The main reason why it gets crap ranges is two-fold. First it's a rotating barrel, so there are seal problems. Second, there's a big bottleneck for the air right after the plunger tube, the hole is barely a centimeter in diameter. In this mod I eliminate both problems.
The first thing to do is take the gun apart. There are screws in the main body of the gun, as well as the slide. However, there's another one hidden under the slide, so be sure to take off the slide, and remove that screw, before you pry apart the gun and break it.
Here's the gun internals (post-mod, no before pictures sorry):
When you open it up, remove the turret, as well as the long stepped sliding piece thats right below the turret, you won't need these.
Next, take out the plunger tube. Your goal here is to get a piece of brass to fit on the end with a hole in the end of the tube as wide as the brass. Here are some pictures of what to cut and what not to cut off:
At the far end of the tube carve out a hole where the piece that connected to the turret used to be as wide as your brass:
Be sure to leave two sections of the end, the screw hole where it attaches to the case, and a crosspiece that slides into a slot in the case, this will keep the barrel secure.
Take your new barrel (I used a 4 inch piece of 17/32 brass), and goop a whole bunch of epoxy around the new plunger hole as well as on the two remaining chunks. Let this dry for a couple minutes.
Now you need to cut the case to fit the new barrel. Carve out a circular chunk on each side of the case, it's more trial and error than anything to get the right fit
Now you should have a larger hole that looks like this:
Now put the new barrel/plunger assembly back in the case. You may have trim some of the epoxy off so that the notch fits into the slot on the case. Put all the parts back on, and screw it up, and voila:
Range testing with 20 shots flat gave an average range of 62ft.
With a spring replacement it could rival the NF, but what I really like about it is the feel. It's smaller than a NF, and the circular end of the gun makes a very comfortable grip for two handed firing. Also, the plunger is excellent and has such a superb seal, to reload all I need to do is put the dart in the barrel a lttle, and when I cock it, it draws the dart right into the barrel, speeding up reloading.
Edited by userjjb, 09 June 2005 - 07:15 PM.