LoneKiltedNinja

Done, mostly.
The sad news is my nearby sources are out of 17/32 brass, the good news is I worked out a fairly easy way to do the AR removal sans power tools.


Step 1: invest in a $10 basic pipe/tube cutter. Cutting right on the seam works, but having done it, I'd advise about an eighth of an inch further towards the end (hit the middle of the AR chamber rather than right near the post support).


Step 2: Find some 7/16" brass tube (1/2" might work, but is probably too large).


Step 3: Wrap the end of the tube as neatly as possible in E-tape until it makes a clean friction-fit in the back end of the formerly-AR chamber. Use your tube cutter to liberate about half an inch of wrapped tube to use as an insert.


Step 4: Fit the pieces of the plunger back together around the tube segment (you may need to shave off a little of your E-tape to get a good fit, you want the seam to be as narrow as possible) and carefully hot-glue all the way around, working the glue as deep as possible into the seam. If you haven't wiped most of the original oil off by now, that may be necessary here. Once the glue cools, use a sharp razor to shave the glue down nearly flush with the plunger. You have a little bit of leeway, and leaving a thin layer of glue probably helps make a good seal when you reassemble anyway.

I also found a couple more Eliminator specifics to watch for:

The orange cap the barrel fits into is all kinds of asymmetric. The top and bottom flanges are wider to one side than the other. The wide side fits into the screw-receiving half of the shell. There's a notch on the barrel-receptacle that fits a post on the barrel, which should also face towards the screw-receiving half of the shell. If the front of your gun isn't closing properly, check the orientation of the cap before forcing it.


There's also a tiny little sight piece that fits in between the halves of the top grip. It is also asymmetric, and only fits one way, but is easy to figure out provided you don't lose it.


So, pending finding the right tube for the barrel, I at least have an Eliminator that survived being forcibly opened and cut on the AR seam, which fires about as well as reported on the IX-1 and still looks fairly good. All tools and materials used (save for a bottle of SAE 20 3-in-one oil for re-lubing) are present for the photo, and as scale reference.

Red Star, on Oct 15 2008, 07:42 PM, said:

I'm assuming this will work on the actual Eliminator?

Given the age of this thread, I'd imagine you're already done, but for reference, the mod of the innards should be the same. Given that the packaging seems to be targetting adults, however (factoid: according to the former CEO of Hasbro, the core Nerf demographic is 11-19), it's probably unsurprising that they made liberal use of sonic welding (read: melt the plastic to act like glue) to render the shell less accessible. Below are a rundown of the hurdles to watch for:


First, this guy. A little plastic ring fused around the bottom of the grip. I wedged a knife in and snapped it, but more elegant solutions probably exist. It is fused to both main shell halves along the seam between them.


Next, the grip itself is fused for an inch or three along the front and back. Again, I wedged a knife in and managed to pop the front open. For the back, the seal was harder, and I had to just wrench the halves apart and hope the seam was the weakest point (it was).


Third, to support the handy little sliding dart stowage block in the grip, the halves actually have a heavy metal pin between them near the bottom. It's not fused to either half, but be aware that, once you snap the halves apart, pull them directly away from eachother. Forcing the gun open like a book with the pin still in place may break the plastic.
As a side note, you can see how heavily the back of the grip was fused here...


Okay, not a real 'difference,' but on this particular gun at least one of the screws seems to have been stripped out on insertion. I'm pretty sure this much plastic pulling out means it's not going to go back together nice and tight, and may also mean some of the screws are heat- or chemically-melted into their holes.


Finally, a curious note: exact same plunger geometry, but no mysterious second black disc/washer. Also, I did a check with a strong flashlight- the cavity in the back half of the plunger actually stops at the visible seam, meaning no dead space. If the Reflex IX-1 has a fully hollow plunger, this may make the original Eliminator more efficient pre-modding. I don't have a measuring setup handy, but I could believe I'm getting in the generous tail of the quoted 25' flat pre-mod.

I'll be drilling out the AR on the gun above (front half of the plunger is still fused at the seam ) and trying the barrel mod as soon as I can get to the tools/parts. If I come up with any different results or other improvements, I'll try to post them.

Thanks. That's exactly the sort of answer I was looking for.

I know the universal forum guidelines for not asking stupid questions, running a search first, providing specifics, etc., but not even knowing what the blaster was called, I'm not sure any amount of scanning the master lists (short of clicking every link until I found something) would have been all that effective.

As for not using the url tag, bleh. I still can't keep straight which of my forums auto-link anything beginning with http or www and which require manual tagging. That's a quick fix.

Edit: case in point-

Quote

I recently got my hands on some of the new eliminators. Except these were N-strike-afied and renamed the "Reflex IX-1"

When Hasbro can't even keep straight what the dang things are called, this looks to me like a no-win scenario unless someone wants to anally cross-reference every single package a gun appears in...

Double-post-bad-juju, I know, but this is actually back on topic- I've found a level-0 fix to the timing issue, and I think, an explanation of why it's happening on some mods but not others. Details forthcoming in a full Mav4Noobs thread once I pull the pics off my camera (probably after I finish the mod on my TTG...), but long story short, place one lucky penny behind the stock spring. That simple.

NerfCrazy, I think I'm missing the context of that last post, but that's okay.

On the topic, I didn't realize you'd already posted the mod, but commented in the thread where you introduced the Zapper mod that you might try it with TTG internals. They're pretty slender, particularly past the plunger proper, and if you can make them fit, the gun has decent power.