15 Years Later? WW Lightning Mod
Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 7:07 pm
SO HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED
However many years ago, I decided to power mod my WW Lightning. If you remember the Hydropower series (Lightning, Blazer, Orca, etc), they're not easy to power mod. So I did a PC replacement. The first picture, with the Snapchat caption, is what it looked like. It was a good idea, it definitely gave the gun a big power boost - so much so that the first time I shot it, the stream broke up immediately (hence the straws on the nozzle selector). The second time I shot it, nothing happened. The PC filled up, I pulled the trigger, then nothing came out. Water gently leaked out.
Fast forward to yesterday, more than a decade later. I was doing a cleanout, I found my soakers and decided to test them. Lightning still didn't work. Well, the entire world has quite a bit of spare time these days, why not fix it? Turns out one of the balloons had broken and was clogging the T leading to the trigger valve. You can see something a little darker at the base of the T, just where the PC is. That's a black balloon.
Well, I have parts. I've built a CPH (which also needs repairs, but that's for another time), I have rubber tubing. Why not fix it with something more reliable? My CPH uses two layers of tubing, you can see the second layer just below the pump in the second picture, but it felt unnecessary here. You may notice I couldn't find a 1/2" endcap to seal the tube, so I had to use the parts available and work my way up to 1". From the one test shot I took, it looks like that 5x stream is closer to 10x now, with a 40' range. It's also been about 14 years since I actively measured stream output and range, so I might just be pulling these numbers out my bum.
Now I'll find a 3" pipe of some sort to make a proper PC case, and I need to give it a proper pump handle. For now, I'm just happy that my favourite soaker ever works again. I did a search of all my old posts, and I reference this thing being my favourite many many many times.