1) Manufacturer, Model
- A&K Dragunov SVD
2) Date Obtained
- June 2011
3) Initial Cost
- $165
4) New or Used
- new
5) Mechanical Problems
- Barrel wobble is common with these guns and as a result the hop up chamber wasnt mating with the air nozzle-
electrical tape around the top of the hopup unit takes the wobble out and now it meets the air nozzle
-the set screw and ball bearing nub that prevents BBs backing into the bolt chamber is a problem with this desgin, it either jams or the repeated action of the air nozzle rubbing past it works it out and you lose the set screw and bearing. In fact with my set screw if I put it in far enough to stop a BB from backing out it would often stop the air nozzle from coming forward- if I backed it off ever so slightly it would let the air nozzle forward but the BBs would back in- NO WIN :P every SVD I have seen so far has this issue; THEN BBs back into the chamber and break and the air nozzle wont go forward all the way; several solutions are online (most involving drilling into your hop up unit)
-the hopup for the SVD is this gummy (silicone?) sort of bar that goes under a set screw through the hop up unit- mine ripped like bad gel so I cut a length of O ring and it fits- also replaced the funky 2 prong hop up rubber with a standard rubber (which needed to be trimmed to fit)
-July 2011 removed the standard piston catch and put in the C&C White Dragon Airsoft piston catch, however once you do this the soft metal of the piston begins to wear down so its sort of a no win situation (unless peple start making C&C pistons I guess?)
-replaced the O ring that goes on the hop up unit with a fatter O ring- now the feed chamber lines up perfectly so I dont get the BB jams from when the piston pushes the hop up unit forward
-
after seeing the same model of gun crack in half one day I looked at mine and sure enough it has a micro fracture just ahead of the magwell. Looking at two other Drags as well as mine and the one that broke provided some clues : What casues this? Well everyone here put 170 springs in to get their snipers up to arund 500 fps. WELL HERE IS THE THING- the AEG springs seem to fit but are in fact slightly longer than the stock spring and as a result if you use and AEG spring it will actually be 1/2" longer and when it fires it slams the piston into the nozzle which slams the bolt into the reciever and eventually the pot metal cracks :\ The spring also develops a corkscrew twist as it is too long even when not compressed(and if you take out the spacer then the piston slam fires so you need the spacer but a slightly shorter spring); in addition becaust the heavier spring puts so much more torque on the bolt it creates a groove that slowly wears the path of the entire nozzle so that eventually instead of going forward and back it literally wears down the hop up metal and develops a wiggle- then you lose compression and even with a 170 spring you can only get around 420 fps- so I went back to the stock spring and 400fps- lesson to be learned: a heavy spring doesnt work well with the design of the gun because the metal will slowly deform in places and crack in others
I guess you could use a regular AEG spring and cut it down
6) Esthetic Problems
Slight outer barrel wobble which can lead to the mechanical issue mentioned above
7) Rounds fired between failures
- like 10 before I saw that the wobble made the air nozzle slam into the hopup unit; about 200 shots until my set screw worked itself loose and fell out.
8) Changes to Internals and Externals (upgrades, mods, dates)
- Installed a modify 140 AEG spring, this is pretty close to the stock spring that came with the gun but is slightly longer. Other SVDs at our field have went as high as a 170 spring but cocking the bolt becomes difficult if not painful for any long games
-This gun uses AEG barrels & springs- in fact you can swap a spring by merely removing the upper receiver (2 screws) and then the spring guide (2 more screws)- so 4 screws and 2 minutes later you can have your SVD shooting at a whole new fps.
-the silicon tube that presses on the hop up ripped- I cut a length of dense rubber hose and fed this in and it seems to be a tougher fix
9) Resale Date and Value if applicable.
- N/A
10)Notes and Comments (Optional)
- In many ways this springer is what almost all springers should be- the spring and many of the parts use easy to get AEG internals. Changing a spring takes a mere 2 minutes at most so you can easily upgrade or downgrade to suit any fields fps limits.
However the typical Chinese quality means that each and every one of these guns will
need various tweaks and modifications
for it to work out of the box. The design of a small nub held by a set screw to prevent BBs backing into the bolt chamber is a faulty design as every SVD based on this design seems to run into this issue within a few hundred shots. In fact all the set screws seem to loosen, like any gun regular care is needed to avoid losing parts
Overall I am very pleased with the gun- though if this was any other sport I would ironically be pissed off: Even if I were to have gotten it at the 'low' price of $60-100USD I would think that any product that fails as soon as you open it would make the designers fix the issues... heck sh*t like that nearly ruined Microsoft when the Xbox 360 had a 25% chance of getting the red ring of death.... but of course airsoft is the one sport where you can spend hundreds on a purchase then discover you need to spend hundreds more to fix it or to get it to even work right so I guess it is par for the course lol.