Hey NH, I decided to make a new topic because I have a few questions that are specific to my Magstrike, as well as some questions I couldn't find an answer to while searching.

First, I bought my MS over a year ago and only did some minimal mods, AR removal, OPV removal, making room for bladder expansion, and plugging the whole on the white winged piece.
It then sat on my shelf until recently, with the bladder unscrewed from the front bladder 'collar'.

Now i saw the Assult Magstrike mod, and got really giddy about having an automatic gun with 70'+ ranges, so I pulled my dusty MS off the shelf and tried to reassemble it. Well it leaked, a lot. I did some tests by submerging it in water and i thought the leak was coming from where the air inlet/output piece (attached to the pump and then up to the trigger valve) sealed with the bladder. I hesitated to goop it because A)it would become immovable, and I'm not sure if its wise to goop a connection that will be dynamically moving (would the goop restrict the bladder inflation? would it even hold tight?).

So i decided to just smear all the fittings on the inlet/output piece in goop, and wait till i got back from work 8 hours later. Well It seemed to improve a lot. There was no longer any hissing, but depending on the orientation of the pump (I held it underwater without closing up the shell, and had to keep pumping it to keep it inflated), there would still be bubbles.

After inspecting the vinyl tubing i noticed a tiny 'scratch' that didn't even appear to penetrate the entire tube, but i slobbered it in goop anyways and went to bed.

I woke up this morning and pumped up the bladder and submerged it once again. Eureka! I didn't see any bubbles at all!

Satisfied, I left the bladder inflated and took a 10 minute shower, but when I returned, the bladder was totally deflated. I was perplexed.

Frustrated, I submerged the entire blaster, and noticed that the only place bubbles escaped were in the piston assembly. At first i presumed this was just the piston displacing the air with water, but it never stopped! It was a quite vigorous stream of bubbles compared to the previous two, so i was in disbelief that it did not hiss or anything. Also, this would mean that the trigger system was not closing all the way, because air was getting into the piston without the trigger being depressed.

Now I'm totally confused. It appears neither the first two leaks were very significant (they were much smaller compared to the piston leak, and all my work was focused on the wrong spot. I don't know what to try next. I think the problem lies in the trigger valve, but i really dont know how to begin trouble-shooting that. This is where I need your help NF!

Okay, I realize that was a long post for a simple leak question, but I have another question about the "Assult Magstrike" mod (which isn't in the mod directory, but I stumbled upon while reading the 15 pages of Magstrike search results).


Banding the piston and adding the external piston enlargement do essentially the same thing, they increase the amount (either by volume, or pressure) of air needed to actuate the piston, and fire a dart, right?

As far as I can find (and I read 15 pages of Magstrike search resulsts), nobody has posted about doing both, or even doing a larger piston enlargement than the original. My question is if anybody has done both of these, and what kinda performance he's gotten. I was wondering if there is a point where adding a bigger piston enlargement doesn't add any significant range because of weight etc.

If I'm understanding it correctly, theoretically, if you built a super large piston enlargment, you'd get a very slow RoF (because it would take a while to fill the new piston), resulting in an almost semi-auto like magstrike with (presumably) incredible ranges. I.E I'd much rather have a Magstrike that could only fire 5 or 6 shots 100' than 10 shots at 50'. These are just guesses obviously, but the original Assult Magstrike mod was getting a full clip of 10 darts to go 70'-105', surely 5 or 6 shots at 100' consistently is plausible.

I realize the above paragraph is a 'conceptual' sentiment that might be received unfavorably here, but i was just wondering if anybody has documented this, and if i'm missing something fundamental that would limit the piston enlargment's benefits.


tl;dr - 1) how do you trouble shoot a leaky trigger valve?
2) what are the limits of the "Assult Magstrike" mod?

Just to give a little experience, I'm a Target cashier in Michigan and i can honestly say i ring-up a few nerf guns a day, maybe a dozen. in 2 years with Target i've never seen anybody purchasing a nerf blaster who looked like a modder.
By that i mean somebody in his late teens to mid 20's in age. Its been 100% young kids (13 and younger) and older men/woman (parents/grandparents). So, unless there are a lot of 8 year old and 40 year old modders, I'd say we make up an infinitesimally small percentage of the Nerf market.

Now another obstacle is that, even with a large enough influence in static market composition, we still would have an uphill battle. It would take a disproportionate amount of strict negative feedback to change Hasbro's ways because, currently, their infrastructure is totally devoted to N-Strike and reverse plungers. Basically, any bad media we could generate would have to be so impactful that it influenced sales enough to warrant a whole sale transition in the companies business model. That's a monumental amount of negative influence, not just a few bad reviews.

tl;dr: Even if we are able to reduce the longstrike's predicted profit by any brow-raising amount (doubtful), it would still take MORE than that to really change anything coming down the pipeline because the inverted plunger design is so cheap and portable that it can withstand smaller volume of sales due to a higher profit margin (cheaper to make) and less overhead (infrastructure already exists)

Looks like a very simple, yet effective mod. Nice and clean too.
Do you have any other plans for it? What kinda spring would you add for such a huge plunger tube?0

I also have a non-mod-related Bow n Arrow related question that i've been wanting to ask since i saw the BnA in the internals directory, but didn't want to necro any posts: There is no catch/trigger mechanism for this gun correct? You just pull it back and let it fly? Is this tricky to use?

I sort of tested it on my NF by depressing the trigger and trying to just pull it back and let go, but my release is always too awkward and slows the plunger down a great deal.

Sorry for the slightly off topic question. Nice mod. Breech it and clip it!

is it necessary to drill (i.e make an inner diameter throughout most of the dart length) a la http://nerfhaven.com...ans/Diagram.jpg ?

I read about 6 pages into this thread before giving up. A lot of stefan making how-to's dont even mention it, but some of the (more well respected) ones do.

I assumed the advantage was increased accuracy, but with my first batch of stefans (which i didn't drill) the accuracy seemed spot on. Of course, these were my first stefans and it was just nice to not deal with streamline swirling

also, what are the advantages/disadvantages of different stefan lengths? I made a few different lengths (1", 1.5", 2") and the range and accuracy all seemed more or less the same. The one advantage i liked was i could shotgun fire more shorter darts in a single barrel.

what diameter of brass did you use? what kinda darts are you using? Sounds like a bad dart fit issue to me. typically 17/32" brass is used on stock darts.

Or perhaps the barrel is too long. i tried CPVC'ing a NF and a 4" barrel with about 1" of coupler was too long (the dart never made it all the way out before being slowed down). i made a brass version and it seems to work very well.

If neither is the case, and there are honestly no leaks in the seal (hot glue isn't a very good sealant, you should also add plumbers goop or equivalent), then i'd assume there is a problem with the plunger head or tube. maybe there is a crack?

Also about the Ace spring. Unfortunately you bought the wrong one. There is no (easy) way to use an extension spring in replacement for a plunger tube spring. The #49 thing doesn't seem to apply to all ACE's, and the one by me doesn't carry handyman springs at all. i found a very nice 2 pack of C-836 (or some such number, don't have the package anymore) springs that work, but they aren't #49 or anything. You really just need to shop smart and find a spring that looks like it will fit in your tube and isn't so strong that it will break everything. Trust me there were some pretty tempting compression springs that coulda passed for bike shocks that i wanted to try, but i used better judgment and passed.

sorry for the ramble. its 4:45AM and i'm having a bout of insomnia. Hope i helped a little.