Lada Artillery Advice

Build a homemade water gun or water balloon launcher and tell us about it.
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NivaWaterTurret
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Lada Artillery Advice

Post by NivaWaterTurret » Mon Oct 17, 2005 8:05 am

Hi,

I'm looking for some advice about mounting a really big water gun on my car. I've never built a water gun before but this site seems to have a lot of good stuff.

Here is my situation:

My car is a Lada Niva which is great fun for tearing around the dunes near where I live. After many hours of work, I've hooked up an air compressor to run directly from the engine. This compressor gives enough power to take a 4WD tire from 10 psi to 40 psi in about 20 seconds. The system also has a pressure release valve set to 100 psi but that can be changed.

What I want to do, is mount a gun on my roof cage, to be powered by the compressor and operated by someone standing on the back bumper. Ideally, the gun would be hooked up to a 20-40L tank of water in the car.

So here's the outline of what I need a design for:

1, Huge water tank
2, Permanently connected to an air compressor
3, Big results

So far I have a fairly primitive idea which may not even work but I'm interested in comments from any experts:

The idea is a 20L barrel with two tubes (50mm long, 10mm diameter) coming out of the side (one at the top and one at the bottom). To the one at the top I connect my compressor and to the bottom I connect a hose. The hose from the bottom has a tap of some sort to let the water at my victim once the pressure is up. The tank is filled with water via a screw-lid.

Any ideas/comments either similar or completely different would be welcome.

I also promise to give updates when I build the thing.

Ash

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Spinner
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Post by Spinner » Mon Oct 17, 2005 11:48 am

Welcome to SSCentral!

I'm hardly the best person to give advice on homemade building, but I'd have thought a simple Constant Air Pressure system would be what you want (I don't think I've quite grasped your current idea).

For this, I'd have thought you'd need a pressure chamber pressurised by the compressor which then feeds into the firing chamber via a regulator. I'd suggest the firing chamber to be either gravity filled with water or pumped into it from a tank in the back of your car.

After all that, you'd need a trigger at the front of your barrel.

I might well have made some glaring mistakes in that...so I'll let Ben take over the advice!
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SSCBen
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Post by SSCBen » Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:16 am

Welcome to Super Soaker Central!

What's your budget? I'll need to know this before telling you what to buy. I also would like to know how you plan on operating this water gun (i.e. how you plan on firing it, if it will require two people, if you'd be comfortable using a simply ball valve, etc.).

What Spinner has said would be a great way to make this water gun. The only problem I saw was the regulator which may or may not be necessary. Most compressors have a regulator built in already, but if your regulator does not then it would be a good idea to buy a regulator for this project.

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Hunt_and_Annoy
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Post by Hunt_and_Annoy » Tue Oct 18, 2005 2:29 am

Sounds interesting...you might want to try also having a WBL on it...

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NivaWaterTurret
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Post by NivaWaterTurret » Tue Oct 18, 2005 4:46 am

Cheers guys,

My budget is not huge, maybe a hundred dollars, but I already have a shed full of tools, PVC pipe and all sorts of other widgets so give me your advice assuming I'm willing to spend money.

It'll be operated by one person but can be bolted to the car so weight is not an issue. I like the idea of building a ball & socket swivel mount onto the roof cage so it can be aimed. Maybe I'll even put some remote servos on it and operate it from inside the car (clearly I have watched "The Jackal" too many times). That much I can engineer myself but the water gun part I don't know enough about.

As for the regulator, I'm not totally sure what that is, but I'm sure I don't have one. You see, my compressor is an old air-conditioner I tore out of a car-wreck at the rubbish tip. All I have is a release valve that lets some pressure out whenever the system reaches 100psi.

Ash

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SSCBen
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Post by SSCBen » Tue Oct 18, 2005 8:17 pm

If you don't have a regulator, go to a home improvement or hardware store and ask for air compressor regulators. They should help you choose one that's right for your compressor. Most small regulators are fairly cheap.

I looked up a bit of information on the car and I'm assuming these specs are correct. Check them out and tell me if anything stands out as funny. I'm trying to tailor this water gun to fit perfectly on your car. 12.3 feet long and 5.5 feet wide sounds like we can do quite a bit.

Ideally, the nozzle can rotate and adjust it's angle of fire. With a regulator, you can control the amount of power going into a water shot as well. However, you usually can not determine how full the tanks are, so you might want to consider putting some sort of scale under the tanks to weigh them and then write on the scale full, half-full, and empty. This might be a little too much, but it would be a great feature to have.

Are you concerned primarily with making a water gun that will perform well or are you more concerned with making a water gun that will be easy to make? How much distance would you expect from this water gun? 40 to 45 feet would be easier to obtain, but if you would like 55 feet or higher, it can be done.

At the moment, my thoughts are to get maybe two 8 feet long pieces of 4 inch pressure rated PVC pipe, and some fittings. We can work from there. 16 feet of 4 inch pipe should hold about 40 liters of water from my quick calculations.

From what I'm thinking, we could rig a small ball valve to open with some sort of wire and pulley system. I'll look into this.

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NivaWaterTurret
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Post by NivaWaterTurret » Wed Oct 19, 2005 2:01 am

Ok I'll get a regulator soon.

The specs you found on the car are about right. Don't worry too much about fitting it to the car, that'll be easy whatever we build.

Performance is very important, I'd like as much range as possible (within reason). So give me your advanced advice and if it turns out to be too hard then I'll try something simpler.

You've suggested 16 feet of 4 inch pipe to hold the water. Is this better than a plastic or metal barrel simply because the PVC pipe is pressure rated or is there some other reason?

Ash

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m15399
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Post by m15399 » Wed Oct 19, 2005 3:09 am

Are you thinking of using PVC for the tanks? I think with a car, you could find something much bigger and more useful than pipes lined up in siries. I'm sure somewhere in the hardware store theres a 10+ gallon tank you could use.

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SSCBen
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Post by SSCBen » Wed Oct 19, 2005 10:05 am

NivaWaterTurret wrote:You've suggested 16 feet of 4 inch pipe to hold the water. Is this better than a plastic or metal barrel simply because the PVC pipe is pressure rated or is there some other reason?
4 inch pipe simply holds more water. A "barrel" wouldn't hold much water. That's all I was thinking.

Also, I don't think that those 20 gallon tanks are pressure rated. I bought one a while ago, and I wouldn't pressurize that container at all. They already leak enough when full...

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m15399
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Post by m15399 » Wed Oct 19, 2005 11:14 pm

Oh, I didn't think about that. Isn't there something that can be used to store larger amounts of water?

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NivaWaterTurret
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Post by NivaWaterTurret » Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:18 am

No problem. I suspected that the pressure was the reason you went for PVC pipes. The only reason I ask is because I have heaps of water/fuel tanks already.

Ash

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m15399
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Post by m15399 » Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:00 am

Try pressurizing the ones that look the most promising. Hopefully, one might be able to withstand 200+ PSI. If not, then PVC pipe looks like your only option.

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SSCBen
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Post by SSCBen » Tue Nov 08, 2005 9:52 pm

How is this project going? Any new developments? Let us know if you've got anything done because I was really interested.

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m15399
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Post by m15399 » Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:06 pm

Hope nothing blew up on you... I am also very interested and any updates would be appreciated.

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NivaWaterTurret
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Post by NivaWaterTurret » Thu Nov 17, 2005 1:27 am

I thought you guys had lost interest so I stopped posting.

I pressurized a 20L water tank up to about 60 psi without issues but it leaks slowly above that pressure. I may fix the leaks or just not worry since the compressor will always be connected.

I'm currently in Japan and unable to work on it but in a few weeks I'll be home and have another play.

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