Bearing spring guides and piston heads - do they REALLY serve a purpose?

[eel one]

Weather or not the spring rotates, experience tells that at least one bearing (either in the piston or on the spring guide), will increase the life of the spring significantly and make it less prone to brake.

[ThunderCactus]

Originally Posted by Flatlander

A simple definitive test would be to chrono a gun with a bearing spring guide. Replace the spring guide with a non-bearing one but add spacers so the overall thickness is the same and compare the chorno results. Anyone ever done this?

Yes it does make a difference, it's been tried tested and true many many times. Infact I've heard theres places in asia where the players actually put shims (+1 to +5 fps shims) on their spring guide to get to their absolute max FPS limit.

[Flatlander]

Originally Posted by ThunderCactus

Yes it does make a difference, it's been tried tested and true many many times. Infact I've heard theres places in asia where the players actually put shims (+1 to +5 fps shims) on their spring guide to get to their absolute max FPS limit.

Not quite sure what you're arguing or what your point is? Spacers/shims will up your FPS and the bearing acts like a spacer also, I know that. I'm just curious to see how much FPS and consistency the actual bearing alone will give with the same 'thickness' in both cases (ie. add spacers/shim on a non-bearing guide to replicate the bearing thickness).