The thing is you know how good the Chinese are for amalgamating rifles together (ie Remington Express (Diana front end and HW rear)) or slightly altering them, I know the TH208 action wouldn't properly fit a standard Diana 34 stock as the 208 action was slightly shorter and the front stock screw mountings where about inch out, I also changed the barrel on my B20 and fitted a HW95 with no aggro, if I've read right in the past, do you have problems trying to fit a 95 barrel to a 99?
Looking at your photo's, it defo looks like the newer ones are 99 cylinder size but with 95 style stock and fixings (ie no 99 style front bolt fixing underneath), the cylinder also looks smaller and could possibly be 25mm internals again, the daft thing is, people may start thinking that this could be the new cheaper 99 tuning bitch alternative but they probably won't be that much cheaper than a proper 99 with better trigger/materials/build quality, the original B20 was a bargain when they first came to our shores as they where between £50-100, half the price of a 95 and they made an excellent first rifle or tinkerers special.
But then again, thinking about it a cheap rifle of half decent design (HW copy) with 25mm internals may make a decent platform for a 99 chaser (I won't say beater) and could be the next rifle to take the boinger bash by storm.
Pete
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