NERF Gun Mod

September 1, 2011

Most recent mod (Nov 2011) - power switch moved to barrel for easy access; trigger lock removed

Idea

For a while, I wanted to make a good gun mod. I saw this new design nerf is selling, which is baseball-pitcher style (two spinning wheels) and was wondering how much more juice that could put out.

Supplies

• Nerf N-Strike Barricade Gun: http://www.hasbro.com/nerf/en_US/shop/details.cfm[...]
• 4 steel washers (optional)
• 6 volt battery
• Wires

Construction

1. Take apart the gun. Conveniently, all the screws are on one side (there's one under the battery cover too).
2. Re-Connect the wires that are going to the 3xAA battery holder to instead go to the 6V battery. There is no easy way to use both at once, so don't do it (you have a risk of burns/explosion if you do).
3. Remove the annoying safety switch that requires the top 'door' to be closed before firing, if you want. While I was at it, I removed the door altogether, and also removed the little pieces of yellow plastic that go around the bottom of the barrel. If you remove that, be sure to keep the holes for the screws though, otherwise the design will be flimsy.
4. Test the gun to make sure the 6V battery is in fact connected.
5. For possibly extra power:
   • Take apart the red box which contains the spinning wheels and motors.Notice there are no gears used.
   • Once the two spinning wheels are exposed, carefully and thoroughly hot glue two steel washers on top of each wheel. This will add to their total momentum and allow you to fire more rapidly (and possibly faster darts).
   • Put it back together after testing.
6. Put the gun together and attach the 6V battery securely.

Results

It shoots really far! I measured around 30 feet. And it's semi-automatic. And it looks quite imposing.

Overall worth doing. Not much to improve here, other than possibly have a clip instead of the barrel (which is possible if you take out the 'door' on top. It will be top-loading though). Duct-taping on the big 6V battery worked out surprisingly well, and there is no way for it to fall off (even upside-down, shaking, etc) as it is right now (a trick for doing that: make two small one-layer rolls of duct tape, about the width of a penny, and place one perpendicular to the other at the surface of contact between the battery and the gun. Then tightly tape the battery down by going around the gun. This works for attaching any object to a flat surface)
Some photos:

Left and Right side views. As you can see, the battery is quite big and it fits on top. The tape holds it down very well. The little pieces of yellow plastic below the barrel are removed, but there is just enough space left for one screw to fit under the barrel (you can see in left photo).

Top View. The top door is not there anymore, and there are wires running from the battery to inside the gun.

Barrel view. Wouldn't want to have your eye here. In this photo, the two spinning wheels are visible (one on top, one on bottom) and on the left on each you can see dark outlines of the attached washers.