Golf Cart Tank

Build a homemade water gun or water balloon launcher and tell us about it.
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tanked
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Golf Cart Tank

Post by tanked » Wed Aug 05, 2009 1:51 pm

Hey guys, so I’m trying to build a tank as a summer project – I’ve got a golf cart and would like a water cannon to mount on a turret on the back. I’m going to be shooting at a crowd, so a large volume of water is more important than a precise stream. Range – 50 ft would be nice, if possible. Money’s not a huge issue, as I’d rather have something that works well than something cheap. Same thing goes for difficulty of construction – I don’t want something easy to put together that doesn’t work. I was thinking of maybe a CAP system, but I’m wary of connecting a compressor to my battery, as golf carts don’t have an alternator, and I wouldn’t want the battery to die mid-spray. The cart’s a 1972 Harley gas three-wheeler, and is about 7 by 4 ft. Thanks for any help you can give and let me know if you need more information.

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adronl
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by adronl » Wed Aug 05, 2009 8:00 pm

I have a few cannons and large guns for you if you need some fire power and all of them get over 50 ft.

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C-A_99
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by C-A_99 » Wed Aug 05, 2009 8:18 pm

Adronl can sell you homemades if you would rather not build them. Prices may vary but usually they're never more than the cost to build them.

If you're building it anyawys, many air compressors are too slow for the job. If you can't get a compressor to work, you can consider using CO2 with an air regulator. But personally, I'd keep it simple; get 2 foot pumps for the gunner, and hook them up to a big (no more than 3L) air tank. You then have a complete pressurized resevoir system. All the gunner has to do is step back and forth to pump and you don't have to worry about junk like compressor batteries nor CO2 canisters.

However, for a more advanced design, I'd look into foot pumps that pump water. They would probably require designing (or maybe modification will suffice), and would be tricky to get to work, but would be completely worth it as you would then be able to store large amounts of water without pressurization, then use the pumps to charge up a pressure chamber. The pressure chamber can be air powered, low pressure dropoff, a stack of balloons, or anything that'll provide good volume.

If you don't like the idea of using 2 foot pumps, then I'm not sure on other good methods. I assume you have a driver and a gunner on the cart, but if you can get a passenger to ride on, you can mount any gun in the passenger seat for more firepower. Even something like a Monster XL would work, but pumping could get difficult when you need more firepower. (in which case you can simply duplicate the design used for the big gun)

Consider adding a water balloon launcher on the top gun for more epicness. Let me know what you want to do and perhaps I can come up with some ideas.

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Silence
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by Silence » Thu Aug 06, 2009 12:04 am

Welcome to Super Soaker Central. :)

If you've had experience with automobiles, perhaps you could use the engine itself to use. Find a useless item powered by the belt/chain under the hood, if such a thing exists (which it may not, since there's no alternator and probably no power steering or brakes), and see if you can retrofit a pump using that. Probably too impractical though.

Just curious, how do you charge up the battery? Just plug it into a wall socket? I figure you'll need it for the ignition, spark plugs, and all the assorted dials and lights.

SuperCAP is obviously the natural choice, but in the absence of abundant electricity, there's not much you can do to pump it up. However, if you use compressed air (HPA) or liquefied gas, you'll be able to store lots of it. With HPA and liquefaction (of something like propane), you can compress air or gas to 1/200 or 1/300 of its original volume, respectively. But because both types of pressure storage absorb heat as they're used, you'll need to use metal pipe because PVC shatters when it's cold. Thus costs may be high, but certainly not prohibitive, if you're after a powerful, mounted water cannon.

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cantab
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by cantab » Thu Aug 06, 2009 11:16 am

If you have the vehicle, you could mount a second engine, powering a pump. Get a dynamic pump (like a centrifugal one), not a positive displacement pump - the latter won't move if the output is blocked, for example by a nozzle valve.

I dunno how much power you'd need. Probably petrol tool engine would be fine.

Or if you want to go electric, second battery and motor. You'll likely get less running time with that though.
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tanked
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by tanked » Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:06 pm

Hey guys – thanks for all the input

Adronl – I’d rather build my own, but I’ll certainly let you know if it doesn’t work out and I need to buy one.

Silence – I did try to find somewhere to rig up a compressor but unfortunately, there really isn’t anything extra on the cart, so I can’t use the engine to power the cannon. To charge the battery, I take it to a local garage and get them to do it, or stick it in a car and drive around a bit.

Cantab – the pump was my first idea, but I couldn’t easily get my hands on an appropriate one, so I figured I’d just build my own system.

I like the foot pump idea for its ease of reuse – once my CO2 tank is empty, there’s nothing I can do on site. The pumps would also make refilling easier – I’m planning on having a reservoir mounted on the cart, so I can just pump from that into the pressure chamber. So if I’m using 2 foot pumps to pump/pressurize, what sort of pressure chamber system would give me the most power? Also, I need this for early September, and I live in Canada, so any design with hard-to-find parts that I may need to order in from somewhere may not work out.

If I was going to try out a CAP system where I pressurize the cylinder beforehand, is there any sort of guideline to help me figure out how big of an air tank I would need?

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Silence
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by Silence » Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:31 pm

tanked wrote:If I was going to try out a CAP system where I pressurize the cylinder beforehand, is there any sort of guideline to help me figure out how big of an air tank I would need?
Sure. Drenchenator described physics in constant air pressure water guns here, but if you just want to know the initial volume of air you need, that's even simpler. You'll need to know what volume of water you want to shoot and at what pressure, though.

I'm going to use atmosphere (1 atm = 15 PSI) because they're convenient for the obvious reason that an "empty" container at sea level (or close to it) has 1 atm of pressure.

The official SuperCAP report intentionally omits many details, but the entire discussion contains lots of information. Provided you're using a sane (narrow) nozzle, four atmospheres of gauge pressure should work well. Let's say you want 20 liters of water. In order to maintain 4 atm of pressure all the way to the bottom of the tank, you need about 20 liters * 4 atm = 80 liters of standard-pressure air, plus whatever it takes to fill the air canister, which is negligible. Divide it by the volume of your air canister and you'll get the maximum operating pressure; or if you know the maximum pressure you can pump in (if it's HPA), divide by that pressure and find out how much air canister space you'd need.

So for hard figures, you'll need to determine three things: volume of water, pressure at which you fire the water, and either the pressure or volume of compressed air that you can store. Hint: using HPA or liquefied air, the water volume is going to be the limiting factor. ;)

Bradisfun
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by Bradisfun » Fri Dec 18, 2009 9:20 am

i say that that if money is not a problem then get a scuba tank or two that way u'll have lots of air (3000-4500psi in each tank now just decide urr size) then have a big water supliy or a eazyley refillable 1 (so have something lke a 1 way valve in a eazy acsesable place
well thats just my 2 cents

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C-A_99
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by C-A_99 » Fri Dec 18, 2009 7:27 pm

His project is probably on hiatus or cancelled, thus he may not see your post since this thread is pretty old.

I don't know how much pressures regulators will support, but for a scuba tank, a pretty high strength one is necessary. (especially given the apparent volume of those things, though I'm not exactly sure) I'd personally go for the lower cost options (with the bike pumps and all) but that's just me.

Bradisfun
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by Bradisfun » Fri Dec 18, 2009 10:56 pm

well he may not but other may and i no i have been helped by threads that have not helped the starter.but he did say that money was not a problem so 2-3 scuba tanks would be light weight and would hold A-LOT of air the only let down with them is the cost
i think that 2-3 scuba tanks on a "tank" like this would last me probally 3 weeks (and i'm not very resoursfull ,i go though a 150 pball in bout 1 min ina scurmish game)

Bradisfun
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by Bradisfun » Mon Dec 21, 2009 1:41 am

any 1 have anything to say?

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JuchTurtles
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Re: Golf Cart Tank

Post by JuchTurtles » Mon Dec 21, 2009 1:55 am

Well, for my imput, it depends on the golf cart. If it has four seats, you could take one out and put in a water tank in it's place. Mount a turret and cannon on it, and it's a PR design that shoots out a lot. Of course, you could limit the amount that comes out or you could have several tanks attached. This is an interesting project.

I'm thinking about working on a tank as well, but for now, no.

Part of the reason nobody's posting on this topic is because the original discussion was in August, and now it's December, 4 months later. Forum member tanked is not active and hasn't posted anywhere for a while. His project is either done, on hiatus, or cancelled.

This is an interesting project, however, and I think someone, at some point, should complete a tank. Tanks are the most dangerous thing in waterwarfare, it's just about the only thing that can kill you.

Maybe a slower tractor would be a solution (with it's blades off of course).

You could mount a WBL or cannon on one turret facing backwards behind the driver, with other guns on the sides on turrets.

I don't really know, but there's my two cents.
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