How good Double bell M4A1 RIS?

Guys, I am a gel blaster lover from Sri Lanka and here the gel blaster market is not well established yet. But I have found a seller with some reputation whom I can get a Jin Ming M4A1 gen 8 fully upgraded with metal gears ,metal barrels, spring ,battery and O ring for about $165. All the acaccessories and parts are available for that in the market. Also, there is a seller whom I can get a Double bell M4A1 RIS for about $200. But there are no parts and aaccessories for that in the market. So if there is any problem with the blaster ,I will not be able to fix that since there are no parts available. My preference is Double bell. So, I want to know what is the best thing to buy between these two. And how durable Double bell M4A1 is?

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Welcome to the forum! :wave:

Double Bell is a good choice, they’re pretty risk free. They build quality gear that performs well straight out of the box and they have a solid reputation for reliability. Can’t really comment on the price, I’m not familiar with how much is reasonable in Sri Lanka but if you’re happy I’d say go for it.

The M4A1 RIS is a great platform for customising. You won’t need to touch the internals, but the quad rail gives you the option of adding whatever accessories you like such as foregrips, PEQ boxes, flashlights, etc.

Someone on here will have a DB M4, they’ll be able to give you their hands on opinion. :+1:

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Thank you so much! Really helpful!!!

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Many Double Bells have been sold here in Australia. And I rarely see them on my bench. Two, maybe three in the last year, which is great considering the volume of sales on them. All the M4s I have seen had cracked gearboxes, and a long barrel.

The main thing is the cylinder for all models is a 70% ported cylinder, and most have a long barrel that should have a full cylinder. The spring they come with has them doing around 360-370fps on a 7.4v battery. They also have a quite heavy double o-ring piston head.

My recommendation is to change to a cylinder that matches the barrel in the longer models is a full cylinder. This will help with the volume. Change the piston head to a normal single oring type, prefferably a light nylon/pom head and run an m100 spring. Also worth radiusing the gearbox while at it as it takes 2 minutes. Some might do an aoe pad to help the impact, but I wouldn’t on the longer barrels as you want to use all the volume you can.

On most models with the longer barrel this will still get around 360fps, but it is doing it much more efficiently, with less strain on the gears and less impacting on the front end.

I own two AKs from double bell, one has been mint, perfectly shimmed, it is the only blaster I have that didn’t get a shimming adjustment. The other one, the cast gears failed, and get a full treatment of nice motor, shs gears, solid slim bushes, m100, piston head, cylinder, and radius. They are a bit tight fit for aftermarket gears. Shimming them is more compromise than perfect placement. I only changed to slim bushings to get a little extra area to shim as there is not much/enough available to shim aftermarket gears correctly.

All in all, considering other brands Double Bell is a solid choice. Good value, and good quality. And plenty of choice of models too. Hard not to recommend really at the prices they go for here.

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Thank you so much. Can you elaborate on how to change the barrel in simple words. Sorry I am new to gel blasters.

Double Bells you don’t really change the barrels on as they are an 8.5mm outer diameter, and all the aftermarket barrels I know of are 9mm, 9.5mm being the most common or 10mm outer diameter. To change the barrel on a double bell you also have to change the outer barrel so it can suit aftermarket barrels, and then you need to lathe them down to suit the tpiece and fit it. Also in the case of the RIS models, you likely need a free float handguard, it is a total front end change to get a different inner barrel - hence why few people do it.
Usually you change the cylinder to suit the volume of the barrel they come with, which is a gearbox out and open up job. Very easy once you have been inside a few gearboxes, but the first time can be quite daunting. M4 blasters with a v2 style gearbox are VERY common, and youtube is your friend for this, I recommend watching plenty of videos before attempting it.