QuickFury = Furyfire, with a heart transplant from a Quick Blast SuperSoaker

[Just Some Bob]

I wasn't really planning to enter the contest.  But I had several Quick Blast SuperSoakers just begging to be used, and with less than a week to go, on Sunday afternoon, I got my hands on a Furyfire set.

So this is somewhat of a rush job, and not up to my usual engineering standards, but the bottom line is that I had fun doing it.

First, the Quick Blast.

All we need are the main parts.  The little stuff in the upper left is too cool to throw away, but not used here.  Also I did keep the shell around, and hacked some small parts from it as raw material.

Pump it up a little, and then saw off the water nozzle:

clean the area up and then trigger the valve to knock out any sawdust.  Keep it pumped a little bit, all the way through the modding process except when the air system is opened.

The little piece that moved the spring can be unscrewed from the end of the piston also.  I'll have a pic of that later.

For the Furyfire internals, this is a little more than we need:

The white piece snapped to the end of the pump rod can go, as well as the pump "safety" mechanism below it.  We won't need those.

 It is much more convenient to do our test fitting, into the Furyfire shell, with the chamber and pump as separate parts.  We're going to be shortening the hose, so carefully remove it from the chamber.  To guard against scratching it, I used wooden tools - several toothpicks, carved to have chisel-ends. Keep them both away from the cutting dust, since the air system is now open.


Now, we're going to be hacking into the FuF shell, and I do mean hacking:

From this side, we need to completely remove several of the ribs and even part of the outer wall.  

Even more had to be taken out, as test-fitting went on:

I carefully took the big flat part out whole - saved for later.

From the other side, we need to notch one rib (for the blast valve) and put a slot in a part that sticks up (the original spring perch at the very back), which we will use to hold the trigger pin aligned.  The first-aid tape keeps the trigger spring from flopping around so I don't have to remove it.


Next, on both sides, we need to take 1/8" inch off this rib, for the pump to fit:

I used a slot cutter on my Dremel and left a few "webs" in place until my measurements were good.

[Just Some Bob]

Measure how much room there is for the length of the pump body:


Cut the pump tube. A little short is okay, maybe even 1/16" - my caliper is more precise than is ever likely to be necessary for nerf.


With the chamber almost fitting in place, I cut off just enough from the original end of the hollow plunger to allow it to slip back and forth in the shell like it's supposed to.

I also sanded flat spots on the sides of the chamber outlet, once I determined the angle at which it was going to fit in the shell.  This will allow the floating cylinder seal to work as designed, moving back a little to allow free rotation, and moving forward for a better seal as the air pushes it.

Here we see the first test fit of both the chamber and pump.  Note the black cylinder seal fitted to the front of the chamber, and the trigger pin going through that slot in the back.


I cut down the QB pump shaft to just the portion which could stay inside the tube through the full range of the FuF cocking bar's motion, and attached that to the end of the (otherwise unmodified) FuF cocking bar:

I carved out the inside of the QB shaft with my Dremel, then drilled a hole and squared one edge of it with a triangular file.  The FuF bar is a snap-fit.  But really that was only because I was unsure of the dimensions.  You could simply carve down the cocking bar until it fits, then drill through both for a plastic pin.


After the first couple of evenings of work, everything came down to the trigger connection.

In order to get around the pump, I heated and bent the trigger, as well as cutting a slot in the shell rib that it slides under:




This is about the ninth version of my trigger mechanism.  It got me into range testing, but it broke, too.  The blue pieces are cut from the Quick Blast shell, including some parts that seemed to have the right curves, and both ends of some screw posts (installed with screws).  The curved white piece (screwed to the orange trigger) is part of the cut off pump tube, and helps the connection snake around the working pump tube.  The blue "hook" wired to it is a chunk of QB shell.  The air hose needs to go under the hook, and then the hook grabs the blue post gorilla-glued to the trigger pin.  (Techically, I used Elmer's Ultimate High Performance Glue - but it seems the same)

Here we see how the hook reaches around the pump to grab the pin:

There's a lot of slack, because the trigger needs to operate the cylinder first, before firing.

[Just Some Bob]

Buttoned up, it looks just like any other Furyfire - except from one side:


Here it is with the chamber full:


From below - so you can see that it really doesn't stick out a whole lot:


That flat piece I saved could even work as camouflage:



Remember that picture I promised in the first post?  The piece removed from the end of the QB piston?

[Just Some Bob]

Since I know someone will ask - ranges...

Right now, it's hitting just about the same as this exact blaster did when I tested it stock.  Less consistently, in fact - a couple have fallen shorter, and some go as far as 41 feet.  But mostly low-to-mid 20s, fired flat at eye level.  Bear in mind, this is with absolutely nothing done to the turret yet.

But I have done *nothing* to seal that moving black piece to the chamber outlet.  It needs a good seal of some kind.  I belive that alone will gain about fifty percent from what it's doing right now.

I also will need to rebuild the trigger again very soon - I think I'll use metal for durability next time.


Oh - something else I almost forgot to mention:

Hot glue = ZERO
Electrical Tape = ZERO
Goop = ZERO

[Ubermensch]

Did you intend to enter this in the contest?

[Just Some Bob]

Did you intend to enter this in the contest?

I did enter, with over an hour to spare, based on the rules in the form that had been posted here for months.

"7/24/2009 11:59 PM EST" <-- yes, I know that's not what it says now, but that's what it said for all but the last two days.

But after seeing the dick move of altering the posted rules to attempt to cover up a mistake of a simple hour, instead of just simply accepting and learning from it, and allowing a few entries to be up to an hour later than mister high-and-mighty originally intended,  I have decided that the contest is not worthy.  And then I deleted the post pointing here.

As for the contest threads, can you please cut it out.  I made an honest mistake, and your posts are actually causing some problems.  The contest has concluded.  If people couldn't figure out for themselves that I had made an honest mistake, that is not my fault.  I only noticed the issue this evening and by the time I got to comment on it to correct the situation, time had run out.

Those are not the words of am adult who knows how to accept and live with even a small mistake.  Those are not the words of someone whose true goal here is to help the community.

Those are the words of someone who still owes me hundreds of dollars worth of blasters which I paid for in plenty of time to receive all of by Christmas, who has the GALL to attempt to use that undelivered merchandise as leverage to cover up his mistake.

Rather than just accept a few more entries that were posted in the last few minutes of a three month window.

In protest over those excluded modders - automatron and a couple others that people in the chat said happened on the other sites - I removed my entry.

All he had to do was say "yeah, okay - entries will be accepted until an hour later than what everyone can see I had really intended."  What would be hard about that?  How many could there be, and what possible harm to the community could accepting them cause?   But no, covering up the mistake was deemed more important.  It seems he even got jwasko to help out with what amounts to a "coverup" by altering the posted
rules just for this tiny little mistake.  

And since that's pure politics, I'm not entirely confident FU is worthy.







I had fun building this blaster.  That was supposed to be the point.

[jay]

Sorry to hear about the mod contest but nice mod anyway. One question, what did removing that part from the end of the piston do for performance?

[Just Some Bob]

One question, what did removing that part from the end of the piston do for performance?

Nothing, it just fits better.