What are your thoughts on these? I don't mean the 100.00 + ones at PA; but rather the marine/auto ones from 20-40 bucks. Has anyone here experimented or thought of experimenting with one?

It seems some modifications to the gas spring itself will need to be made (the rod and tube ends) for it to function properly in a compression chamber and one would have to get the compressed and extended length down. Does anyone know how the PA ones go into a rifle? Is it just a drop in? Maybe a threaded tophat that screws onto the rod end and into the piston? I'm not sure at all - it's just a thought, but I'm pretty curious.

I've though of trying to build one myself. The automotive ones have an orifice to allow them to extend slowly, so you would have to try to open it up without it blowing up on you. I assume they are under a lot of pressure. You would have to use seamless tubing and probably need some space age type seals for the piston and caps. I would think you'd need to charge it with nitrogen or argon (something that's not really affected by temperature as much as air). I would go with the threaded tophat idea and a base that would match the current spring guide. I really don't know how they're installed, I've never shot one or had one apart. I don't think I would attempt to take a gas strut apart because I think it would be like disassembling a live grenade. Just my 2 cents.

Yeah I wouldn't take one apart but I'm thinking of one could find one that would only need mods to the ends to fit, it just may work - or not. Either way I think it would be cool to test one out.

You may be able to check out some nerdy robot building sites for gas springs and such. Also, www.surpluscenter.com used to sell gas springs and air pistons really cheap. They may have what you're looking for. I don't think building one would be extremely difficult. I think figuring out how to charge one and to keep them from leaking over time would be the hardest part. I think I read on the Yellow where someone had tried this before. Good luck.

Resurecting another old thread sorry... Old tool and die designer coming out. Im seeing these nitro springs and thinking wow, exactly like I used to design into stamping dies. I little backgound here on the whole wire spring thing. Wire springs are really old tech. Sure they work and I'm new enough to the whole airgun scene that I won't hazard a guess about if they are best in this application. I will tell you what I do know from my die design experience: the biggest concern that we had as designers when we had to deal with wire springs was poundage right when we needed it. We had a thing we called contact pressure. If we needed X amount of pounds at contact we had to basically overload the application with wire springs to get the poundage we needed. We always had to design at least an 1/8 inch of preload into the springs (springs were compressed 1/8" at rest). Power buids as you compress a spring of course. Along came nitros. Awesome contact pressure. These things have all the power you need right at contact. No need to preload. Think about in the gun application...at the moment you need the most strength from the spring is actually when the spring is the weakest (fully uncompressed). All the power is generated right when the sear is released (most compressed). Nitros build pressure too just not the same way or at the same rate. They have what we called pressure rise but they generate much more force when fully extended vs a spring. More bang for the buck kind of thing. There's allot you can do with nitros. I think that's going to be the first mod on my Big Cat I think. Longevity of these doesnt even come into question. We put them in dies that were hitting a million + strokes a year with minimal failures. Here's some web sites: www.dadco.com www.hysonproducts.com these are the guys we used most. Wow this got long, sorry...