Question about upgrades for Snow Wolf K98.

[666]

Hey gang, I'm getting above mentioned BA rifle, I heard some people say it is compatible with TM VSR parts, just want to make it clear before I proceed with the purchase. So, is it or it is not? I fired one this past weekend, so I know what stock rifle is capable of. I want to bump up FPS on it. Besides spring I assume it will require upgraded sear, stock hopup seems to be just fine.
P.S I can use local gundoc to do the upgrades for me, of course if parts are compatible, because I just dont have time to fiddle around with airsoft anymore. I also have VFC AK that needs to be overhauled.

[Drakker]

It's not compatible with VSR parts, except for the hop-up rubber and possibly the barrel. I'll be opening mine next week when my replacement hop-up rubber comes in, so I'll be able to confirm then.

But know that it works very well stock. The hop-up is weak, so you would need either a bigger nub or a new hop-up rubber to shoot heavy ammo. Otherwise it's pretty consistent for a stock gun (+- 4 fps with MadBull Bio 0.32g BBs with the one I have, +- 6 fps with horrid Valken 0.36g BBs). It sits right around the usual field limits with 1.55 joules effective with 0.20g BBs (408 fps average) and 1.44 joules effective with 0.36g (293 fps average, it seems like it's a bit undervolumed, maybe a better hop-up rubber would help, I'll know soon). I'm pretty satisfied with the stock performances, and seriously only plan to change the hop-up rubber.

With that said, TNT makes upgrade parts for it. They make a complete spring, piston, spring guide stopper, spring guide, cylinder head and sear set (https://www.switairsoft.com/product-...8k-upgrade-kit), they also make an upgrade hop-up chamber (https://www.switairsoft.com/product-...powered-kar98k, which is probably useless) and a hop-up chamber and barrel kit (https://www.switairsoft.com/product-...m-retrofit-kit).

The reviews on upgraded S&T/Snow Wolf Kar98k show great accuracy, reports from some experienced players put it right in VSR10 territory for performances. It's doesn't have the air volume to deal with extra heavy ammo like a VSR10, but it's still performing very well with weights around 0.36g-0.40g (according to reviews, and once upgraded). I can't report on long range accuracy right now because I have yet to field it, but in my basement at around 12 meters, I get a 100% hit rate on 2.5in/6cm popper targets. The rare times where I miss, it's always my fault.

I've been recording stats with it, for fun and giggles, I made a Google spreadsheet with it :https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

I'll update the spreadsheet when I get 0.40g and 0.43g BBs later this week, and will probably test it again with a Maple Leaf Autobot rubber to see if there's any performance difference, and if a tighter rubber helps with the limited air volume. This might also be one of the rare bolt action rifle where a 6.01 tight bore barrel is actually a good idea.

So overall, a greta gun so far. The fake wood is the best I've ever seen in Airsoft. The best part is that the bolt doesn't close when your mag is empty, so no dry fire. We'll see how well it holds up in a few months/years. But knowing that TNT makes upgrade/replacements parts gives me some peace of mind.

[Drakker]

Well, I got my hands on 0.4g BBs and 0.43g BBs and happily went along and tested them. The power fell sharply, way too sharply. So I chronoed again with 0.36g and 0.20g and surprise surprise, the power fell to 1.15-1.20 joules (about 350-360 fps with 0.20g). I did shoot it some during the last two weeks, about 150-200 more rounds. Looks like the spring quality leaves a lot to be desired and it's settling pretty low. This also means that my previous testing might have been a bit wrong, if the spring is really that bad, I might have observed the spring slowly settling and not a serious under-voluming problem. Looks like I'll have to redo those series... meh.

[666]

Thank man! I ordered 500 fps tune up kit, waiting for it to arrive. Hopefully it arrives before next event. It doesn't seem to be too complex to swap parts. I'll update once I do the upgrade.

[Drakker]

Great! I redid the 0.40g and 0.43g series.Turns out it was an "operator problem" and the hop-up was lowered to minimum, I probably changed it without realizing it while manipulating the rifle and assumed the hop-up stayed where it was, because you know, it usually does haha. Also, I've never seen such a drop in power before, that's a whole 50 fps with 0.20g, that and we know that the hop-up rubber can't even hop 0.28g BBs properly. So, the numbers in the Google spreadsheet are good now, I can confirm that the air volume is low, the effective power per shot goes lower and lower as you use heavier BBs.

I'll start by swapping the hop-up rubber and see how it goes. Next I might grab a VSR10 6.01 barrel, probably a 430mm, 55mm shorter than the stock barrel because nobody makes 485mm VSR barrels) and see how it goes again.

I finally got the chance to try the rifle outside. Didn't have much time so I used only 0.32g BBs. The range was only about 35m, as stated by Airsoft Depot on Facebook. But the accuracy was nothing short of amazing. To the point where when you shoot, the BBs stays exactly on top of the front sight until it drops. If its possible to keep that kind of accuracy while increasing power, this rifle might very well be the new VSR10 for vintage rifles fans.

[666]

Only 35m? Wow! One we test fired was hitting man sized target from about 70 meters. Bunch of us took turns to be a target to make perfect man sized target I was hitting a person at least once out of every three shots. We ran .28's.

[Drakker]

Maybe the S&T comes with a better hop-up rubber? Or it's a different batch? My Snow Wolf's rubber is utter crap. Anyway, the guns come from the same factory, and as far as internet lore goes, S&T and Snow Wolf are the same entity. Maybe the batch Airsoft Depot got is especially bad, but Swit Airsoft in Taiwan was also quoting 30-40 meters stock. And everyone seems to agree that stock, the gun can't hop anything properly. TNT Studios have a disassembly video on Youtube and show how small the hop-up nub is, so maybe all it really needs is a bigger nub, but I have tons of spare VSR rubbers, so if I'm going to disassemble it, I'll install a new rubber at the same time. I was planning on measuring the nub window size and 3D printing a custom nub too.

[666]

Don't know what to tell you. Our group purchased something like 9 K98's from Airsoft Depot. Most rifles were field tested at Woodsman, one was tested after Woodsman, that's the one I fired. Haven't had a chance to test fire mine yet but all those rifles were pretty good from what I've heard. Allies were actually mentioning getting hit a lot by fire from BA rifles. One did break during Woodsman, probably a sear.

[Drakker]

Wow, maybe I should try with 0.25g or something... I wasn't planning on keeping the stock hop-up rubber anyway, the Maple Leaf rubbers make such a huge difference in range and accuracy compared to most stock rubbers that I was going to change it anyway.

[Drakker]

So I finally got around to open it up. The hop-up rubber was a poor shiny rubber of the likes you would find in old Well VSR10 clones. The inner barrel is NOT standard. It's not VSR/GBB compatible out of the box. It would be easy to modify the hop-up chamber to accept them, but then you would have no barrel retention other than the hop-up rubber itself. That's probably why TNT is selling only barrel+hop-up chamber combos. Modifying a VSR/GBB barrel to fit in the stock chamber would be possible, but would require a lathe or a VERY steady hand (there's an extra ring that goes all around the barrel).

The stock barrel was bridged, but the bridge was very tiny, unbridging it was a 5 minutes job with a snip and a file. I got the ML Autobot rubber in, teflon taped it and everything went right in. The hop-up nub was much bigger than the poor sorry thing in the TNT diassembly video and I kept it. The gun will now overhop 0.36g BBs without a problem and the FPS has gone up a bit, though I am not done chronoing heavy weight BBs yet.

[666]

My tune up kit showed up two days after the event so I ran rifle stock. What a surprise Wind was pretty bad during test day, before event started. I tried .32, that weight would not even hop so I switched to .28. After about 50-60 shots range drastically increased so I tried .32 again and what do you know... I started getting solid 100+ meters range. Had guys who ran BA rifles take shots and they were impressed with distance. Accuracy past 50-60 meters wasnt great but like I said, wind was pretty bad and we were testing in the open field. Second day it was a lot less windy and I had a chance to take some pot shots at unsuspecting people, scored couple of long range hits. I was a civilian so I had opportunity to roam around and only shot at people who were already being engaged by someone else so I could take time and readjust after every shot but I was really happy with the results. Next step is to install the kit and get zf41.

[666]

Finally had time to take a look at the kit, still don't have time to install/test it though. This is what you get, I never owned/worked on a BA rifle before, just gas and AEG's, upgraded 500 fps spring seemed way too thin so I dug out M170 AEG spring and compared, lengthwise BA spring is about 1/2 inch longer.

[Drakker]

The reviews for this kit are all very good. It's great to see close up pics, if you have a chrono, check your shot variance before and after the install. For a stock rifle the shot to shot variance isn't all that bad, but if it can be improved it would be great. As far as I know, no one really checked if the output power is more stable with the kit.

[666]

Don't have a chrono on hand, places I go to don't chrono Anyways, I did struggle for a bit with sear but otherwise kit went in like a glove. Youtube has pretty good video, language is not there but footage is pretty good and self explanatory. I did poor man chrono test. Entry: https://i.imgur.com/r6YelU8.jpg
Exit https://i.imgur.com/BLgk2Id.jpg

[Drakker]

That kit is supposed to bring the power around 500 fps with 0.2g... It pierced both sides, that sounds about right.