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Arctic Blast with a MUCH needed modification.

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:36 pm
by The Legacy
Hey again!

I have a picture for you. I want to see if you can spot the difference:

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Figure it out yet? Here's a hint:

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Now look back. I'm guessing you get the idea.

Yes, I indeed enlarged the barrel on the Arctic Shock. One of my biggest complaints of the otherwise awesome Arctic Shock, was its puny main shot. It had great shot time, but you would have better luck with a straw and your mouth full of water :oo: so I decided to enlarge it.

If you look at the internal pics posted in another thread, the orange piece that holds the barrel looks to be solid. That's actually not true; it's simply a cap that comes off. Inside it, you'll find it to be almost syringe like. Also, there IS a screen inside the small barrel; it's just so deep inside that you don't see it.

Because of this, you can actually enlarge the barrel without any major surgery. You will need:

- Drill
- A drillbit set with sizes between 1/16's and 1/8.
- Ruler

That's it. Yes, no screwdriving required! :goofy: Now, here's how you do it. To start, plug in a 1/16's drillbit, and have it so that way the bit only extends from it by 1.5cm.

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Drill in until you reach the head of the driver.

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From here, take out said bit, and, from the solid end, push it in gently until you reach a solid surface; that's would be the screen.

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Measure.

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I estimate the distance to be about 4.2cm inside the barrel. I suggest to be safe and to check this on every gun you drill. When you set up your drillbit, make it so that about 3.9cm - 4.0cm of the drillbit extrudes from the tip of the driver. This way, you won't accidentally overdrill (and damage or destroy the ever-so-important screen!). Drill, and make sure the hole is clear.

For drillbit sizes, I recommend anything from 1/16ths to 1/8ths. Any larger and you can destroy the barrel. Any smaller and you'll be drilling nothing.

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Danger: If you drill too deep, you will destroy the screen, and ruin the gun's shot coherency!

Danger: Do not use a bit larger than 1/8's! If you do, you could ruin the barrel!

I drilled the maximum recommended size, and I found it to be more than acceptable. For the sacrifice of shot duration, you get a much larger shot, at close to or exactly the same range! I found that at the maximum, I had about a three second shot duration, compared to the stock's fifteen seconds so obviously it's up to personal preference. :goofy: The fully drilled 1/8th barrel is close to CPS 1000/1200 size! (To match the size, you would have to drill it to the size of the lower orange cap's size. This will require additional surgery that won't be covered in this tutorial (but can be done if you can somehow remove the orange volume regulatory cap). Pick a size between the two extremes and you should see an improvement. Also, the larger, the less coherent the stream, but I found it within reasonable norms.

There's a tutorial floating around this site that covers expanding the capacity of the gun; this may be a perfect modification that you can add to that, as a one-two gun improvement. Suddenly, your little Arctic Blast becomes very, very dangerous indeed. :goofy:

Have fun! :D

Unmodified:
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Modified:
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Re: Arctic Blast with a MUCH needed modification.

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:46 pm
by HBWW
This is an example of the classic nozzle modification. One factor to be wary of with such modifications is to be sure to drill evenly so the stream isn't disrupted. Unfortunately, even after doing so, it still often gets disrupted.

I don't have an Arctic Blast but I've done this on numerous soakers, such as the Flash Flood, Max-D 6000, Oozinator, CPS 2700, etc. Also, for the Flash Flood, I took out the screen with improved results in the riot blast. (which a lot of people have) Since the Arctic Blast is very similar, I reckon doing so would give similar results. Also, with a screen removal, it becomes possible to fit a piece of CPVC in for the FF (not sure about what works with the AB but I doubt the same piece of CPVC would fit), which can be used to attach nozzle reductions, or even left as it is. Unfortunately, its effect on performance seems to be rather questionable right now.

Nice pictures and write-up.

Re: Arctic Blast with a MUCH needed modification.

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:29 pm
by SSCBen
Interesting. The stream breakup is likely from two things: the path the water has to take from the PC to the nozzle and an imperfect drilling job. You might have luck drilling a little deeper, but if you're hitting the screen then you can't go any deeper. There might be some plastic bits in the nozzle causing trouble too.

Due to the small tubing size you can't really get any respectable performance out of the bottom nozzle. I changed the flood nozzle to a normal nozzle with a PVC adapter to get some more flexibility because that nozzle is much larger than the bottom one. With this I was able to use a 3/16 inch nozzle (probably the same size as the CPS 1000/1200/2100) and got over 40 feet of range measured with the stride method. It's worth nothing that I also did a PC expansion modification (which gave me about 600 mL of water capacity, which is comparable to the CPS 1000 and CPS 2500), and I'm not sure how much that would affect power. I did not test the water gun before so I don't even know if that was an improvement.

Later I shipped that water gun to some guy in Iraq who wanted some free water guns because it's hot out there. I'm sure they're putting it to good use.

Re: Arctic Blast with a MUCH needed modification.

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 11:50 pm
by isoaker
@The Legacy: that's a great nozzle drilling guide! Should prove valuable for anyone who opts to go that route. Great stuff!

Thread added to _underground article listing, though actual thread will remain here.

:cool:

Re: Arctic Blast with a MUCH needed modification.

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 3:27 pm
by mkhadem
Sounds cool, do you know the range of the normal nozzle? I know they say its 35 ft but you can never be sure and they can exaggerate sometimes.

Quick question, do u know if the range was any different after you made the nozzle wider? And do u notice the water draining faster?

mkhadem

Re: Arctic Blast with a MUCH needed modification.

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:41 pm
by SSCBen
I don't know the answer to the range question but I can help with the other question. Making a nozzle larger while keeping everything else the same will always increase the water flow (i.e. "make it drain faster").

Re: Arctic Blast with a MUCH needed modification.

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:38 pm
by isoaker
Unmodded Super Soaker Arctic Blast stats are listed in the link. As for how his modded stream behaved, The Legacy will have to answer that.

:cool:

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Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 10:43 am
by huiytan
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Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 11:20 am
by huiytan
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Re: Arctic Blast with a MUCH needed modification.

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 5:27 pm
by Sun
Please don't post the same thing on two threads; we can read one page, thank you very much.