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Does this look like like an ordinary 2011 Shot Blast?

...It isn't. Hidden inside this gun is a CPS system! This guide will show you how to take a Shot Blast and turn it into something that at least isn't a piston gun.


First, Open up your Shot Blast. This is complicated to do - there are several different screw sizes, and there's a shell over the main shell that's snapped into it. I forgot to take a picture of the stock internals, so here's a pic from Nerf Mods & Reviews.



Unscrew the back of the pressure chamber (the dinky little tank that looks kind of like an Airtech tank). You will find a plunger and spring inside. Take this out. Because of the seal, you may have to open the pull valve to get it out.



By the way, don't worry about messing up the trigger system or something. We're going to get rid of that anyway.

Epoxy a piece of 1" PVC pipe into the PC tank. I used epoxy putty.



Attach a pressure chamber to the piece of PVC. I used a rubber bladder from a HydroBlitz. You can use anything you want as a pressure chamber - even the stock one, although this would give it worse performance than it was stock. It might be an easier mod to attatch an air-pressure chamber, using a bottle or large-diameter PVC pipe. Here's my PC:



Now take out the water reservoir and put a good sized hole in the front of it. This is going to be the PC casing for my rubber bladder. Also, get the reservoir cap and tether out.



If you're making and air pressure chamber, skip this step - you don't need to touch the reservoir, but you'll probably have to put a hole in the top of your gun for your PC to stick out.

Now stick the bladder assembly into the hole in the reservoir. (if you're making it air pressure, skip this step too of course)



You need to make a trigger for your Shot Blast. I made my trigger by twisting a piece of wire onto the pull valve pin. Then I tied the other end onto the slide of a Nerf Strikefire. The Strikefire slide connects to tactical rails, so I can connect it onto the Shot Blast's rail. Then I can pull it back to open the firing valve. You need to cut a hole in the top of the gun for the wire to go through. This is just my method; there are many other ways to make a trigger system.

Now close the gun. Closing it is a lot harder than it was to open it You have to get all the parts in place, and you need to tear out a lot of the stuff in the way to get the new internals to fit. You will also need to cut a hole for the reservoir intake tube to stick out of.



...then snap on the inner shell...



...then snap on the outer shell...



...and then screw it all together, and put the pump grip back on. Also, clip the Strikefire slide onto the tactical rail if you're using my trigger system method.

You're done! Now hopefully it works... The first time I did this, there was a leak, and I had to open it back up and apply more epoxy putty. The second time, it worked for a while, and then another leak appeared - apparently the epoxy wasn't completely dry. Now I applied more epoxy, and I'm going to wait several days to be sure it's dry. The top-mounted trigger system works great.

Unless you found a method that doesn't use the reservoir as the PC, you'll need a homemade water backpack.

Nice work! That tubing by the pump could potentially become annoying though, but it should be easy to trim and reconnect.

Epoxy putty is nice when one is too lazy to use epoxy. Of course, you'll also have to be much more careful about sealing the gaps with it as well.

CA99 wrote:Nice work! That tubing by the pump could potentially become annoying though, but it should be easy to trim and reconnect.

Epoxy putty is nice when one is too lazy to use epoxy. Of course, you'll also have to be much more careful about sealing the gaps with it as well.

I agree. The tubing looks like it might get in the way of pumping... Still, nice mod. IMHO all the super soakers this year are rubish but with your ingenious mod, I would probably actually bother getting a shot blast just to mod it 'cos I'm curious to how well it performs.

Slick mod; pics/vid of it in action would be nice if you can!

Performance isn't incredible; it's basically just not a piston gun anymore. This mod doesn't really make it worth it to buy a Shot Blast, but it was still fun to do. I'll try to make a video when I can.

Impending Flood wrote:I would probably actually bother getting a shot blast just to mod it 'cos I'm curious to how well it performs.

Very bad idea IMO. As you can tell by the mod, getting that trigger to work must've been annoying at best, a real pain at worst. And that isn't even a finger powered trigger. Chances are that the valve/internals may not be optimized (large or durable enough) to handle long term pressurization as well.

If you want to mod a newer blaster, the Vindicator/2009 Vanquisher (if you can still find them) are good, as is the HydroCannon. Nonetheless, you'll probably still get better results overall with the CPS line.

Getting the trigger to work was actually easy to do. But I'm still having some leaking problems.

If the leaks are coming from the trigger valve, then you may have to do the rubberband fix. When pull valves are pushed beyond a certain point, they tend to have this problem, and it is very well possible that you did so when installing and/or testing the trigger.

If its somewhere else, a smothering or 2 of epoxy should do the job. (As you know.)

Sorry for bumping, but I never saw this thread and wanted to say some things.

What are the ranges? Shot time?

You could even use the stock mount to make a backpack connection.

...Except it's broken now. I didn't apply the epoxy in the right way, so it started leaking pretty bad.

Range probably wasn't much better than the original range. Shot time was a few seconds. Of course, range and shot time depend on the pressure chamber you use to mod it.