Retaliator upgrade kit from Taobao

I recently ordered 4 of these upgrade kits (http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.25.8zQ4wl&id=26061060718) via a Taobao agent, and it cost me RM 84/- in total, including postage and packing to Malaysia.  That works out to an average of RM 21/- per kit, and you can bring the average price even lower if ordering more.

The costing was as follows:
RMB 28 (per kit) x 4 = RMB 112
+ RMB 11 (postage to agent) = RMB 123
conversion to MYR and agent commission = RMB 123 / 1.9 * 1.1 = MYR 71
+ MYR 13 (postage from agent to Malaysia) = MYR 84

If anyone's interested, the agent's contact email is fatpandataobao@gmail.com.  Delivery speed?  Well, I made the payment on November 7, and received the items on November 15.  Pretty good, but I think the main determining factor is how fast the Taobao merchant ships to the agent.

Ok, back to the kits.  I have a couple of OMW 5 kg springs fitted in my Retaliators, and they worked well for me.  On one of the blasters, I removed the AR, which resulted in a range improvement of about 10 feet.  Unfortunately, the stress on the retaining peg on the shell from the plunger tube was too much, which resulted in the pegs breaking off after about 200 shots:

The pegs look like this on a new blaster:

(image from product page)

I began to pad my plunger tubes with shoe insoles, to lessen the impact:

 but if you look at the picture closely, you'll notice another problem (more on that later).

So when I found out about these kits on Taobao, they seem to address the problem of excessive stress caused by the upgraded spring.  As listed on the product page, there's a pair of padding pieces for the pegs, another padding piece for inside the plunger tube, a stronger catch spring, and the main spring itself.

How does the main spring compare to the OMW spring?  You can see from the picture below that the Taobao spring (bottom) is slightly longer than the OMW spring (middle).  In terms of thickness and resistance, they're about the same (based on unscientific judgement).  The stock spring is at the top.

It's easy enough to fit the padding behind the retaining peg, to stop the plunger tube from crashing hard into the peg.

(image from product page)

The padding inside the plunger tube helps to stop the plunger from going too far into the tube.  If you noticed in the earlier picture, the plunger goes way more into the tube when fitted with an upgraded spring.  I've come across comments that this sometimes crack the plunger tube itself.

(image from product page)

Once fitted, these parts should theoretically prolong the life of the blaster somewhat.  The ranges I obtained with the Taobao spring (with full padding installed, AR intact) is similar to that obtained from the OMW spring (no padding, AR intact).  I've also fitted the parts into a Retaliator with its AR removed, and time will tell if it lasts beyond 500 shots.  It's still noisy as heck though.