Board Thread:General Nerf discussion/@comment-27306930-20181217063417

As threatened, I cracked open my old yellow MagStrike AS-10 to figure out why it didn't want to fire the last three darts very far. And I learned a lot tonight.

First, there's a collar around the shell where the priming handle enters. It's a pain to crack open. Get a big knife, have some patience, and cut at the joint. A little torque doesn't hurt either.

Second, what looks like an air tank on the bottom of the MagStrike is actually a bladder. It's a section of thick rubber tubing that expands like a balloon, with a hard plastic cylinder around it that makes it expand like a sausage, rather than a party balloon. As Nerf goes, it's pretty inelegant, but totally effective.

Third, the overpressure release valve is on the rear end of the bladder. It has a post that sticks out the back. As you pump it up and the bladder expands in length, the post bumps against the back of the shell releasing any additional air you try to pump in. Clever, very clever.

Fourth, the piston mechanism that advances the clip and shoots the darts is the work of a bonafide evil genius. Not only does it mechanically raise the clip to bring the next dart into the chamber, but it releases a burst of air at the end of the stroke, then shuts down to allow the piston to return, then turns the air back on so it can repeat the cycle. And it does this over 8 times a second ! No electronics, no batteries, just physics, mechanics, and dynamics. It's a friggin' thing of beauty 😎  (golf clap)

And fifth, take a picture of the MagStrike internals after it's butterflied. You're gonna need that to get it back together. Otherwise you're gonna have really sore fingers from screwing and unscrewing, then screwing and unscrewing, and then screwing. But I wouldn't know anything about that.

So, to improve the performance so that all ten darts in the clip shoot equally well, it's actually pretty simple. Cut 4mm off the end of the orange pressure release post on the back of the bladder and reassemble. You're done. Not only will it empty the entire clip with improved range, it will dry fire another five or six time afterward. Harmlessly, of course.

By removing that amount of the valve post allows the bladder to expand just a little more, creating more pressure which slightly increases the rate of fire. Remember, this is calculus, not algebra, but the overall ROF is increased to about 11 darts per second after this mod, which is slightly better than its advertised rate, which BTW is currently one of the highest in Nerfdom.

Bottom line, the MagStrike can still be a relevant blaster IMHO. Despite uber-modded blasters, it's still one of the fastest blasters out there. And it's one that folks like you and me can own. This mod makes it even better 👍👍 