I briefly touched on some of these in the other topics, but have others now and pictures to explain what I did and how to do it.
Note: Most of these are not my ideas, but I seem to be the first to have gone through with them and post a writeup of them. None were unsuccessful (hoorah!), but some definitely worked better than others.
The first is the split trigger. This isn’t hard, just cut it down the center or near there. I personally made the left side bigger, since I wear the Manta on my left side, and have to pull the left trigger with my ring finger. Since that one’s bigger, it’s slightly easier to pull.
When you actually install it however, you’ll find that the triggers just rattle around and are generally hard to pull, and they don’t return themselves to be pulled again. This makes for a lot of pulling on them to get them back in place and what not. I came up with a simple solution for that:
This is just a decently powered, small compression spring I had in my jar of springs, that I cut in half and hotglued on. One is slightly shorter than the other. It wasn’t intentional, but they both work flawlessly nevertheless.
I also e-taped the plunger heads until there were very tight in the tubes, yet slide nicely with some lube (sorry for this blurry picture):
It’s not too hard to figure out how to do this, but I find that the most durable way is to wrap too much e-tape on, then remove a little and try the fit again. This way, you don’t have 6 or more small strips of e-tape on the head which could get frayed or bunched up in the long run.
Now the next mod was entirely experimental. It didn’t yield amazing results, but it was a decent improvement in my opinion.
I singled the sides of the manta.
I used ¼” vinyl tubing in widened and angled ¼” holes that go from the outside barrel near the plunger, to the inside barrel near where the barrel starts. This minimizes dead space. You have to make a small v shaped cut and force the tubing in.
Secure it with a bad of hot glue, then when it’s dry, goop/zap a gap/epoxy/stick and seal the hell out of it. Both sides done:
You now have to keep the air from just going out the outside barrel. I gooped the tip and all around a piece of ½” caulk saver and jammed it down in there. (ignore the white piece on there for a second, it’s for the next part)
Once that dries, add a liberal coating of stick and seal (thinner version of goop basically) or sealant of your choice, and let dry.
Last but not least, in order to make a much, much, much better seal between the plungers and the barrels, add a ring of goop around each of the barrel inlets, install the plungers, and allow to dry while upside down (so that the goop runs onto the plungers).
The next part is what I’ve been meaning to do to any gun really, just to show how easily it can be done. It’s taking a firefly turret and rotation mechanism, and add them to any gun. This turret is pretty unique, in that it can be taken off via only one screw, and if you have the turrets you can make swappable clips for just about anything.
To start, drill a 3/8” hole in the back center of a sch40 ½” pvc end cap and place it over the back of the rotation mechanism. Now you need to line it up where you want it. I did this to the singled 2 shot manta from right above, so here it is being lined up for the one side:
One of the great things is that you don’t need to worry about the position of the rotation mechanism at all just yet. Next, mark where the end cap lines up, and hot glue only the end cap down. Layers are the strongest way I find. Now put a screw through the hole that won’t go into your barrel like so:
Once it’s secured, hot glue the other hole to the shell. Now you can see how the turret is removable. You need to take them off for this next part; through the hole in the back of the pvc end cap, just take out the screw attaching the rotation mechanism to the turret base(s).
You need some kind of reducer to channel the air from the plunger into the back of the turret. I used the (normally spring loaded) nub from a firefly that is made to seal with this turret. Here you can see I made a slit in some petg and forced it in to this nub:
Hot glue and goop them on. Make some craft foam rings to help increase the seal. For the singled manta, the overall length is 3 5/8” from where the end of the petg goes to the back of the turret. You’ll need between one and two wraps of e-tape ½” away from the end of the petg to help the petg seal.
Once they’re dry, stick them into your Manta. Remember, this can all be easily adjusted for any blaster. This next part is for aligning the turret. After the insert is in, screw the turret back on via its one screw. Make it tight.
Now turn the blaster so that you can work with the rotation mechanism. Using a flat head screw driver to move the little tabs, rotate the entire assembly inside the end cap and other piece until the turret lines up with the air passage like so:
Once you have it in place, hot glue the rotation mechanism to the end cap and guide piece. Again, layers work best, but make sure to get glue down inside the end cap for the sturdiest bond.
Now loosen up the turret screw so that the slip clutch requires a comfortable amount of force to turn, and here’s your result!
Both turrets can be removed completely and barrels swapped in for more range and less rof, or one side of each, or however you choose!
One of my turrets needed to be redone, but since I liked having the one side turret and the other singled I just took it off completely. It looks pretty mean.
I use the filled in barrel to hold my extra in case I want to single the other side in between rounds.
The turreted side only gets about 40-45 feet on average. There is a hell of dead space there. However, The singled side after all of the work into it, hit 65’ consistently. Up to 70 and 75 feet! I love it. It’s basically worth of being a primary in a small war. Unfortunately, still being a manta, it’s pretty damn hard to aim. Both barrels point slightly inward, and it makes it hard to compensate for that.
Enjoy!
