Remedy Metal Power Train kit: First impressions

The Nerf Longshot, for almost 8 years now has been the ultimate blaster for modders wanting huge power from a CS blaster, due to it's large plunger tube and fairly rugged "battle rifle" good looks. It's popularity among modders is pretty hard to miss, there's literally hundreds of different mods, from integration mods, to power mods, lighting, steampunk and paintworks are hard to miss, and in recent times, as modders start to push the boundaries of power, reinforcements have been popular. Everything from epoxy putty reinforcing, steel plates on the boltsled, and brass breech systems, to plunger tubes made from metal and spring plate supports. All these things have allowed higher and higher spring loads (16+kg seemed to be the norm for a while) but eventually, something usually broke or at the very least there was a huge amount of uncertainty about whether your Longshot would last another war. I myself have broken 2 boltsleds, 2 bolts, 2 back plates, and a plunger over a few years.

Let me show you, what I think, is the ultimate in power and reliability for a spring powered Longshot:

Forgot to take a photo of the kit before it's assembled - pic from Remedy Metal

This is the Remedy Metal Power Train full mod kit for the Nerf Longshot. It's a full stainless steel replacement kit which does away with the standard plunger, catch, plunger tube, back plate, bolt, bolt sled and breech system from the Longshot and replaces it with all stainless steel and delrin goodies.

Full kit installed

The plunger is all stainless, with a bigger o-ring and the screw holding it together has been moved from the plunger head to inside the catch tail, taking a weak point away from the impact area. The back plate and catch have also been redesigned and made from stainless steel, with a delrin support for the catch and an upgraded catch spring. There is also a k-26 main spring upgrade included with the kit. the plunger tube is also stainless steel and includes a vacuum hole in the design to stop it trying to suck darts in to the bolt. The bolt is also precision cut stainless steel and is a 2-part assembly with the front end sealing head (opposite plunger, as I've also heard it called) attached with a snap ring on either side (tool included for that!). The bolt is supported by a full stainless steel bolt sled and feeds in to a delrin coupler as the sealed breech, which also does away with the need for a dart tooth. At the end of the coupler is the precision cut stainless steel barrel which nests inside the existing plastic barrel, allowing it to be painted. The whole kit installed looks very nice and probably leads many people to remove their jam door to show it off.

Reinforced trigger

So it looks stunning, but how does it perform? Well, since I don't have a spare Longshot to build up, I used my old longshot that I wrote about a while ago as the test bed. I started off with just the k-26 spring as my load, but quickly realised that the stock trigger wouldn't handle pushing the catch under such load. I decided to reinforce the trigger with a pair of 14g bicycle spokes cut down to fit the groove in each side of the trigger, and filling the gap directly below the trigger tail with hot glue to support it. The first shot I fired from the assembled blaster impressed me, a lot! modified darts were already puncturing cardboard.

The spring load I'm using - 20kg. Green felt used for padding.

But I couldn't stop there, right? I had no hesitations about upping the ante with the spring load. The blaster now feels so solid and reliable, and really, there's nothing that can break in this kit with a mere k-26. So I loaded in 2 more springs, a 6kg Recon spring which fits nicely over the top of the k-26, and coils in the opposite direction, and then the original longshot spring over that, which coils back the same way as the k-26, so there was no worries about springs getting tangled when primed. All up this is about 20kg. funnily enough, I had answered a question on the Oznerf forum a week ago about 20kg in a longshot, warning that it'd be a pretty tough prime. Well, it is a pretty stiff prime and does slow down rate of fire, even with the Xplorer priming grip. But, to no surprise, the Remedy Metal kit takes it with ease. Firing this blaster is incredible. I do not have any other blaster in my load out that comes close to half the power of this thing, and thinking back to brass breeched Longshots I've seen, it'll probably out range those too.

So the verdict? Well, this isn't a final verdict. This is my first impressions after a week of messing around with it in my longshot. There's still battle testing and range testing to come. But for now, this kit is a stunning piece of Nerfing genius. It is worth every penny I paid for it and then some. The attention to detail, overall quality, reliability and power produced is nothing short of mind blowing. I have no doubt that this is a fantastic step in the right direction for aftermarket foam dart blaster parts. Look out for future posts on this kit, I hope to do a full build video using the Remedy Metal kit, if I can source an in-box Longshot from somewhere.

If you are interested in this kit, visit the Remedy Metal facebook page for updates, or http://www.remedymetal.com/ to order a the full kit or other parts.