Seeking Hop rubber advice

[Zfurlong]

Hey guys, I'm debating between a few different hop rubbers as follows

Devil reaps a+ = looks promising! vid review seems to be dozen times better than stock hop

Maple leaf = seems a lot of people use them and seem to be very successful (are they paired with anything or no?)

And lastly
Prometheus blue, straight hop = seems would work very well with a flathop mod

Any advice would be helpful, as well as any first hand experience wether in use or witnessed. Thanks again in advance.

[pestobanana]

A+ is a gimmick, it doesn't do anything useful in AEGs because it doesn't retain a proper concave shape...

Maple Leaf is actually a decent rubber. Not GREAT, but decent. You don't pair it with anything, but the extended contact patch is decent, and it helps center the BB in the barrel. Down side is that the extended contact patch is a giant chunk attached to your rubber, which is being pressed down by something else attached to something else... So it's not incredibly stable.

Prometheus AEG rubbers don't do anything special. Like actually there's nothing special about them. The moundless rubbers are meant to be paired with their flat or bridge hop tensioners.

Flat hop is pretty good, it gives a more stable extended contact patch to give more consistent lift, and to lift heavier BBs.

Now for stuff you didn't mention:

Bridge hop is the next evolution of the flat hop, and in my opinion is one of the best hop up setups out there. It is pretty much a flat hop, except the nub is missing a channel down the middle. That channel forms a BB guide, so it helps centre the BB in the barrel as it passes through the hop up.

R-hop is known as "the best" in currently available hop up technology. Installing this is much more involved and requires a good tech to do it. It is basically where you cut and sand a patch of high temp silicone tubing to match the shape of the barrel, glue it on, and then sand it flush. The R hop is meant to almost act like part of the barrel. R hop is very good for lifting heavy rounds, but requires you to use BBs .28 or heavier at at more than 1J otherwise it'll kinda shoot like shit.

PDI W-Hold is another option that people seem to like. Its just a regular rubber except the mound has a channel in the middle, so it is a W shape. It helps center the BB down the barrel, but doesn't do much else. It also leaks air down that channel, so you'll instantly lose 30-40 FPS.

My opinions:

The ONLY hop up setups I use are bridge hops and R-hops. Bridge hop is the best hop up setup available for indoor guns, because it is extremely consistent and works well with light ammo at low FPS. Outdoors, it still goes neck and neck with my R hops. In a 400 FPS gun they can both reach out to 250 feet. Bridge hop does a better job of centering the BB than R-hop does, but R-hop gives more consistent lift.

Oh, and all the information I'm giving you here, none of it is from reading crap online or heresay. Its all from my personal experiences, I've used all of the hop up setups mentioned here in my personal guns. Some I got rid of after a game, others I liked and installed dozens of in other guns and customer's guns.

I'm actually looking to do a test of different hop up setups in the coming months in a 250 foot indoor range. That way I can actually have quantitative data to observe.

Everything you read about range and accuracy online... Don't take it with a grain of salt, take it with the whole salt shaker. People make ridiculous and exaggerated claims without measuring their groupings, or their ranges.

[lurkingknight]

I've had terrific results with the W-hold, beyond that I would go to the r-hop.

What pesto didn't mention is that to do a proper r-hop install, you need to have a good air seal upgrade in the gearbox, otherwise the install is wasted an you won't see the best results.

That actually applies to all hop up sleeves. If your shot to shot fps variance isn't minimized to +/- 5fps then all the sleeves on the market and hop up rubber upgrades aren't going to do squat. You'll always have short rounds mixed in with ones that get max range.

I don't like flat hop setups because the more hop you apply, the more you will distort the sleeve to push the rubber through the window. Because regular hop rubbers have a mount, they don't deform as much since you don't push the nub into the barrel window as deep. The flat hop rubbers use the rubber on the sleeve to push down, so it has more to travel before you start seeing the hop effect, stretching it through the window this much will deform the lips for the air seal component, the nozzle may not seal as well.

The rhop is a piece of tubing that straddles the window and is inset into it, so the nub pushes on the sleeve that pushes on the rhop patch, less material to move, less deformation of the sleeve itself.

[pestobanana]

Originally Posted by lurkingknight

I've had terrific results with the W-hold, beyond that I would go to the r-hop.

What pesto didn't mention is that to do a proper r-hop install, you need to have a good air seal upgrade in the gearbox, otherwise the install is wasted an you won't see the best results.

That actually applies to all hop up sleeves. If your shot to shot fps variance isn't minimized to +/- 5fps then all the sleeves on the market and hop up rubber upgrades aren't going to do squat. You'll always have short rounds mixed in with ones that get max range.

I don't like flat hop setups because the more hop you apply, the more you will distort the sleeve to push the rubber through the window. Because regular hop rubbers have a mount, they don't deform as much since you don't push the nub into the barrel window as deep. The flat hop rubbers use the rubber on the sleeve to push down, so it has more to travel before you start seeing the hop effect, stretching it through the window this much will deform the lips for the air seal component, the nozzle may not seal as well.

The rhop is a piece of tubing that straddles the window and is inset into it, so the nub pushes on the sleeve that pushes on the rhop patch, less material to move, less deformation of the sleeve itself.

I mostly agree with what you've said. The PDI W-hold does shoot decently straight, the FPS loss just drives me crazy. I just prefer bridge hops because they are better than the PDI at both centering the BB, lifting consistently, and not dropping FPS. I've also never encountered the issue of the hop up lips getting stretched when hop is on higher. I guess that may depend on how you installed it, and which rubber you used.

[Zfurlong]

@pesto

Is this essentially the bridgehop you were talking about?
http://www.evike.com/products/50232/

And would the maple leaf hop 60* paired with a firefly nub work better than a basic flathop?
And what do you guys think about the actual hop body? Is there really any point in getting an aftermarket one or should the stock one (in most cases at least) work fine if paired with the aforementioned hop set ups?

[Zfurlong]

@lurking

I have a flathop mod in my m4 I currently run, but I've found that after about 60-80 feet every shot I fire seems to pull left very hard (like then you turn your hop full and tilt your gun 90*), any advice on how to fix that?

[pestobanana]

Originally Posted by Zfurlong

@pesto

Is this essentially the bridgehop you were talking about?
http://www.evike.com/products/50232/

And would the maple leaf hop 60* paired with a firefly nub work better than a basic flathop?
And what do you guys think about the actual hop body? Is there really any point in getting an aftermarket one or should the stock one (in most cases at least) work fine if paired with the aforementioned hop set ups?

Yes that is the bridge hop I'm talking about. Using a flat nub is useless unless you have a moundless rubber.

The only reason to change a hop up unit is if it is causing issues, or is poorly made. Most of the time stock hop up units are acceptable.

[Zfurlong]

Originally Posted by pestobanana

Yes that is the bridge hop I'm talking about. Using a flat nub is useless unless you have a moundless rubber.

The only reason to change a hop up unit is if it is causing issues, or is poorly made. Most of the time stock hop up units are acceptable.

So using that bridge nub paired with a mound less rubber "should" be able to give me better results than my current 80 foot flathop that veers left at anything beyond?

[pestobanana]

Originally Posted by Zfurlong

So using that bridge nub paired with a mound less rubber "should" be able to give me better results than my current 80 foot flathop that veers left at anything beyond?

If everything is set up properly, it "should". A properly set up bridge hop should give you an effective range of just over 200 feet, and a max range of just over 250.

[Zfurlong]

@pesto

Thanks for the info and advice, I do have one final question, I have heard of people using a very small piece of metal to put in the little hole on the hop nub. This supposedly helps keep the tension of the nub centered on the hop rubber is this true?

[pestobanana]

Originally Posted by Zfurlong

@pesto

Thanks for the info and advice, I do have one final question, I have heard of people using a very small piece of metal to put in the little hole on the hop nub. This supposedly helps keep the tension of the nub centered on the hop rubber is this true?

I'm actually not sure what you're talking about. If you're talking about a metal hop up tensioner, those are really out of date. I actually prefer to have a softer tensioner as it gives a gentler, more even pressure over a bigger surface area.

[ThunderCactus]

He means shimming the nub side to side
Yes it will help keep it centered

[lurkingknight]

never had to shim a bridge or flat hop nub side to side... they're a pretty snug fit.

[Rossco66]

I've had to use a piece of electrical 14 gauge wire inside of a nub because it was too soft and wouldn't apply any hop even when fully engaged in a friends CA M4.

The wire inside means no deformation and consistent hop with much less hop dialing required to lift the BB.

[EOD Steve]

Originally Posted by pestobanana

I'm actually not sure what you're talking about. If you're talking about a metal hop up tensioner, those are really out of date. I actually prefer to have a softer tensioner as it gives a gentler, more even pressure over a bigger surface area.

He's referring to inserting a small round pin through the hole in the flat or bridge hop tensioner to stabilize the actual rubber during compression. This is demonstrated in the installation video for the Firefly Namazu flat-hop installation video.

A possible reason that his trajectory is suddenly veering to the left or right may be that the tensioner or nub is not centered over the barrel window. It's for this exact reason that I never use the Modify Ryo-whatever flat nub - it's undersized for the hop window so it shifts from left to right.

I don't particularly mind or care for bridge-hop or flat-hop tensioners if only for the sole reason that the way the tensioner is designed does not allow for the rubber to pivot fully around the hop arm. I've gotten decent-enough results with the flat and bridge-hops but as you saw last summer, my R-hop still outshot your bridge hop. *shrug*

Hit me up when you get access to that indoor range, I'll bring my shittttttttt