Quick Mod: Nerf Mega Bigshock

One of my new acquisitions from Canada, the Bigshock is already a favourite of some modders for its ease of modding, power and low price (10CAD). I embarked on a short quest to make the Bigshock more powerful and also able to use both Mega darts or regular darts like Kooshes.

 

The barrel I used for regular darts is a 16cm long piece of 16mm UPVC, the Aussie equivalent of the American 1/2" CPVC. 16cm is a rather arbitrary length, I just selected a length that I thought looked good and provided enough barrel length for good performance. I'm not sure exactly what length provides the best performance, but 16cm does well enough for me.
The e-tape allows the barrel to sit tightly inside the Mega-sized barrel, while still being easy to remove.

The AR is still intact for firing Mega dart, however to allow the use of the smaller darts I ripped out the dart peg. Besides that the barrel is unchanged, so Mega darts fire just fine.

The barrel is designed simply to be rear loaded, then inserted into the Bigshock and fired. The barrel holds open the AR when inserted, allowing maximum power for the darts. However instead of a loud cracking noise there is usually a popping noise upon firing.

Besides the new barrel, I also added a Nitefinder spring to the stock spring. I couldn't manage to take off the pin on the top of the plunger head so I resorted to winding the NF spring on, which was a little difficult and took some time, but worked out very well.

Ranges?
Fired roughly flat (possibly with a little angle), Mega darts averaged about 16m. Not a huge improvement over stock, but its range is much more consistent now.
Koosh darts averaged about 25m, with some dropping to the ground quite early (one around 17m and one around 20m), and one soaring to 30m.

Considering the size of the Bigshock and the effort I put in, I'm quite happy with the results. 25m with Kooshes is quite impressive considering I only added a stock spring, and the Mega darts pack quite a punch.