui, but given that they don't make this model you don't have a lot of choice. This isn't helped by the gearbox being directly next to your ears, thanks to the bullpup design, and I'm seriously considering some Surefire earplugs. The split chassis design, whilst good, is a pain in the neck to get back together correctly. If you don't get the front end exactly right (and it's easy for one of the "lips" to overlap) the safety will jam in one of the positions. The chassis is held shut by two retained body pins, which does at least mean that you can't lose them when working on it. It can be quite a tight fit getting everything back together and you may need to reseat the gearbox and double check for snagging wires. This is a shame as the design features of a quick release, quick adjust spring are marred by having to crack the chassis to get at it. If this was accessible without having to do this you'd probably never need to open the thing up.

It's been suggested on various forums that this gearbox is pretty tough. In the UK I'm unlikely to ever upgrade to the point of breaking this, but it's nice to know. It has a 3 position spacer behind the spring, which is adjustable without opening the whole gearbox. This allows a wide range for a spring. For the supplied 120 it's claimed to be in the region of like 400(high), 370 (medium), 330(low). A M110 would probably give more usable UK values. Whilst useful, it's probably *more* useful on the standard L85 as the L86 is less likely to be chosen for CQB.

The gearbox uses a motor cage which allows you to adjust the tension before putting everything back together again. However, it really needs some threadlock from the outset or it will just unscrew itself as it fires. This can be partially alleviated by tightening down the grub screw that's in the butt plate so they friction lock against each other, but I'd probably suggest thread lock as well. Sadly, I also managed to break my motor in about half an hour by snapping the spade connector tab off. This is surprisingly easy to do when replacing the motor cables. The design means that unlike a v2 box where you push directly down onto the terminals, you push sideways and can bend the tabs through 180 degrees, causing them to fatigue and snap. Then it's either a £70 motor or a bodge job to fix it (I went for the later). If anyone knows of a source and easy way to repair motors that have been damaged in this way then I'd be interested in hearing from you. I feel soldering the tab back on is unlikely to work due to vibration and the angles involved. Soldering wires directly to the motor and then having another connection elsewhere may be an option, but it's not straightforward - at least not for me. (I know all about Fire Hazards, I am one).

To further reinforce my opinion that everything should be tightened and threadlocked before your first outing, after a day's skirmish my pistol grip was working loose. This was fixed by opening the chassis, removing the fire control mechanism and retightening the screw found underneath it. Again, it's unfortunate to have to split the chassis and go through all this rather than being able to tighten it from the outside which would have been much easier.


Accuracy

Out of the box a lot poorer than I was expecting. Having owned a a G3-SG1 previously, which is physically longer (1040mmm vs 912.8mm) but with a shorter internal barrel (470mm vs 610mm), I was disappointed by the shotgun spread of this "accurate" weapon. I've subsequently cleaned the barrel and got much black gunk out (albeit after about 5000 rounds on my first day of skirmishing), so we shall see what happens on the next outing. The hop rubber may also be to blame, and I'll look into changing that as necessary if I don't see any improvement. The hop unit is a unique design, which bears a lot of resemblance to the M4/M16 style. This is slightly disappointing as previous experience suggests the G3 or AK style to be more consistent. On that note, the hop was erratic initially, with even the lowest setting overhopping the bb's significantly. However, after half a magazine there was a dramatic change and it produced a much flatter trajectory. At this stage it's unclear whether this is due to it bedding in, or the cold conditions at the time (zero degrees). With a 610mm inner barrel I expected more from this.


Tech specs and everything else

Motor: ICS Turbo 3000 motor. Producing 26,628 RPM @ 9.6V, 2,708 Torgue G.cm (Steyr, from filairsoft)
Battery: None included. Can be configured with a mini type battery in the handguard.
Magazine: ICS high Capacity (450 round). Comes supplied with two. Higher capacity due to larger (real size) magazines.
Barrel: 610mm long. Diameter unknown.
Rate of Fire: Varies dependent on battery. To be tested further when new LiPo battery arrives.
FPS: Variable dependent on spring installed and position of spring tensioner. Out of the box believed to be high 400, low 330.


The gun comes with two 450 round hicaps, one of which I managed to lose by the end of the first day. Genius. These hold more bb's than the usual 330 round M4 hicaps due to being physically larger. This means they match the size of real magazines which is great for getting them out of pouches, but can look strange when used on M4's. This is due to real steel magazines sitting higher up inside the magwell - normal M4 hicaps are designed to be the correct size when mounted in the magazine well. However, as this is a bullpup neither you or anyone else is really likely to notice this as the magazine will be obscured by your arm most of the time anyway. Whether you use real size or standard airsoft size magazines they will still sit further out of the gun than any other part, which makes the gun difficult to stand up in display mode if you have one in. You'll notice there are none in in any of my pictures.

Updates
Further updates will be made as I get some more trigger time in with this. I think it will end up being a fairly competent woodland gun, but time will tell...

This is my first review on Arnie's - be kind! The original review can be found at Tea & Medals and updates will be made as more is learnt. The images used in this review are attached below in case my bandwidth gets nailed.

[spetsnazdave87]

Nice review fella, if your accuracy improves I might well look at picking one of these up...

 

cheers!

 

Dave

[fossilfuel]

Interested to see how this fares and the splitgearbox design evolving with it.

 

Possibly this could be the L85/85 brand to buy.

[3vi1-D4n]

It suffers from the same problem as the ARES/STAR L86.

 

The steel front that is supposed to support and add rigidity to the bipod, doesn't start at the receiver but rather it starts off front of the foregrip.

 

This means that the only thing that is actually supporting the added weight of both the bipod support and the bipod, is the outer barrel itself. Given both ARES and ICS use aluminium outer barrels, the torque from the bipod and the bipod support will warp the barrel, plus the weight of the weapon itself, shooting the L86 on standing or prone the accuracy will change drastically.

 

The ICS L86 is accurate on prone but the rounds go high above the point of aim. While standing/kneeling it shoots at the point of aim but the accuracy/hop trajectory is all over the place. Overall the accuracy is still better than the Star L86, but only just. My SLR shoots a lot more accurately than the L86, given comparable barrel length.

Edited January 6, 2010 by 3vi1-D4n

[Wild_XIII]

A word of warning. If this is anything like my ICS L85 then the cocking handle is extremely weak and will snap off!

[Colin_The+Ferret]

Deploying the bipod seems somewhat fiddly initially and I have been told (albeit by a 14 year old) that it is not identical to the real steel. It is necessary to pull back a small lever under the front barrel whilst simultaneously squeezing the legs together and pulling them out. The whole thing is reminiscent of trying to get a Vulcan Nerve Pinch right. I'm lead to believe that the real L86 just requires you to squeeze the legs together.

 

No, the lever is there on the real thing too, and it is a pain. If you look between the 1st and 2nd "full" holes from the handguard you can see it sticking down.

 

 

Note this is a training weapon, and therefore a bit battered.

Edited January 7, 2010 by Colin_The+Ferret

[Kousnik]

hatchet, have you any experience of the star version? how does it compare?

 

I had the star but sold it, my experience was that it was similar to carrying a metre long, 6kg aep...

[Hatchet]

I have no experience of the Star I'm afraid. Certainly it sounds like the Star is heavier. I find the ICS to be a good weight and well balanced. No issues using it unsupported or walking towards targets and keeping it in a firing position and my arms were still in their sockets at the end of the day. Equally I didn't feel disadvantaged in woodland range engagements. The spread is certainly a factor, but range and rate of fire were fairly standard for an AEG. Once the postman manages to dig himself out of the snowdrift I'll see how it goes on a 7.4 lipo.

[Jay7]

Hmmm,I wanted a Star\Ares L86 until I heard about the barrel movement.

Was almost about to buy the ICS version after seeing and reading about its solidity and now it seems like it has the same problems as the Star...bugger

[kingdong]

great review mate

 

my friend has got a star l86 lsw and does not even compete with the ics l85/l86 series. first things i noticed was the cocking handle on the star/ares is plastic. the ics cocking handle is aluminum. the furniture finish i.e. the hand guard looks and feels allot better. the one thing i can say is that the ares pistol grip is more like the real steal grip as the ics pistol grip is a bit chunkier.

Edited January 7, 2010 by kingdong

[enigma83]

vey nice review!

thanks alot!

[Hatchet]

So far, due to other events, this has only been out twice. Still, managed about 12k rounds so far though. Magazines need to be firmly seated or they have a tendency to drop out. They "click" into place, but then a tap will actually seat them firmly. Not sure why this is, but I've had a couple drop loose.

 

Accuracy continues to be an issue. This is fine for putting down a cone of fire, but very frustrating when you can't shoot people who are in range due to the scatter. I've had it open again and replaced the hop bucking with systema, but no change as far as I can tell. I can't see it being barrel play as the outer barrel is firmly secured at a couple of points. Unfortunately the custom length of 610mm doesn't lend itself to trying an alternate barrel - I have a 600mm PSG1, but the hop interface is different.

 

Having had it open and examined the hop as part of this, I do wonder if the design itself will always give some issues. Due to the hop lift bar being on just one side of the unit, it looks like the will always be a distortion on the horizontal plane so that the left side contacts harder.

 

All of this is academic as the spade connector on one of the wires has broken so I will have to replace that now too...

[BIGBC]

My ICS L86 has outperformed my expectations and I was expecting a fair bit from it. Ive even used it in CQB a few times without issues.

I found the accuracy to be really good too.

 

 

Just ordered a 550mm Prometheus barrel as Fire-support and ICS themselves list it as a 550, you sure its a 610mm?

[Hatchet]

Pretty sure, I've measured it when I've had it out of the gun for cleaning/hop rubber change. None of which have made any difference sadly. Perhaps I've just been unlucky, but at the moment I'm reluctant to drop more money on it in the hopes it might improve.

[BIGBC]

Sod, ive put a tape measure against it and eyed it up and 610 looks about right. Dont know why ICS would list it as 550 then. Will take a look and see when I get hold of it, can probly find a mate to buy it and get the 590 or 650 and trim it.

 

Shame your having issues, Ive had a play with a few of the ICS L86/85s and theyve all been pretty decent.

[BIGBC]

*dont know how the Mods feel about double posts but couldnt see an edit button anywhere*

I just stripped mine down and measured it. Definitely 610mm - anyone want a Prometheus 6.03 550mm inner barrel? lol

[jkerry2782]

I have a ics lsw and found it to be a great weapon, killed the piston by knocking it in to semi while on auto. The hop unit is great after i file the arm down to get more lift as it would not hop .2 bbs with out any mods.

[BIGBC]

Well the 550mm Prometheus barrel has made a considerable difference. Pretty pleased with it really, that and an ACOG has made it a pretty solid DMR.

Still plan to get a full 610 tight bore and one of those H hop things when I can.

[RSM]

Was the 550mm prommy a drop in fit?

[BIGBC]

As in it didnt need cutting?

[RSM]

Yeah, I had to have a PDI 6.05 472mm (L85, you can probably fit up to 490mm in there without it looking daft ie barre protruding riiight up into the flashider) barrel modded to have new grooves added so the hop collar would clip into place right...the prommy you put in the LSW not need similar?

Edited April 19, 2010 by RSM

[BIGBC]

No the L86 can take upto 610mm, I ordered a 550 cause the ICS and FireSupport sites listed it wrong.

The prometheus had all the slots cut in the right places, compared it to the stock barrel before putting it in and all seemed right.

[Rekrab]

Any update on this Hatchet?

[Hatchet]

Not at the moment. Have been sniping again the last few months, so not really bothered to try anything further. I'm slightly indifferent about it at the moment. Still nice to get out of the box for a look, but...

[Rekrab]

No worries, I've been contemplating getting one as a change to the usual M249 support weapons.

 

Please let us know if you have any further joy with it