After each successive layer of glue, I cut down the centre to make sure that the glue wasn't sticking together. I wanted to make sure the two halves of the shell would come apart. After I filled in the space, I cut and sanded down the glue wall to be more even with the rest of the shell.
If you are following along, it's important to make sure that you don't fill in too much space with hot glue. Right where the blue part of the shell meets the yellow is a screw housing where the plunger tube attaches to the shell, so make sure you don't go past that point with your glue.
Internally, I removed the post and air restrictor (which you can probably find a writeup for somewhere around here, there are tons of them floating around NH), then stuck a small nub of 1/2" CPVC into a 1/2" CPVC coupler and sealed it in place with some super glue. I then stuck the nub of CPVC onto the plunger tube with Plumber's Goop. Nothing too complicated or impressive.
I replaced the stock NF spring with an Everbilt spring cut down to the same length of the stock spring. (You can buy the replacement springs at Home Depot in packs of two.)
Once all of that was done, I put everything back in place to make sure it would all fit. Here are the modified internals in the shell, with some added foam backer rod for noise reduction.
I hand-painted the shell after all of the internal mods were completed, following the same technique I used when painting The Gremlin. The NF doesn't have much space for graphics, and I wanted to keep the colour scheme clean and simple, so I just went with a simple thunderbolt symbol where the NERF insignia used to be.
Total painting time: 4 hours
I think the gap between the two shell halves could have been filled more cleanly with Squadron putty, but I had to work with what I had available.
As always, priming handle and coupler painted orange. I just like them better that way, I'm not sure why exactly.
I haven't had a chance to do range tests for it, so I apologize for ranges being unavailable at the moment. I have been quite busy with classes and other things lately. I may have a chance to do a few indoor tests this weekend, though, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Questions? Comments? Flames about there being too many NF writeups already?
