*sigh*
There had to be a use for it after the rotation mech quit on us. We tried all kinds of stuff. At one point, the 4k was singled, which worked for a little while (until we got fed up with how tiring it was to pump, which was conveniently when the hot glue on the barrel broke off). Then we mounted the turret on a Titan (my first turret job, actually...wish I had a pic of that thing) which worked until the internally-mounted bungee cord that was holding the turret against the air output got twisted ito a knot or something. That, and the fact that we used the end of a water-balloon filler-upper sink-threaded funnel to put the air into the tiny holes gave the titan less range after 25 pumps than his (at the time crayola'ed) SM 1500. So that was pointless.
So we tossed the turret aside for an extended period of time. A year or two, actually.
Then this wonderful little invention known as the Big Blast was put into production. After all the hype over its abilities to leap tall buildings in a single bound (or 35 pumps; take your pick) we decided to have a look (mind you, we weren't thinking at all about the 4k turret at the time...) After seeing visitor Cthulhu use one (and limiting his number of pumps, so he wouldn't be blowing holes in trees and/or small children) at our reent Turkey Day War, the aforementioned trusty clan member was ready to toss aside his Blast Bazookas and SM 1500 for a short while to see just what everybody was really going on about.
Even without a pump plug and barrel replacement, the thing was shooting stefans out of the stock barrel (restrictor removed, of course) like a beast. And then his mind got to working again.
The old Titan project came to mind at some point, and he brought it up with me. An interesting thought, to be sure. But I was having way too much fun putting 2k turrets on guns at the time to want to think about the headaches that would be involved with mounting a turret that didn't have a working manual rotation mech built in.
But he pestered me, and even went out and bought this wonderful little metal gadget at Home Depot. It's a metal swivel for keychains and the like, and it would keep the bungee or whatever we used from getting all twisted up.
So we met last week, opened up his new big blast, and took a hacksaw to that thing.
Actually, if you decide you're insane and want to try this, I'd start with the 4k turret. So I'll go in the order that really would've made more sense.
Here we go:
That (above) would be the lovely back of the 4k turret. That is, after we took a sharp knife (didn't want to change dremel bits or charge my drill, so I said screw it all...) to each of the holes and opened them up real good. About half again their original size, actually. This was so we could fit some sort of pipe into the back of the turret, that the air would go through.
I'll tell ya flat out this shell was MADE for a 4k turret. The plastic wall that runs horizontally along the gun that ended up just underneath the stem of the 4k turret fit it so that the top barrel of the turret lined up near perfectly with the center of the big blast's barrel; A GREAT fit.
In the above picture, you'll see we've hacked away at the front of the shell a bit to fit the turret in there. You'll also see a PVC elbow. Don't know what size I used; all I know is I epoxied it a little closer to the trigger than it should've been to support the lower half of the turret (what with a spring pulling on it all the time, ya know?) so I wrapped a crapload of e-tape around it t built it up, so the turret wasn't been pulled down. This ended up making for a PERFECTLY level barrel-to-shell alignment. In other words, the barrels don't point slightly up or down; they're perefctly in-line with the line of the original stock barrel.
You'll also notice that the air is coming out quite far away from the actual valve. I would've moved it closer, but COME ON! It's a freaking BIG BLAST! It's go so much air coming out of this thing that it might as well be single barreled all over again, were we to move the turret closer. It gets plenty of air, but not so much that it'll get banned like a titan or something.
Lastly, you'll notice coming out of the stock barrel, there is a metal tube coming out with some e-tape around it. The e-tape is somewhat cone-shaped, so it's easy to insert it into the back of the barrels, but the tape will squeeze to fit in and seal the back of the barrels off. You can use any tubing you want (really small brass...a drinking straw...whatever) but I used a short piece of old airsoft barrel I had lying around. It's thick, so it'll be durable, but it's big enough to put out some serious air volume as well as velocity.
Here's what I attached to the back of the turret. Using a screw with a small eyelet screwed directly into the stem of the turret, I attached the metal swivel. Behind that, a loop of ziptie to connect it to the final piece, a small (but surprisingly robust) expansion spring I bought at Ace Hardware.
Here's the contraption fit into the shell. The Spring fits into the small space in front of the trigger perfectly, and the swivel fits in front of that wall. The Ziptie merely goes between. The shell was so well fit for this mod, that the other end of the expansion spring stretched to fit over a post that one of the gun's stock screws went through.
Now that it was completed, the method of firing was simple. Pump and shoot, then pull out on the turret, turn it, and slide it back over the stub, which entered a fresh, loaded barrel. Pump and shoot. Rinse and repeat. It's really incredibly simple, and ghetto-fabulous. Like older modifications, before people started getting all hi-tech, and every mod you saw that was worth anything had two full rolls of duct tape on it. But without the duct tape.
With the large gap between the valve and the barrels, the pump ended up needing to be plugged, but it doesn't require a rediculous amount of pumps to get it going. Five to seven do it plenty justice, and that's with STOCK BARRELS.
Sure, the ranges aren't incredible, nor do I see them as quite up to par just yet (it hits 60-70' right now) but that's because it's still running stock barrels. The barrels are too short for the amount of air coming out, so I'm going to brass it soon, and all will be better. With some short barrels running out of it (no longer than 4"...anything more than that and it'll be too heavy to rotate comfortably) it'll stabilize the darts enough to hit 80-90' flat with 5-7 pumps, no problem.
So the finished product:
Personally, I think it looks absolutely awesome. It looks like it was built that way, because we were lucky enough to have two companies using nearly identical shades of orange.
Edited by Falcon, 05 January 2007 - 06:50 PM.
