Okay, so my local TRU got these in yesterday, so I went out and bought one. I like it a lot! I must apologize, though... I was too busy having fun to take pictures of the hacks I'm about to describe.
From the very beginning I was disappointed with the strangely short darts. Especially seeing as how the clip is physically long enough for the full size stock darts to fit. So I fixed that problem. I also disliked how much smaller the air ports (in the clip) were than the exit port in the plunger tube. This is an obvious air restriction, so I fixed that too.
I began by drilling through the back of the ports and the air restrictors with a 1/4" drill bit. This mod by itself makes this gun great, especially if you plan on using shorter than stock length stefans.
If you aren't interested in doing a LOT more work to in order to facilitate usage of stock length darts, then skip the next part.
Then I flipped the clip over and drilled through the tubes with a 9/16" drill bit, completely removing the air restrictor crap in the back in one nice step. Well, at least it was SUPPOSED to work like that, and might, theoretically. What I ended up having to do was to CAREFULLY slice the seam around the back plate of the clip with a razor blade. Once I got it started, it was pretty easy. What I found was the remaining pieces of mangled springs and plastic from the air restrictors. They were easily removed once the plate was off, and this nets us just enough depth to allow full length stock darts. The barrels are all one piece of plastic molded together in a row, which just slides in to the clip frame assembly in the front. I drilled through each barrel with the 9/16" bit, being careful to skip every other, due to heat build up. From here, I cut sections of 9/16" PETG (that I was lucky enough to find at the only exotic fish shop in town [of course, this is AFTER I had already ordered some from OMC]) to fit the clip, and pressed them in to place. They are pretty tight as it is, so I didn't bother gluing them. Lastly, I reassembled the clip and glued (I used ABS pipe glue) the back plate at the original seam that I cut. Care MUST be taken to avoid getting excess adhesive on the outside of the clip. It's not a big deal except for the side with the tabs for the advancement mechanism which are all along one side near that seam. I was a little messy, and had to spend extra time cleaning the tabs so the clip would advance normally and the plunger would cock.
Last task, removable clip! I decided to modify the gun, rather than the clip. It seemed easier. Basically, I just cut extra notches on the frame to allow the top and bottom tabs to slide in. No big deal. Then, I just reassembled it.
I only shot a few darts, because it's cold. They were all stock taggers.
1. 51'
2. 54'
3. 56'
4. 61'
I'll do some more later and confirm. Keep in mind that I haven't modified the spring or plunger in any way.
EDIT: I tested all of the other styles of darts I have at my disposal, and came to the conclusion that the accuracy varies greatly between the different darts and the different positions in the clip. But they are ALL better than the originals. The standard micro darts seem to be consistently 10 or so feet short of the taggers. The other brands are usually shorter, except for the Buzz Bees.
Edited by Kabuki, 03 March 2008 - 07:37 PM.
