[ILLusion]

Maybe it's because the only CAs that I ever handle are ones that pass through my workshop requiring repairs, but I don't like Classic Army guns. Period.

For years, I have stood the ground of: "avoid CA, their quality is shit."

But then CA released their new generation of Armalites, and the hype on them was massive and the market was hit by a storm of them. Wave after wave, they came in, as CA offered extremely low wholesale pricing to retailers. If you ran a business and wanted to make money, CA was the ticket. Everybody wanted to check it out. I haven't had a chance to handle and work on any of them until the past several months, and I have my final verdict:

CA was, is, and will probably still be a really shitty purchase for the next while. The amount that my clients have had to pay just to get their guns functional or field-worthy have been at times... disgusting, even going as far as a complete gearbox overhaul.

The pistons are shit, most get stripped to crap in less than 1000 rounds, I've seen broken spring guides, tappet plates, melted trigger assemblies & selector plates, the hop up rubber is garbage (upgrading to a Systema one will yield a 5-10fps gain, btw), the piston head o-ring is garbage on most that I've worked on (almost 100fps gain by swapping the piston head), the SR-25 nozzles blow (literally. They're the STUPIDEST designed nozzles ever - causing air to blow out the SIDES and away from the BB, rather than AT the BB)... I could probably go on with the list.

The best example so far of how poor the guns are out of the box, is RonaldChang's CA-25 which entered my shop shooting about 185fps. This is with a spring that I tested to shoot almost 440fps in an efficient setup. I'd equate it to an M130 equivalent spring:

- The piston head gave almost NO seal
- This gun has seen... I'd estimate 500 rounds and the piston was already stripping
- The cylinder head was letting air out around the sides
- The air seal nozzle was a NO SEAL nozzle - like I said, CA cut notches in to the SIDES of the air nozzle - which, as I understand it, ports are cut around the exit on Marui air seal nozzles to prevent a vacuum buildup in the compression chamber during the piston drawback portion of the cycle. The difference is that Marui cuts the ports in a way that air is still directed AT the BB when the compression cycle begins, whereas CA's ports are cut so far down the sides that a very noticeable blast of air is wasted as it escapes out the sides rather than towards the BB. Even after upgrading the cylinder, piston head, cylinder head and hop up rubber to a rock solid air seal, the garbage air seal nozzle would still cause the gun to only shoot 335fps MAX. Did I mention that the air seal nozzle is garbage? And to put salt on a wound, THE PISTON HEAD IS ALREADY VENTILATED!!! The air seal nozzle ports are 100% redundant and unnecessary! Whoever Classic Army hired to be their engineer should be shot, hung, dragged through the streets, dropped in to a mulcher and then shot again, just to make sure he couldn't ever have any offspring with dreams of being an engineer like daddy.

The gears are okay... I haven't seen any major problems with those, but given the faults of all of the other parts, I can't honestly recommend a Classic Army gun to anybody who's looking to buy.

The only way I can recommend it is if the buyer is after a reasonably solid all metal external and is planning on dropping in a gearbox / hop-up overhaul.

Even still, I'd recommend the buyer look elsewhere, such as G&P, before looking at CA...

so sad. I'd had hoped they changed... I guess not.

I had such a hatred for CA before, that I charged 50% more on my labour rates just to work on them. They caused so much grief and headaches at times, that it was astounding to me that such a product is even so welcomed on the market. Maybe it's just me, but I'm a stickler for quality, and CA is extremely lacking in that department.