Introduction: Competitor IV

About: Hello. I'm JonnyBGood! I'm a college student who now has a degree in Mechanical Engineer Technology. (MET) (excessively worded to mean a person who builds stuff).I enjoy building K'nex guns and many other thin…

Now it's time for Competitor IV! Competitor IV is the best competitor to date. There is no feature that is considerably worse than the last Competitor or Rival. For this gun my entire goal was this to be as popular and more popular among people have built a Competitor. So far most people have commented that they have built my first competitor....such an old model, but features my first removable mags and I guess a low piece count and easy instructions. This gun has all my newest and best ideas, my favorite being a new and very effective clip lock design that you will surely enjoy!

Feel free to see the preview for more information about the gun!

So my overall hopes is this gun will be built and modified more than my first Competitor so lets get building!


Note: This gun is a Competitor so disregard any broken pieces used in this ible'. Replace them with good regular pieces and please don't alter or cut your knex!

Step 1: Body

A new sleek design but on the typical panel seems nothing too unusual. Please correctly place the blue rods. This creates the normal "peg board" which is a typical base for the entire gun.

Cool Fact: Competitor One was built more than a year ago in November 2012. I had competed in a knex gun building contest before I built it though, and funnily enough, I had never built a removable magazine before either. I got second in the contest though... out of the two people who actually finished something. XD


If you have any questions feel free to contact me about them in a comment on this ible'!

















Step 2: Top Internals

Well the difference Competitor IV and 1 is very well defined in this step. Mainly due to the fact that the block is no longer top mounted. You'll be building that later in the handle step. You'll also be building in this step another one of my favorite feature about the gun, the flip up rear sights. This was throwback to my Competitor II model which actually featured the same things this gun does, just an earlier and less clean version.

The thing I think people enjoyed most about Competitor 1 was the clearly simple design. The IV model definitely has a little more complexity to it, but the clean design is definitely worth it.

Again if you are having issues with assembly I am always glad to help. Please leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.

















































Step 3: Handle and Firing Mech

Ahhh....nothing like a comfortable handle. Funny fact is that my first Competitor's handle was actually a stolen idea from Banana inventors true trigger knex gun. I give him credit now anyway...
I will say that this handle is my original idea so I didn't copy someone's idea piece for piece here. Make sure to look at the final placement pictures at the end of this step because it is very important for you to place the hinged features as shown.

I'll be around frequently if you have any questions about this step. Feel free to comment your questions.



































Step 4: Trigger Guard and Bottom Internals

Well now for some more of the guns key anesthetics and mechanisms. In this step you'll be building the guns trigger guard and magazine lock so take care to follow the pictures. The trigger guard on this gun uses y-clips so look for my image notes if you don't see any.

I decided to share some of nostalgic memories of earlier competitors throughout these steps which is kind of weird but I guess it's okay. It is after all my ible'. When I posted Competitor one I used a lot of older knex gun builds as reference, newer ones being from 2008-2009 ish. anyway so that is why on my features list it includes true trigger as one of the features. XD Kind of a given now and probably then, but you professionals probably thought I stepped out of a knex time machine with Marty McFly! Heck I thought everyone thought TR-18's were the best thing since sliced bread! I guess I should have done more research on the recent knex gun projects. (No offence to any TR styled gun, they are really that good.)

I'm frequently on this site so if you have a question please leave me a comment and I'll get to it as soon as I can!

Step 5: The Final Layer and Finishing Details

Alright! My favorite step in all knex guns. Put the top layer on it and admire your work. Make sure to put a couple connectors on the blue rods to hold it together and also notice that I use old braces rubberbands on the blue rods in the barrel to keep them from sliding out. Feel free to use any small rubberband as a substitute. (Never had braces, my brother did though...)

Fun fact: The longest Competitor I have built and posted is Competitor III Bullpup edition. The shortest Competitor built and posted would probably be Competitor II. I say probably because I did preview Competitor Jr. A long time ago but it really was a shortened Competitor 1 so I don't really consider it new or different.

Another cool fact: Competitor IV is the same length as Rival II. Rival II was posted in February of last year. Funny how things come back from history.

Remember I'm always waiting for any comments about problems with assembly so feel free to comment about it.

































Step 6: Magazine

I spent a lot of time in the development of this part. Every Competitor before this model the magazine and the mag lock have been added at the end of the guns development. This usually creates a huge problem when trying to figure out how to keep the magazine in the gun with out altering the guns appearance that I'm usually already happy with. Well for Competitor VI, I built the gun around the clip lock and the magazine, which has made the best mag lock in any Competitor on this gun.

Well in this step you will see that I altered the traditional magazine design a little. This is because the mag lock on the gun will lock into the grooves of the magazine. (which is why those triangular cut-outs are on the magazine.) Make sure to follow these pictures and I'm sure you'll build it alright.

If you do have problems I'm always here to help you out though!














Step 7: Done!

Congrats!! You have finished your very own Competitor IV. As you can tell throughout these last six steps it is the best Competitor I have ever created so please enjoy and modify. If you send me a picture I'll add it to this ible' and of course I would love for you to point out your own modifications. I am very excited to see and hear back from you about my latest and greatest Competitor!

Thanks for building!,

JonnyBGood