Mod: RapidPDW Overhaul

My barrelless RS, the RapidPDW, was my first Rapidstrike rewire, utilising stock motors and some stock switches off a 2S battery. Since then however, I have completed no less than four complete Rapidstrike builds (one of which was not my own), and the RapidPDW was left on my blaster rack collecting dust. I finally got around to giving it a motor upgrade.

I wanted to make use of the two spare Falcon 130s I had lying around for the flywheels, so had to choose a pusher motor. I wanted a slower, high torque pusher motor to make use of the pre-existing live centre wiring (utilising some stock switches), so settled on an MTB Hellcat. At the time, I was also making an order from BlasterTech, so added a Hellverine (Hellcat mislabelled as an MTB Wolverine) to that order.

Pusher motor replacement was easy, I just had to clear out a bit of plastic in the pusher box. Unlike some of my more rushed builds, I made sure to keep as much plastic as possible for minimum wiggle room.

Naturally being a 180 motor, the Hellverine requires some shell cutting to fit. By now, I'm quite used to cutting holes for 180s so was able to make that hole quickly and relatively cleanly.

I used my spare BSUK pusher cover that used to live on my Bullpup RS. I'd replaced it with a Jase3D pusher cover, and wanted to make use of it.

As mentioned previously, I wanted to make use of my spare Falcon 130s.

I also added a BlasterTech mag release, as I strongly dislike the stock RS mag release. I have a couple of homemade lever mag releases, but the BT ones are much better looking and more comfortable.

Overall shot of the internals, fairly standard. Note the e-tape covering PCBs. These PCBs contain stock switches that still run the pusher circuit. As I wanted a lower ROF build, live centre would be the ideal wiring, however I really couldn't be bothered doing another full live centre microswitch build. I'm well aware of how poor these switches are, and I am likely to replace them in the future with proper microswitches, but for now I just wanted a build that worked. I also happened to be out of microswitches, and have only just got around to buying more.









Time: 1.94

No. darts: 18

ROF: 8.76dps or 525.8rpm

Voltage: 11.3V (3S LiPo)



I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out, it's a relatively compact and easily usable RS build. ROF is high enough to be perfectly usable, but low enough to be very easily controllable. Muzzle velocity seems about standard, 100-120fps with blue Koosh, depending on the dart. As mentioned before, I will likely at some point replace the remaining switches in the RapidPDW with proper microswitches, but that's a low priority for me. I'm also currently lacking an appropriate LiPo that will fit in the front compartment, but I'll get around to ordering that at some point. For now, it operates fine using one of my other 3S' for testing purposes. Most importantly though, all four of my Rapidstrikes are now in a superstock viable condition, which I'm very happy with.