15 replies to this topic

[alextwin007]

The purpose of this mod was to take a raider and swap its reversed plunger out replacing it with one from a nightfinder. I lost the pictures for the first part so I will try to explain what I did the best I can.

This is a finicky mood and will most likely need tweaking after your done.

Materials:
Raider
Nightfinder
½” PVC
17/32 brass
9/16 brass
19/32 brass
Disk of hard plastic (I’ll get into why latter)

Open up your raider and take out the plunger, catch mechanism, slam fire ability and the parts that hold the plunger in straight, we will not be using them

Cut the barrel so that it looks like this (sorry I don’t have exact measurements). Hammer a 3-3/8” piece of 17/32 into the barrel.


Cut the 17/32 brass so that it follows the curves of the front of the original barrel.


Cut ¾” pieces of the 9/16 brass, 19/32 brass, and the ½ PVC. Glue the 9/16 brass into the 19/32 and using some e-tape glue the 19/32 brass into the PVC.


Hammer and glue the PVC into the plunger tube like shown. I used a dist shot plunger tube taking advantage of the glued ring, but a nightfinder plunger tube would work fine as long as you make sure it’s straight.


Now for the shell. First we will have to cut of this small part of the shell as shown.


Now to allow the nightfinder to fit around the back of the gun you will need to cut it at the nerf logo as shown.


It should fit around the back of the gun like this.


Next cut off the handle of the nightfinder just below the trigger.


Place the nightfinder trigger directly behind the trigger of the raider and mark were on the shell the trigger make contact


You will have to sand theses parts down so that the trigger can move freely.


All of the steps above to the shell must been done to both sides of both the raider and nightfinder.

When the nightfinder is placed around the raider, the two triggers should line up as shown.


To make sure the triggers stay in line cut the back of the raider trigger so that it’s flat.


One problem that we have to tackle is to allow the boltsled to slide over the new larger plunger tube. Originally, there is a lip on the bolted in the very back.


You will have to sand this lip down so that it is flush with the inside of the boltsled like below.


I’m not sure if this part is necessary, but it helps allow everything to run smother. What you have to do is sand down the inside of the boltsled so that it slides over the plunger easily. It wont take allot.

Edited by alextwin007, 12 March 2010 - 04:06 PM.

[alextwin007]

Finally we are going to mount the plunger tube. Before doing this make sure that you have finished your bolt completely. To allow more surface area for the glue to adhere I placed camping foam in the shell as shown.


Before you glue down your plunger tube, make sure everything line up perfectly. Run the breach through a full set of motion to make sure that the breach neither comes out the front or the back of the plunger tube. Mark this location and glue the plunger tube in place. I found that on mine this ended up being just in front of the end of the gun.


When you’re gluing the plunger tube in place make sure you have the breach in it. Also use the back of the raider stock to help you make sure the plunger tube is straight. Once the glue dries go through the action of the breach making sure everything is lined up.

The final thing you have to do is remove this safety device from the top portion of the shell. Without a reversed plunger, if you don’t remove it, your boltsled will be restricted from moving back.


When you put this gun back together, you have to do so in a certain way. First place the nightfinder trigger in the raider shell and screw the raider shell together. The nightfinder trigger should stick out like so.


Now flip the raider around so the side that the clip comes out of is down. Now this should make assembling the nightfinder portion easier. You should be able to slip the plunger rod into the raider along with the spring resting it on the back shell of the raider. Once everything is together, it should look like this.


Although it doesn’t look the best, I would advise using duct tape to secure the nightfinder to the raider shell. This will allow you to make fine adjustments before your do anything permanent. Also by keeping the shells of the nightfinder and raider separate, you will be able to do basic repairs without opening the whole raider. In the end, it should look like this.



There are two things that I am going to do to make sure this gun doesn’t break. The first is to cushion the plunger head with camping foam. This serves a few purposes as it not only protects the plunger head, but also it prevents the brass from getting destroyed. You will have to swap this out every now and then because the brass will cut the foam. The other is to add some sort of stopper to the plunger so that it will stop before even hitting the brass. Doing these two things should prolong the life of the gun.

Now everyone is probably asking about ranges but at the moment I only have a stock nightfinder spring in here. The ranges are typical of a stock nightfinder. I added a tighter barrel with adding the 17/32” brass but didn’t replace the spring. Replacing the spring with an Ace 49 spring would probably require more reinforcement but performance should dramatically improve.

I plan on updating this with what was stated above and attempting to keep the slam fire ability, if I do I’ll update this.

Questions, comments, flames.

Edited by alextwin007, 12 March 2010 - 04:07 PM.

[canuck]

It looks really good, but isn't the gun a litttle front heavy?
Why not try to retain the stock attachment, and use a recon stock, so the the cocking motion resembles a
crossbow?

Anyway, it looks damn good. Keep up the good work!

Edited by canuck, 12 March 2010 - 04:28 PM.

[mr yetti]

It sort of looks like the Star Wars blaster. Any thing to do with Star Wars it amazing, so then this must be amazing too.

[stuck by stefan]

Wow. do you still prime it with the stock priming handle.

[erich76]

That things a beast. Just for clarification, the 17/32 pretty much pushes the NF plungerhead back right?

[alextwin007]

It looks really good, but isn't the gun a litttle front heavy?
Why not try to retain the stock attachment, and use a recon stock, so the the cocking motion resembles a
crossbow?

Anyway, it looks damn good. Keep up the good work!

The gun isn’t front heavy when you consider that with the priming handle on your holding it with two hands. One of my goals when making this was to allow it to use the original priming handle. This is supposed to be an indoor weapon so I was going for rate of fire and a X-bow style of priming doesn’t allow that.

Wow. do you still prime it with the stock priming handle.

It still primes using the original priming handle, although I didn’t have it on in the picture.

[canuck]

It looks really good, but isn't the gun a litttle front heavy?
Why not try to retain the stock attachment, and use a recon stock, so the the cocking motion resembles a
crossbow?

Anyway, it looks damn good. Keep up the good work!

The gun isn’t front heavy when you consider that with the priming handle on your holding it with two hands. One of my goals when making this was to allow it to use the original priming handle. This is supposed to be an indoor weapon so I was going for rate of fire and a X-bow style of priming doesn’t allow that.

Wow. do you still prime it with the stock priming handle.

It still primes using the original priming handle, although I didn’t have it on in the picture.

Wow, I did not notice that. I think my jaw dropped more after I heard you can use both priming handles

[washedup]

Very inventive! Now what are you planning to use for ammo? Stephans or stock darts?

[TantumBull]

Very cool mod. But why not just drill out the bolt and glue in 17/32 brass?

I see, the seal relies on the nesting of brass, pretty ingenious way to do it really, rather than screwing with rubber seals.

Edited by TantumBull, 12 March 2010 - 10:55 PM.

[moosa]

I for one would love to see this thing getting well-modded Nite Finder ranges, and have the blast fire mechanism functional. Awesome work, but please, do keep going.

[Salmon]

Very nice. This reminds me of a plan for a gun I had long ago when I first started nerfing for a gun called the Sparta, but unlike you, I never made it, and unlike you, my concept used a Recon instead of a Raider. Anyways, props for getting it done, and doing a great job with it too.

[nostyleguy]

I'm a little confused about the way this gun cocks. The bolt sled brings the entire barrel assembly backwards into the NF plunger tube, thus pushing back the plunger and cocking it? That's pretty nifty, but what keeps the seal between the PVC sheath and the NF plunger tube? And where is the breech 'slot' to allow darts in? I may be missing something obvious here.

[alextwin007]

I'm a little confused about the way this gun cocks. The bolt sled brings the entire barrel assembly backwards into the NF plunger tube, thus pushing back the plunger and cocking it? That's pretty nifty, but what keeps the seal between the PVC sheath and the NF plunger tube? And where is the breech 'slot' to allow darts in? I may be missing something obvious here.

Your right about the first part. The seal between the breach and the nightfinder plunger tube is actually accomplished by the brass. To allow the dart I made sure that I cut the brass so that it fits inside the original bolt completely so the dart is guarantee to get into the breach once opened.


This gun is designed to work with both stock darts and stefans. I will probably be using streamline because a group that I nerf with only uses stock darts.

[Kalex]

Hm. Now I must One-Up this and build a Long-Raider. Or a Raid-Shot. Or something like that.

[Niteshot]

Awesome. I wanted to do this with a Recon, instead, I would probably put the catch in the stock.