whats the deal with FULL METAL TOOTH pistons?
 

Ive got a stock ics mp5 with a broken piston that ive been meaning to fix for months now and i was thinking it would make sense to upgrade to a piston that wont break quite as easily. I guess ive been procrastinating because of the huge number of different kinds of pistons that are available.

After doing a quick search of this forum im seeing posts about possible damage to gear boxes and other parts when using metal tooth pistons. Would this be true in most cases when using full aluminum or full metal tooth pistons?

is it generally better just to stick with plastic pistons?
any recommendations?

Prometheus piston.

Last piston you will ever need to buy (assuming you're not running some wacked out-of-balance build...)

Avoid the Deep Fire full metal toothed piston, the teeth are fine but the crappy plastic they make all their pistons out of is just that, crap. Installed a full metal toothed one in a M249, after a few hundred cycles the rail that the metal teeth section slides into cracked almost halfway down one side.

Keep in mind that it's easier and cheaper to change the piston when a jam happens rather than a full set of gears that costs more and need a shim job each time (By the fact that if the piston's teeth are stronger than the gear's, the gear will shred...). As ILLusion said, go with the prometheus. Good quality, and if something goes wrong you'll save your gears.

Well the downside to a full metal piston is that it could add more weight for the motor to pull. But I would assume often that is negligible.

There are a lot of good choices for pistons. As Illusion mentioned, Prometheus is a great choice, top of the line stuff.

But if you want better value and still great reliability, try the Azimuth/Stormtech pistons:
http://www.airsoftparts.ca/store2/in...oducts_id=1495

The OP was talking about full metal tooth pistons. not metal bodies pistons.

Some gears are absolute crap and the metal teeth on the piston will wear down the gears, instead of it being the other way around. You almost always want the piston to be the point of failure so having your gears wear out because the teeth are too strong is stupid.

Their is a lot of information on the web about full metal teeth pistons, check the date that it was made available and the sources. LOTS of it is horribly out of date. AEGs now a days should be able to run full metal teeth out of the box, Aside from the soft Tokyo marui gears, i dont think you have to worry.

The prometheus hard piston is excellent. It's a 1/2 metal teeth piston. I've run that in extreme FPS setups 550-650FPS. it's one of two choices that are available for high FPS application that is consistently reliable (IE I can get 10,000 rounds out of it).

I don't like azimuth or full aluminum bodied pistons. The side wall deformation ability of the azimuth can be a major weakness. I like the weight in the aluminum pistons. It helps gives the gun a nice crisp sound when paired with a M200+ spring however, again its lack of flexibility in this case is a major source of weakness. I don't need the piston to destroy my gears or chunks of my compression system

Also swiss cheesing pistons probably a bad idea now that the material quality has shot up so much in the last 6 years.

Avoid them like the plague in stock mechboxes.
There's nothing wrong with polycarbonate pistons for durability. But there is a problem with CHEAP polycarbonate pistons.
The $10-$15 and stock pistons are the ones that break really easily, but if you get something quality in the $20-$50 range, it'll never break.

Prometheus makes the best if not second best polycarb piston on the market, however I've heard they don't work so well without a quality gearset. Honestly at $45 it's overkill for a stock mechbox.

System supercore is apparently the best, but same story as prometheus.

Systema red or the new black polycarb pistons are great. They're designed for maximum compatibility, and pretty tough too. I've never seen a stock mechbox strip one.

stock tokyo marui is probably your best. Despite being a stock piston, they're actually REALLY tough. Most high ROF setups in japan use stock marui pistons.

What you're looking for is a polycarbonate piston with 1-3 metal teeth, and really soft. The softer the piston, the better it works at low fps, and the lower it's chance of breaking.
Amos has stock marui pistons I think

Yeah I can vouch for the TM pistons, very tough and will not catastrophically fail on you like other cheap pistons. Don't be fooled into getting a cheap piston with metal teeth, many times they're made of cheap brittle metal that will shatter.

+1

First choice hands down is TM stock.
Close second is Modify Ultra (the white one).

It is useless to put a 45$ piston in there. You WANT a weak point, preferably the part that is the cheapest to replace... 90$ for a gear set or 25$ for a piston... not hard to chose.

Forgot about the stock Marui, That is my go to piston for High RoF, low to mid FPS setups. It's super super super super super cheap, and it more than does the job.

"Stock gearbox" as a term has changed a lot in the last 5 years. A "stock" vfc gearbox can handle the full teeth pistons, as can Realsword, and other top shelf brands. Just because it's sold as a "premium" gun in Canada doesn't mean it's a top shelf brand. Especially over the last 2 years, the gun choices that are commonly available in Canada now would not have been a 2nd, 3rd, 4th pick 6+ years ago.

thanks for the replies guys, i guess ill stick to a plastic piston.

the Stock ICS pistons have been pretty bad so far. the one on my friends m4 broke after a few hundred shots, and mine broke after a few thousand.

Full metal tooth racks are not needed in standard builds. They are more expensive and don't really do anything for your build. They are most common in DSG setups because of the gear hardness. The best pistons and cheapest pistons on the market right now are the Super Shooter 7 Steel Teeth Clear Blue Piston and the SHS 7 Steel teeth piston. The shs piston being 8.50$ at ehobby and the super shooter I think is around ten.

To be honest, if you adjust your AOE on any piston (besides the some mentioned above which are utter crap, like the deepfire) it should last a long while.

Conflicts6

Those pistons are absolute garbage.

In my eyes a piston that can go 650 FPS for 10,000 rounds is a good piston. I tried the SHS "steel piston" with a M230 spring and the pickup lug, and first 3 teeth failed after 3 shots. My gears proceeded to eat the hunks of "metal" that came off the piston. Compare that to the 3 bags of 0.30's that Prometheus hard lasted with the M230 spring.

Granted not everyone needs or wants a gun that shoots 650fps but if want to spend the money to put a piston into a gun that can handle 650fps for several thousand rounds, I'm sure it will last at least that long on a properly shimmed box at your local club's energy limits

Shs pistons and super shooter pistons have worked wonders in all my builds. If you look on airsoft mechanics they are the most recommended piston. First off, were did a m230 spring and what were you attempting to accomplish with that? Second, which piston exactly were you using and was you aoe adjusted? A link to the piston would be nice because I remembered that a run of SHS pistons were bad in a particular model.