Blaster Care
In this day and age of terrible new blasters and the old ones becoming more valuable and rarer, taking care and properly maintaining these older models is vital, although even if they were still available you should take care of them anyway, as with proper care they will last ages.
This is just a simple general pointer on certain tips you can do to help keep your blasters healthy and working fully.
Storing
Might not sound like a lot, but storing your blasters in the right place makes a big difference as to whether they appreciate or deteriorate. Leaving them in the garage or generally a cold dirty place won’t help the blaster at all. Problem areas may include the pump seals going bad and also trigger valves wearing out causing water to shoot out the nozzle when pumping. The even worse thing than that is that it can cause the internals to crack causing leaking, and also stressful noises when pumping. The worst area for this to happen is where the reservoir suction hole connects to the internal plastic part. I have seen it cracked on a 2500 before, which means that the amount of water drawn when pumping is only half because there is no a good seal anymore, making it unpractical, and a nightmare to fix because it is such an awkward location. Storing them in a place like this also means that gunk and dirty crap can get in clogging things up.
Do not leave them outside either over the winter or in direct sunlight; leaving it outside over winter will again most likely damage the internals, and leaving it in direct sunlight or just bright light in general will ruin its once boyish good looks.
The best place to store them is somewhere at normal room temperature, not too hot, not too cold, just right. I store mine in my room away from bright areas, leaving them in a dark area is advised. Worked fine for me and still does, I haven’t had any blaster I have had from new go wrong because of it and they work and look just like they did from the first day.
Consistency
This is mainly for CPS blasters however it is advisable on pretty much every blaster. If you aren’t going to use your blasters for a while or not very often, it is a good idea just to give them about a tanks worth of pumping up and shooting just to keep them working well every now and then. This is important on CPS blasters, as since they use a rubber bladder, if no water goes through them for a long time then there is more chance of them rupturing or more stress being put on them because they are so dry and more brittle.
More Tips
>While it sounds stupidly obvious, when you have finished using your blaster make sure you empty the reservoir out fully and pump all the water you can from the firing chamber with the blaster facing down – Leaving water in the reservoir and also pressure in the firing chamber for a long period of time will damage the blaster, leaving pressure in won’t do the firing valve any good.
>When storing, I always leave the pumps extended slightly so that they don’t get stuck when next taken out and used.
>It is also a good idea to store blasters with the reservoir caps unscrewed; this basically just lets the blasters breathe a bit more when not in use.
>Finally, if you are using larger older air pressure blasters which include the SS/XP 300 and XP 250, these blasters did not have pressure/safety valves. So constant over pumping will do them no good and after a while will most likely cause leaks and cracked internal plastic tubing. So when you feel that it gets noticeably harder to pump, then stop as that indicates you have reached max pressure. Doing this will ensure that in years’ time yours will still be functioning fine without leaks, which is what didn’t happen to a lot of them because many got over pumped too much.
There, a few little pointers on how to make your blasters function fine without issue.