Helix repair story

For questions, articles and discussions regarding water blaster maintenance and repairs.
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scottthewaterwarrior
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Helix repair story

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:37 pm

This is a short story about how I fixed my Helix. :helix:

I have always been fascinated by the Helix, it is a vary cool gun. I always carry it as a secondary. Even though it is scratched up, with a stiff pump, and one of its nozzles has been jammed on the narrowest setting even before I traded my XP 310 to a friend for it. But it never failed me, until it broke. :(

I was preparing for a short one on one battle with my friend Luke. I was balancing several guns in my hand wile trying to re-lock my water gun chest, when I dropped my Helix. It wouldn’t fire after that, so I put it aside until after my friend left.

Later, after some tests, I realized that the barrels still rotated, but only air came out, and no water was drawn in from the reservoir. This led me to believe that it was a problem with a valve. I took it apart, after a year in my friend’s backyard, some screws were rusted, but I only had to drill out one of them. After I got it apart the rest was fairly easy. Except the spinning mechanism, all the other parts just came out, being only held in place only by the casing. I got the valve assembly out, this was really glued together, and I ran it under hot water for several minutes and still couldn’t get it apart. I tried blowing into all 3 openings, (to bad I didn’t take photos) than went out side and gamed the hose up to them, full blast. I think the problem was a stuck valve because at first it didn’t go through the pipes, than suddenly started going through, I guess the water pressure must have unjammed the valve. I lubricated it and reassembled it. Now it’s good as new, :) as new as a gun that spent a year in my friends sandy backyard can get anyway.

Oh ya and thank you isoaker for making this section!
"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

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isoaker
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Re: Helix repair story

Post by isoaker » Wed Sep 01, 2010 1:22 pm

scottthewaterwarrior wrote:Oh ya and thank you isoaker for making this section!
No need to thank me! I'm happy to create things that people use so if this forum ends up well used, it is definitely worth creating!

As for your repair story, neat stuff! Got any pictures you can share?

:cool:
:: Leave NO one dry! :: iSoaker.com .:

scottthewaterwarrior
Posts: 941
Joined: Wed Jun 02, 2010 4:21 pm
Location: Bethesda, MD/North West DC
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Re: Helix repair story

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Thu Sep 02, 2010 4:12 pm

I've got pics of me taking the gun apart, they were actually taken later when I took it apart again and tried to mod the nozzle adjust mechanism so they would always be in the narrow setting. I didn't manage to do it though, my plan was to attach a rubber band around the nozzles so they would stay together, but I realized that would interfere with the spinning mechanism. I would have had to take out the whole nozzle adjuster to do it, I wasn’t shore if I could get it back in, and I was worried about breaking the gun, (I like it and have had it a long time) but I might buy a new one and try it. I will post it if I do. While I had it apart I fixed the nozzle that didn't adjust, a rod had just fallen out of place, it's the close up picture of the nozzles (It's in place in the pic).

I forgot to take a picture of the valve assembly, so use this link: http://www.isoaker.com/Armoury/Tech/internal_helix.html , its the pic called Closer view of the Helix's gear box. The valve assembly is the "T" section just before the gear box.

I posted the rest of my pics below, sorry, their a little big.
Attachments
Close up on nozzles
Close up on nozzles
Helix internals 005 resized.jpg (144.8 KiB) Viewed 1522 times
This is the screw I had to drill out
This is the screw I had to drill out
Helix internals 003 resized.jpg (182.91 KiB) Viewed 1522 times
My beat up Helix
My beat up Helix
Helix internals 001 resized.jpg (189.79 KiB) Viewed 1521 times
Last edited by scottthewaterwarrior on Thu Sep 02, 2010 8:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

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isoaker
Posts: 7115
Joined: Sun Jul 04, 2004 1:51 pm
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Re: Helix repair story

Post by isoaker » Thu Sep 02, 2010 5:58 pm

scottthewaterwarrior wrote:How do I add pictoures to the post?
Many ways to do it:
-you can attach images directly to the post (at the bottom of posts, there's an "Upload attachment" option allowing you to upload and attach files up to 128kb in size

OR

-if you have a place you can host them online (i.e. Flickr), you can then link to the image using the [ img ] tags

OR

-if you don't have hosting, you can email me the images you want to include and I'll push them onto the iSoaker.net server and send you links so you can add them into your post

Hope that makes sense! Is there a thread on posting pics somewhere on iSoaker.net? If not, it should be created.

:cool:
:: Leave NO one dry! :: iSoaker.com .:

scottthewaterwarrior
Posts: 941
Joined: Wed Jun 02, 2010 4:21 pm
Location: Bethesda, MD/North West DC
WWN League Team: Catskill Mountain SEALs
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Re: Helix repair story

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Fri Sep 03, 2010 5:35 pm

I added the pictures!
They are above :)
"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

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