M14 Socom Scout Rifle

My latest craze is scoped short barrel 7.62mm assault rifles. I've got them all converted into effectively scout rifles with low mag scopes and the like. I have a couple of HK MC51 types, a SCAR-H and a FAL DSA. My current favourite though is my Cyma M14 Socom. In my not so humble opinion it rocks.

The gun itself was purchased from Gunfire in Poland priced very reasonably at just over £100 delivered. Of course, it was "hot"; firing at a site unfriendly 385fps. No problem, the spring was clipped, a Lees Precision Engineering piston head was added and adjusted for AOE and the gearbox was rewired for an Extreme Fire basic mosfet. The old motor was binned and a Lonex A1 motor added for quick trigger response. Before firing it all back together the barrel was polished to a mirror finish. The quality of the Cyma castings are pretty rough and the fire selector was replaced with a Tokyo Marui one. I also replaced the bolt cover with a Guarder USMC version.

I wanted to add a scope but the eye relief would have to be impressive and/or the scope would have to clear the rear sight. After much searching I finalised on a Visionking 1.25-5x scope and a King Arms low scope mount - the lowest I could find. I had to source 30mm scope rings but managed to get a pair or no name bits off of eBay that looked the part. The scope is amazing for the money but still sits pretty high from the sight line although I don't think it would be possible to get a scope any lower unless you're mount a true scout type scope on the front rail. As I discovered, true scout scopes are not for airsoft at least as far as price is concerned! To raise the eye level I ordered a real steel Bradley M14 Adjustable cheek rest - this cost more than the gun! Not pictured above is the edition of a Laylax front rail fitted with an ultralight weight plastic bipod. The finishing touch is is the black signature edition Carlos Hathcock national match sling from Turner Saddlery.

Overall, the gun came in at around £490 or around 2/3rds the cost of a Tokyo Marui based project. In its current form you'd need to be real close to tell the difference.