17 replies to this topic

[Pearson2]

First off I have to say I love the concept of a Tetra strike. Small enough to be a sidearm but having 4 barrels that can be fired together or seperate gives it a little more punch then your average pistol.




Things you Need

Tetra Strike blaster
Screwdriver
E-Tape
PETG (I used 16 inches. 4 for each barrel)
Epoxy
Star Head Screwdriver
Hacksaw or Dremel






Take your Tetra Strike and remove all of the screws.




There is a green grip on the back of the gun that will need to be pried off with a flathead screwdriver. Its pretty easy and can go back on after you are done modding the gun.





Pry or cut this orange nub off. Sadly there is no way to keep it intact as even if you can get it off without breaking it it will not fit over the pump head.




Have a look at the internals. Oh by the way don't do what I did, I was a little too rough with prying that last orange part off and somehow broke the handle for the plunger off. *Whoops* Thankfully I was able to put it back on with a bit of Super Glue.




Unfortunatally PETG won't fit down the barrels as they are. This is a shame as they would do a great job to keep the barrels stright (If you're into that kinda thing.) For me I plan on having my Tetra strike fire all shots at once to increase my chances of hitting someone when I fire at them, that being said I want my barrels slightly angled so I decided to get rid of the barrels all together.




The first Tetra strike I worked on I did this with my dremel and a rotary bit. I don't recomend doing this as if you cut too far down its very easy for the blast chamber to spring a leak hence why I cut my second tetra strike with a hacksaw. I placed the blade against the chamber and cut as close as possible without actually cutting any of the chamber.








When you are done it should look like this.



Still more to post please wait for comments

[Pearson2]

Sadly the holes that release the air are kinda small. I'd like to expand them but again, learning from my first one, its way too easy to cause a leak in the chamber. I did the best I could by taking a star head screwdiver and slowly pressing it into the hole.







It didn't expand the air flow a huge amount but every little bit counts.



Pretty stright forward after that. Take your favourite Barrel Material and attach it to the top. I figure 4 inches of PETG should make for good barrels. A little super glue and plumbers goop to hold everything on. (If anyone is wodering why the barrel farthest to the right looks like a mess I tried to sand down the old barrel to make a bit of an angle for my new barrel and ended up putting a small hole in the chamber. Those leaks are a little tricky to plug).



Once this is done I recomend plugging the pump. I'll explain more on why this is a great idea later.

One Last problem........




Remember the orange ring we pried off of the pump? There is nothing to hold that part of the gun together. You could leave it like as is. I tried a few times and it actually increases the very short draw. I just worry that durring a war the pump will come out and I won't be able to get it back in.


you could potentially use super glue, hot glue or create a screw port but I'm a very lazy man, plus I don't like having guns that I'm not able to open again. Bring out your roll of E-tape.




A few times around will make the barrel good as new.


Before I forget here is why I like plugging the pump so much on this gun, the draw is so small that, as far as I can tell, its impossible to over pump the gun. Once you get a good amount of air pressure in all the barrels the air will no longer go into the tube. Rather, it will just compress at the bottom of the plunger tube and pop the plunger back up again. I'm not sure if this is the exact reason or not but I tried over pumping this gun many times and I wasn't able to do it. That being said after about 20 pumps I couldn't get any more air to go in.



There is too much green on this gun. I'm thinking a paintjob is still to come.


No ranges it, its too cold outside to test but my basement is 30 feet across, firing 90 degrees from the ground the darts hit chest level at pretty good velocity. I'm guessing 50 feet is not unreasonable. 60 might be pushing it.


Overall, I really like this gun. Getting the hang of modding the first one took a little bit but I could probabally finish another one of these in half an hour. Don't get me wrong I don't think they will ever replace a primary but I'll take one of these over a nightfinder anyday.


Questions? Comments? Sugestions?

Edited by Pearson2, 10 February 2010 - 04:48 PM.

[HOTH]

Nice, simple mod. Good writeup. It was pretty easy to follow.

[fallinouttadabox]

I think a zip tie would be a better choice than e-tape to hold that part of the shell together because of simplicity and lack of adhesive residue. Also, you look like you need a bandaid for your finger. Also, also, good job, way to take chances on the tank's opening size and figure out a way to fix it afterwards, makes me happy that you didn't just create a "what would happen if" thread.

[FatNerfer]

I want a Tetra Strike now.

[umpshaplapa]

I think when I get mine I'll try to expand the air tanks. That could boost the range. Also I think a pump replacement would be a good idea. 20 pumps for 4/50' shots doesn't seem that practical.

[MindWarrior]

I can see the tetra strike as a great blaster for integrations, its tanks are only slightly smaller than an at2k's, and building up on this mod, you can have a mini, and easier to use marvelous salvo setup with ranges potentially in the low 80s.

[bourbon]

I see two ways to improve this besides tank expansion. One, on the Tetrastrike there is a check valve for each tank so that they don't leak into eachother when fired. That means there probably isn't one in the pump, which means you can't build up hardly any pressure. This thing should be primed in 12 pumps, max.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure you can put longer barrels. People use 12" barrels on their AT2Ks nowadays, I think 6" would be more reasonable, especially since the air release is a bit slow.

[Hi Yah]

Could you nest PVC over the barrels to protect them and keep em' straight? What are the ranges?

[Pearson2]

fallinouttadabox, on Feb 9 2010, 08:43 PM, said:

I think a zip tie would be a better choice than e-tape to hold that part of the shell together because of simplicity and lack of adhesive residue. Also, you look like you need a bandaid for your finger. Also, also, good job, way to take chances on the tank's opening size and figure out a way to fix it afterwards, makes me happy that you didn't just create a "what would happen if" thread.

I hadn't thought of a zip tie. Thats a great idea. That cut was from trying to take the rest of the orange nub part off with a flathead screwdriver, I always forget to push the screwdriver away from my hands. I'm pretty stubborn when it comes to modding a gun. I think this is in part to having Forsaken_angel as a very close friend. I'll go and bring my newly modded gun to him thinking I'm the shit and he'll look at it and say "Its decent. Wow that turret seal is terrible. Why isn't your PETG stright?" Which is good because it keeps me on track for doing good mods. Although I could have left the hole smaller and said "What if" I had to figure out even if it cost me a blaster..... which it did.

umpshaplapa, on Feb 9 2010, 08:56 PM, said:

I think when I get mine I'll try to expand the air tanks. That could boost the range. Also I think a pump replacement would be a good idea. 20 pumps for 4/50' shots doesn't seem that practical.

The air tanks look fairly easy to expand. I've never tried that or a pump replacement before but I believe you're right. This gun screams for both of them. You're right 20 pumps is a lot, would probabally get frusterating after a full day of nerfing.

bourbon, on Feb 10 2010, 03:38 AM, said:

I see two ways to improve this besides tank expansion. One, on the Tetrastrike there is a check valve for each tank so that they don't leak into eachother when fired. That means there probably isn't one in the pump, which means you can't build up hardly any pressure. This thing should be primed in 12 pumps, max.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure you can put longer barrels. People use 12" barrels on their AT2Ks nowadays, I think 6" would be more reasonable, especially since the air release is a bit slow.

I have darts that are pretty thick. I worried that if I put barrels longer then 4" on the gun that the darts wouldn't make it out of the barrel on the first shot. I'm curious about your first statement, how can you tell if there is a check valve on the pump? Also would adding one make it less pumps to fill up?

Hi Yah!, on Feb 10 2010, 05:48 AM, said:

Could you nest PVC over the barrels to protect them and keep em' straight? What are the ranges?

Angel receomended wrapping the barrels in E-tape. You could potentially put PVC over the ends of the barrels for protection, I think it might be a little tight towards the base with the green spacers there.

As mentioned before its to cold here to do an acurate range test. I can try if we get a nice day. For now though the best I can offer is that it shoots over 30 feet.

[cheesypiza001]

Whenever cutting near the end of an airtank, always make sure to pressurize the tank prior to cutting. Doing this will make sure that no large dust particles or small bits of plastic get in the way of the sealer piston and therefore cause a leak.

Also, like others have suggested, I would recommend that you use PVC on the base so that your barrels are straight.

[Pearson2]

cheesypiza001, on Feb 10 2010, 03:11 PM, said:

Also, like others have suggested, I would recommend that you use PVC on the base so that your barrels are straight.

For anyone doing this mod I would totally agree. But for the purpose that I wanted it for, as a sidearm to shotgun fire anyone who rushes me I wanted the barrels angled in diffrent directions to cause a greater spread area. So in truth I goofed on 3 barrels and just that one on the top was done properly.

[titanium2]

What is the likely hood that you can seperate the tanks without causing leaks?

Edited by titanium2, 10 February 2010 - 06:11 PM.

[bourbon]

The further away the check valve is from the pump head, the more pumps it will take and you will not be able to achieve very much pressure. Take any Nerf pump and look in the bottom of it. If there is a black rubber pin with four holes arranged in a circle around it, the check valve is in the pump. If there is just a plain old hole, the check valve is further down the line, in the air tank.

On guns where the check valve is in the tank, it's basically the equivalent of only pumping halfway down the pump tube. All the tubing between the pump and the tank is dead space that prevents you from building up pressure. If you add a check valve right at the end of the pump, it will be much more efficient. This is why I added a check valve to my SS2, is because there is a good 2-3" of tubing between the end of the pump and the stock check valve.

If you do this, you may not even need to replace the pump at all. I would, however, relocate the pump to the gun's handle (and make a new pump handle) so you can possibly fit this into a pocket, provided there was something to protect the barrels. How much dremeling would have to be done to nest the barrels in PVC? They could possibly be glued to one another which would make it much sturdier.

Edited by bourbon, 10 February 2010 - 07:07 PM.

[JATDO]

Nice write up, But longer barrels will help a lot. If you have a good dart/barrel fit you will get more range with longer barrels.

Just as a side note,

Pearson2, on Feb 9 2010, 10:34 PM, said:

No ranges it, its too cold outside to test but my basement is 30 feet across, firing 90 degrees from the ground the darts hit chest level at pretty good velocity. I'm guessing 50 feet is not unreasonable. 60 might be pushing it.

When you said 90 degrees from the floor, wouldn't 90 degrees be perpendicular to the floor? You meant to say you shot parallel to the floor.

[white moonlight]

Nice mod, can't wait to get ahold of one.
I know you said the barrels are crooked for more of a spread, but how is the seal from barrels to tank?
Also what order do the barrels fire in?

[k9turrent]

white moonlight, on Feb 10 2010, 09:30 PM, said:

Nice mod, can't wait to get ahold of one....Also what order do the barrels fire in?

They Fire from top to bottom.

And I'm still selling Tetras

[nerfkid33]

What are the exact ranges? I am realy thinking of doing this mod.