Thursday, March 29, 2012

Massacred Internals

So I was trying out that neat way to prime the Longstrike with a Massacre kit installed that I saw on The Document.  It was working out great... until the polycarbonate parts failed.

The video in this post explains all that has happened.  I've been very light in my usage of this kit, only testing it out for ranges and performance so far (as seen in my Longstrike vs Longshot vid).  It's been less than a week that this kit has been installed and after all that testing that Orange Mod Works did with their Massacre kits before releasing them, this is probably just as frustrating for me as it is for them.

It broke right at the point where the bolt sled meets the plunger tube.  This is very disappointing to say the least, but I blame the 6kg spring more than I blame a poor quality product, even WITH the warping issues the bolt sled still had (as evidenced in my previous video).  That spring is just unnecessarily overpowered for something like this.  Now I get to see this quick customer service that I've read so much about when other folks have had failing kits.  I've seen stuff replaced by OMW really quickly, so I'm hoping I have a similar experience.



Looks like I'm not the only one with this problem either.  Wira SevenSeven posted a similar image.

10 comments:

  1. Wow that sucks. Let's hope the longshot kit is better.

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  2. I was worried about the polycarb parts strength when they first revealed them, and my fears has come true. They should have kept some parts metal (the boltsled) and some polycarb (bolt and plunger).

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  3. Oh damn....I feel terrible. My kit is still in one piece so far, but it's hard not to be concerned and a little depressed over seeing this happen. Sorry Zook, it's pretty crappy to know it came apart in correlation with my advice being taken. I can't imagine the two "clamshell" grip options I spoke of would be any harder on the internals than a fully two-handed approach, but still...I'm practically ready to buy a 5kg spring just out of solidarity. Hopefully OMW's customer service lives up to their reputation as far as getting you a new kit is concerned.

    At a minimum, I will no longer be taking advantage of the fact that a traditional one-handed prime works with my kit- that certainly puts extra stress on the internals and I suppose I'd be wise to avoid it.

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    1. Fear not. I saw someone else posted a similar breakage on the OMW Facebook page. Your priming method advice was likely NOT the cause of this failure.

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    2. I appreciate the absolution. If these failures keep up, maybe OMW will be real champs and start sending out 5kg springs with the replacement parts. I do hope the spring is the culprit- it would be nice to have a simple, affordable alternative that could alleviate the anxiety that I am sure will now plague every pull of the bolt.

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  4. I think at this stage of foam dart blaster modding, it's now time for someone to look at designing a purpose-built high performance dart tagger. it's obvious Nerf blasters are deseigned to accomodate the needs of toy consumers primarily. until there is time, effort, and funds put in to creating a blaster designed for competitive "foam sports", the Nerfing community can only try and deal with these kind of limitations.

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    1. I think they call those kinds of blasters "Homemades". ;) There's plenty of SNAP-based designs out there for fans who want even more outta their blasters.

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  5. although i haven't had a lot of experience with OMW its really bad that it broke. It SHOULD come packaged with the 5kg spring really.

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  6. I'm pretty sure the poor quality product was the reason for the failure. If they did extensive testing they would know the flaws for the current massacre design both in structure and composition. Its not the spring's fault.

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    1. Let's all just instantly assume poor quality when the reality is these new kits only have about a 2% failure rate (40 defective units give or take a few)

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