VelveetaAvenger

Been a long time since I've done any modding, but I came across a few tricks after opening up my SledgeFire that might come in handy for other people.



If you're not replacing the spring (I don't have any extras around) you don't have to open up the white part, just push in on the bottom edge of the plunger tube that faces away from you and push up. It will slide right out.



Here's the rear of the A/R assembly. Unfortunately, the front of the plunger tube is glued together, which is always a pain. Instead of messing with that you want to drill out the triangular area in the middle, and then take your screwdriver and push hard through each hole in the front.



Since everything is orange it's a little tough to see here, but when you do it correctly those back plates should snap off cleanly. It worked on the top two, but I think the bottom one was drilled a bit too close to the side of the plunger tube. Once you get the springs and other air restrictor garbage out of there it's easy to widen the front holes and clean up the rest with your dremal.



The downside is that you're left with a lot of deadspace in the front of the plunger tube. I eyeballed it wrong, and this piece of foam doesn't even come close to the end of the plunger tube. I put a slightly bigger piece in there for now, but I'll have to hit up Ax-Man again for some more.

I don't use a tape measure for ranges, but our house is about 50 feet long. Before the mod most shots were falling short, after the mod they all went past it (all stock darts). I'd guess there's about a ten foot improvement, mostly it seems to help the shots stay consistent.

I didn't see any shell refill packs, I'd like to get one before I mess around with the barrels too much. I got this mostly to have fun at an all Defend the Core war, but I bet a singled rear-loading shell would be an easy and effective mod for swapping in and out.

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Update with some HammerShot info. I didn't think it was really big enough to make another thread.

Like the SledgeFire you're also left with some dead space at the front of the plunger tube. I did the same thing with a smaller piece of foam on the plunger rod and took out the posts in the barrels. It's pretty nice compared to dealing with the barrel A/R's on a Maverick.

Unfortunately there wasn't much if any range increase with streamlines (although they still hit a good 60 feet), and slugs only go about 45' or so. It probably needs to be rebarreled to make it worthwhile.

Stopped by the local Walgreens the other night and they had this pack marked down to $2.50. So I had to pick it up. After looking online I guess they have been out for a while, but I haven't seen anything about them on this site.

No need to argue about the merits of darts vs discs anymore, now you can shoot both!


The only other one at the store was the Stealth, but it was still a little pricy so I didn't get it. Both it and the Thundershot are water blasters as well.
I don't think the Turbo-Fire has a gimmick besides looking hella sweet.


You can actually keep 3-4 discs in the mag on top, for semi-auto action. Range for the discs is a whopping 5-10 feet, most of that diagonally to the right.


Internal shot. The spring is short, but decent strength. The disc shooting arm is screwed onto the plunger rod, so it should be easy to remove. I wasn't expecting to mod it right away, but you can double the range to about 20 feet by removing the A/R and sealing the barrel. I think the discs shoot a little further too.

They've got some other cool looking blasters on their website, but I don't know if any of them have been released yet.

Whole package.

Tank close-up.

Air Restrictor.


Opening it up is pretty basic except for the scope on top. I've never had much luck with the boiling water to loosen glue so I grabbed some pliers and twisted the endcaps. They stayed in one piece except for the little tabs. The lenses are glued to the shell, but everything's strong enough that you can just slide a knife in and twist to break the connection.

Anyways, the tank is all one piece so I won't be opening that up. I'm 90% sure it's backpressure, there's not a lot of travel in the trigger. The only a/r is the one on the end of the barrel. The barrel follows that wavy line up and down, so you do have to cut it off.

The barrel is way too loose for regular stefans, but perfect for megas. I got about 50-55 feet from cutting off the a/r. It puts out a ton of air, but the seal to the tank isn't ideal. To load mini-marshmallows you take the whole barrel out, pop off a cap on the end with some rubber that sits against the tank, and put it back in when its full. Unfortunately I didn't have any to test that part before I cut it open.

The area up top would be fine for integrations. The handles are nice and big, although the whole thing is smaller then a "real" Mass Effect rifle probably would be. With a paint job and maybe some leds it will look great though. The shell is open almost to the tank, so I'd like to put a breech on it, maybe use the top area to hold electronics.

I hope some more people got it while it was on sale, price is up to $40+ now Classic Rapidfire Shooter

I just love the fact that all he did was change the color and remove the front gun handle.

I can't vouch for what's inside, but I'm considering getting a copy for the nerf-factor alone.

The artist also seems to be a fan of super-soakers, they're on some of the other covers.

For whatever reason the super-soaker is disguised a little better, unless this is another nerf blaster and I'm stupidly missing it.


I'm not trying to restart the "nerf in popular culture" thread, but I thought this specific example was good enough that people would appreciate it.

I was at Tuesday Morning last week and picked up a neat looking gel-blaster called the "Gotcha Shot". While it was fun to mess around with (emphasis on the mess, the goo likes to dribble all over and according to the package will stain your clothes if you actually get shot with it) I prefer to fling foam, not gib with gel. After cracking it open it was pretty obvious that slapping a coupler on and calling it a day wasn't an option. Internal shots from an earlier form of this blaster can be found HERE if you want to know what got removed.

The original plan was to make a homemade plunger tube/rod/head, but I had a spare Nitefinder sitting around so I just raided that. The first step, after opening the Gotcha Shot, was to clear out all the junk inside. Everything except the catch, spring, and trigger went straight into the garbage. Fortunately, the catch isn't actually attached to anything, so you don't even have to cut it off.

Next break out the dremel! I highly recommend getting a "high speed cutting" bit, it's all I use anymore.

Everything that holds the original internals should be cleared away, except for the rearmost wall. It's a convenient brace for the Nitefinder plunger tube. This is where I made the biggest mistake of this mod. The rectangle that is cut away from the shell was raised up and flat, from eyeballing the plunger tube fit it looked like it had to go. When I finished both sides and put it together, the plunger tube was loose and rattling around. Fortunately the problem was easily solved with a few layers of electrical tape, but the moral of the story is that cutting twice and measuring once is completely wrong!

Look at that plunger rod action!

The pump length on the Gotcha Shot is about 3 inches, but the Nitefinder rod is just long enough to cover it. I ended up cutting it under a 1/4 inch from the priming handle, but you'll want the rod to be as long as possible and trim it down to fit. Make sure to trim down the Nitefinder catch as well, so it doesn't get hung up on that bracing wall. Then use goop to attach the rod to the catch. I just measured the draw of a stock Nitefinder, and was surprised to find that it is apparently only 1.75 inches, so there's definitely an air volume increase. The spring is also stronger then a stock Nitefinder spring, I don't have any of the popular replacements to compare it to though.

Now it's time to get the tube in there!

It's so close to being a perfect fit length-wise. At first I just trimmed the tiniest bit off the back end, under an 1/8th of an inch. When it became apparent that it was too loose to just sit in the shell, I got out the Gotcha Shot's original "barrel" to stabilize it in front. The plunger tube won't fit inside the barrel, but it's close enough that you can widen the inside of the barrel without cutting through. Goop them together, wrap e-tape to stabilize the back, and it sits in there quite solidly.

Looking good so far!

It's a half cpvc 1/2 inch coupler, gooped into the hollowed out thing that holds the Nitefinders A/R, which is gooped to the plunger tube and Gotcha Shot "barrel". Although I did this last, I would recommend doing it before trimming the plunger tube. When I fit it on the plunger tube normally, it was too far in and the plunger head knocked it off after a couple of test shots. In the picture it is attached a little bit further out, but is holding together so far. It is completely airtight, when I hold my hand over the coupler the plunger stops with about 1/3 of the tube left.

All together now!

The finished product. It shoots across my living room and into the hallway wall without losing any height. I think that's something like 35-40 feet. An outdoors test doesn't really matter at this point, since it's below freezing with a couple feet of snow on the ground, but it should get comparable ranges to any draw-extended Nitefinder. It's a really comfortable and cool looking shell, I wish I hadn't cut those rectangles out of it though.

I'd like to set up a breech that opens when the pump moves back and closes when it moves forwards again, but I'm not sure how to do it without adding a ton of dead space. Do breeches still work if you push the dart behind the opening instead of in front of it?

Anyways, that's all for now. Hope you guys enjoy the mod/writeup, I was just glad to find a project that interested me over the winter here.

↓ Haha. Yeah, I scraped off the "DO NOT" part.