• Welcome to the DeeperBlue.com Forums, the largest online community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing. To gain full access to the DeeperBlue.com Forums you must register for a free account. As a registered member you will be able to:

    • Join over 44,280+ fellow diving enthusiasts from around the world on this forum
    • Participate in and browse from over 516,210+ posts.
    • Communicate privately with other divers from around the world.
    • Post your own photos or view from 7,441+ user submitted images.
    • All this and much more...

    You can gain access to all this absolutely free when you register for an account, so sign up today!

Technisub Ranger shorty - removing inner barrel

spoolin01

Well-Known Member
May 20, 2008
63
7
98
I can't figure out how to dismantle the rear handle assembly, to get the inner barrel out. The handle assembly appears to be an inner part holding the barrel, and an outer casing, that the pistol grip attaches to.. How to get these two apart? Is there a pin or screw behind one or both of the metal badges that are attached to that outer casing? I can't find any other fasteners holding things together, and if the two parts come apart some other way, I haven't been able to figure it out.
 
Look for the Technisub Ranger thread here, it includes this diagram.

technisub-ranger-manual-001-jpg.32992
 
Look for the Technisub Ranger thread here, it includes this diagram.

I did find that thread and looked at that, but it doesn't make it any clearer to me how those two plastic assemblies come apart. It looks like there's a second pin through the inner barrel, behind the sear pivot pin. It also looks like there is a screw through the upper left of the outer grip casing, towards the back, and possilbly a corresponding boss on the inner grip assembly, that might be the threads for that screw. There's no visible screw that I can find, unless it's behind one of the metal badges glued to the grip casing. I didn't want to pry one off before looking for confirmation that it was the right thing to do.

The internals shown in that exploded diagram look significantly more complex than the shorty model I have, at least to my eye (I don't have the gun here in front of me). There are a few pins shown that I don't recognize from the partial dismantling so far, and quite a bit of stuff concentric to the inner barrel that I don't believe is in my gun.
 
Last edited:
The procedure for most guns is to let all the air out by pressing the inlet valve at the rear and then knock all the transverse pins out including the one that the trigger swings on. Make sure any power regulator is set to full in order to make sure all the air comes out before doing anything. The vertical pin that the plastic trigger pushes against needs to be pulled down and out, then unscrew the muzzle using a rod that pases through the muzzle relief holes to act as a wrench. If the piston is in the way, push it back first. Then pull the rear handle section off as it sits over the inner cylindrical rear plastic bulkhead. It should come off easily, if it does not then you have missed something that is holding it. A lot of force should not be required unless corrosion has seized up screw threads, but that is not very common.
 
"Then pull the rear handle section off as it sits over the inner cylindrical rear plastic bulkhead"

This part isn't clear to me. All the Mares and Seac guns I've serviced have the inner barrel sticking through the one-piece rear handle section, held in place at the back by the threaded plug that holds the fill valve. That plug, and the nose cone, are what holds the entire gun together. In this case, there is no currently visible means of unscrewing that rear plug, though I believe the exploded diagram shows that there is one that will come off - that it's not integral with the inner barrel. Also different here is that the rear handle section is not one-piece, like the others I've seen. It appears to be an inner piece that the barrel passes through in conventional fashion, and an outer cosmetic piece that comprises the grip and trigger guard. I'm assuming that to find the flats on that rear fill plug to get a wrench on, I'm going to have to separate the two pieces of the rear handle assembly - the outer casing is covering everything up and however that inner barrel is secured at the back end, that mechanism is not currently visible. I just can't figure out how that inner portion comes out the front of the external casing.
 
The Technisub guns are different to the Sten and other models and only followed the same layout with the later Conquest Booster. The previous gun, the Grinta, is more like the Ranger, so check out the dismantling that I did there. I remember I could not unscrew the rear end, but found that the outer plastic section pushed down and a couple of transverse pins had to be pushed out that held the rear end of the gun together onto the inner barrel. I don't know if the Ranger is the same, but it certainly uses the fat pin inlet valve and that may indicate it used the same construction method.
 
The Technisub guns are different to the Sten and other models and only followed the same layout with the later Conquest Booster. The previous gun, the Grinta, is more like the Ranger, so check out the dismantling that I did there. I remember I could not unscrew the rear end, but found that the outer plastic section pushed down and a couple of transverse pins had to be pushed out that held the rear end of the gun together onto the inner barrel. I don't know if the Ranger is the same, but it certainly uses the fat pin inlet valve and that may indicate it used the same construction method.
In general structure, that's looking more like what I'm facing. I see the extra pin that passes through the Grinta inner plastic sleeve and the barrel, just behind the sear. That appears to be shown in the Ranger diagram as well. What is a mystery is how the barrel of the Grinta and that rear fill plug mate together. There are no external threads visible at the back of the barrel. The slot at the forward edge of that rear fill plug look likes it might be intended to mate with that rear pin, but that still doesn't show what holds those two pieces together under pressure. It's not possible to see if there is also a set of holes in that fill plug, 90 degree offset from that slot, that the rear pin could fit through. That could be the attachment means. That still doesn't explain what releases the inner sleeve from the outer casing. That's why I'm looking at that screw 309346 in the Ranger diagram, and wondering if that is what holds the inner plastic sleeve in place.

I'll take another look at my handle section to see if I can see any way to twist or pull that inner plastic sleeve out from the outer plastic casing. If not, I'll pry off the metal badge that I seem to remember was located in about the right position to cover that screw, if it exists.
 
The transverse pin holds the rear valve body on the inner barrel, there are no screw threads in the rear of the Grinta barrel. You disassemble the gun from the front end before you remove the rear valve body by pulling the tank off and removing all other accessible parts. Ranger may be the same, but I never bought one to find out. To expose the end of the pin the black cylindrical outer body slides down the inner barrel leaving the inlet valve body exposed on the end of the inner barrel tube. I describe how to do it on the Grinta thread near the beginning.
valve body fixing pin.jpg
 
Last edited:
Thanks, I thought that might be it. I've tried persuading the handle section to slide forward with some moderate hammer taps, but it doesn't seem to move. What do you make of that screw (309346) in the Ranger diagram? It looks to me like the diagram shows it threading transversely through the outer handle casing, and through some unidentified part as well (309326). As I said though, the diagram makes that gun look way more complex than the one I have appears to be.
 
With everything removed in terms of levers and pins the outer rear handle pulls off rearward. The cylindrical inner body pushes downwards on the inner barrel to expose the cross pin that secures the inlet valve body, or that is my guess. This Ranger gun is an attempt to make their previous gun construction for the Jeans and Grinta look more like the Stens, but looks are about all they achieved. I don't know how the power system works, they talk about the easy loading feature in the instructions, but I think it must be a throttle system. There is no sign of a partitioning bulkhead which is what you need for a true easy load system. The problem with their drawing is they have made a parts list more than an easy to understand layout, so I redrafted some of it to show what is what. The screw you are referring to holds the power selector lever on its rod, the power selection being achieved by rotating something, just what I don't know but it must have something to do with 309325.
technisub ranger detail.jpg

Correction, that long pin 309342 goes under the inner body and I have now amended the diagram.
 
Last edited:
Some photos would help as the parts on the diagram as drawn don't necessarily tell the whole story as detail and scale may be distorted by attempts to depict three dimensional objects.
 
With everything removed in terms of levers and pins the outer rear handle pulls off rearward. The cylindrical inner body pushes downwards on the inner barrel to expose the cross pin that secures the inlet valve body, or that is my guess. This Ranger gun is an attempt to make their previous gun construction for the Jeans and Grinta look more like the Stens, but looks are about all they achieved. I don't know how the power system works, they talk about the easy loading feature in the instructions, but I think it must be a throttle system. There is no sign of a partitioning bulkhead which is what you need for a true easy load system. The problem with their drawing is they have made a parts list more than an easy to understand layout, so I redrafted some of it to show what is what. The screw you are referring to holds the power selector lever on its rod, the power selection being achieved by rotating something, just what I don't know but it must have something to do with 309325.
View attachment 60261
Ah, mine lacks a power selector function. Going from two day old old-man's memory, if that rear handle casing comes off backwards that means the only thing holding it in place is the sear actuator pin sticking up through the bottom! ... unless there is some rotation of that inner body that disengages it from the outer casing, like the breach lugs on a rifle bolt. The only pins I recall taking out were the line release and trigger pivot pins, and a plastic trigger-safety mechanism, all of which were through the trigger guard. I don't recall anything that would have pinned the outer casing to the inner casing. That's what was so baffling. My other thought was that the handle assemblies might slide forward off the front of the barrel, but I was not able to budge them in that direction.

It will be a couple of days before I get back to the gun, but I'll tackle it with fresh eyes, now that I have more confidence about how it's engineered.
 
It will be the trigger transmission pin holding it, you have to pull it out downwards and out as I mentioned before. Don't mark or scratch it, so be careful! The outer black handle will then pull straight off as there are no fancy locking lugs to twist free. The gun is much like the Grinta, but they fattened the tank diameter with a thick outer shroud to disguise the fact that the gun has a small diameter tank. Although I never bought one, I certainly picked one up in the shop and the rubberized tank shroud put me off as although I could not see how it was built just by looking at it, something seemed not right even though it looked good. The Sten and Cressi SL guns would have wiped the floor with it performance wise. Technisub then produced the Conquest Booster which is a clone of the Sten construction, but kept their rotating safety lever rather than use the slide type safety.
ranger.jpg

Ranger
Technisub Conquest Booster RHS R.jpg

Conquest Booster later model, early version was black with lime green highlights. The safety lever has busted off, the black circle near the trigger is where it used to be.
 
Last edited:
Is this what your Ranger looks like, here the power regulator has been blanked off and I assume that is how the gun came from the factory? The only Ranger I looked at was the longer one which the shop had just put in their window display and had levers on either side. The gun in these photos is the pistol version.
ranger small handle detail R.jpg

The first thing I noticed was that yellow grip handle was going to flood and in shorter guns that makes them poor or non floaters after the shot. Most guns these days have open bottom handles, they usually have plenty of tank volume to offset the weight of the gun in water, but any unnecessary parts added to a gun, such as that shroud, can mean the gun is a sinker. I never knew anyone who owned a Ranger, so I don't know if the longer one floats by having more tank length. When the Mares Sten first came out it had a sealed handgrip and all the Sten models floated after the shot, but as a cost saving measure Mares ditched that feature and the shorter MIniministen and Ministen became sinkers.
original mares sten without tank.jpg
 
Last edited:
That's about what it looks like, though I don't specifically recall that blank area where the power regulator would otherwise be. I'll take a better look next time I can, and some pics. I never used the gun, and only dug it out because it's slash and burn time for useless possessions. I bought it along with several other shorties to try out as hip-holstered guns while freediving abalone, should a nice lingcod be spotted, more than 10 years ago. Then they closed abalone season, probably permanently.

After 12 years, it was still holding good pressure, and only leaked when the trigger was pulled.
 
Now I have found a single power used gun for sale in Italy and we can see that they put a sticker over where the power regulator controller should be. According to the diagram there were 60 cm, 70 cm and a Mini model of the Ranger with the VP model having variable power.
Technisub Ranger single power.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: Zahar
Aha! - I found that eBay listing that your previous pic came from and there IS a pin where the power regulator stuff goes, that would be under the badge that goes there! That must be the key to getting the two handle sections apart. The rectangular Technisub badge on the opposite side must cover the other end of the pin.
 
Aha! - I found that eBay listing that your previous pic came from and there IS a pin where the power regulator stuff goes, that would be under the badge that goes there! That must be the key to getting the two handle sections apart. The rectangular Technisub badge on the opposite side must cover the other end of the pin.
I don't think the pin goes right through, it will only be on that side as the gun needs to be airtight. I think that the single power guns have parts left out and/or a blanked off section. I am just going to do another thread on the variable power model as I just found some more info.
 
There appears to be a pin below the access hole for what would be the power regulator if the gun ever had one.
ranger pins.jpg
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Zahar
DeeperBlue.com - The Worlds Largest Community Dedicated To Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing

ABOUT US

ISSN 1469-865X | Copyright © 1996 - 2024 deeperblue.net limited.

DeeperBlue.com is the World's Largest Community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving, Ocean Advocacy and Diving Travel.

We've been dedicated to bringing you the freshest news, features and discussions from around the underwater world since 1996.

ADVERT