WaterWar.net

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.

Nice to see you around again and good work. I never particularly was a fan of Hydropower, so I like your PC replacement. I'm looking forward to the upgrades being completed.

Thanks! I like Hydropower blasters, but they definitely lack that extra kick. They can get good range and output, but they do it so gently. I'll see if I can bring myself to post a shot vid in the coming few days.

God that's gonna be weird to handle with all that water up there.

Kind of a late reply, but welcome back! For a lot of us, though we may go through periods of dormancy, this hobby tends to stick with us.

That's some pretty crazy modding too. I used to do stuff like that on occasion. Let us know how it works out. I'm curious about the handling.

Thanks!

I finally decided not to Netflix or PS4 yesterday and today, which gave me opportunity to work some more on this. It leaks pretty badly still so I'll have to look at the PC connection. Performance doesn't seem great right now, I'll see how it looks once I address the leaks.

As for handling, one of my favourite things to do at the gym is the farmer's walk, so either I'm completely desensitized to imbalanced things or otherwise it's not that bad. Not quite sure which.