CPS 1700 Nozzle Selector Repair

Tools/items needed

-Normal & Flathead screwdrivers
-Ruler
-Electrical Tape
-Epoxy
-Drill Press
-2mm drill piece (or thereabouts)
-Wood
-Replacement screw
-Vice
-Metal washer

Having gone through a lot of CPS 1500’s and 1700’s over the years, one thing I personally noticed is that the CPS 1700’s stream lamination on the 10x nozzle is worse than the 1500, see picture below.  Obviously the 1700’s 10x can be good, however I’ve found it is a lot more twitchy, in which you have to fiddle about with the nozzle selector more to get it good.  The nozzle selector I’ve found in general seems to be less stiff than on the 1500 when changing settings.

From this I thought that maybe I could help the lamination somewhat, however from what initially was going to be a stream improvement mod, that turned into a repair and just being grateful to have a working nozzle selector in the first place.
The problem was this, upon opening the blaster, the nozzle selector decided to snap off.  Strange, as I have opened up 1500’s and 1700’s before with glued nozzle pieces the same way and that never happened.  However, this is a rarer silver and red European version.  Also someone was selling another one at the time I got mine which had its nozzle selector repaired, so this may suggest a manufacturing fault or a faulty batch.  Either way, I had a problem to deal with.

As you can see, the piece of small plastic which holds the screw in had snapped off, breaking da connection.  The screw doesn’t actually go into the plastic; it just stops there, giving a more fragile connection.  First job was to get the screw out, because the plastic piece is so small it needs to go in the vice for a firm hold, if not then you’ll be forever caught in a loop like Eric Cartman wanting a Nintendo Wii too early.

Next up is to find a new screw.  For this you may have guessed, the answer is a longer screw so we can screw it right into the plastic where the original screw ends, giving a much better connection.  I found my replacement screw from all the salvaged spares I had from over the years.

However the original screw had a larger diameter head around the outside in order to hold down the outer ringed plastic piece as shown here.  A metal washer will be needed, however save that for later.

With all that set ready, the first aspect that needs to be done is see to that mess the snapped off nozzle holding piece has caused.

In order to make it easier to repair, the blaster needs to be taken apart, with the valve piece unscrewed and taken off.  For some reason on the 1700 and probably on the other larger CPS’s from the 2000 line, Larami decided to make it way harder to pry the pieces apart after unscrewing all the increased amount of screws holding things together, so much so that when you close it back up again it needs to be epoxied, more on that later.

And looking at the piece from behind, an explanation as to why lamination is worse compared to the 1500.

As you can see, instead of the well-designed straws with mesh screen method the 1998 and before CPS blasters used, it has been replaced with showerhead like plastic circular pieces the Monsters and such used.  This has been known to give off worse performance and is not as good a design as before.

Now going back to the new screw, as you can see I need to measure the extra distance it has in relation to the broken piece it is going through and beyond.  It was around 0.5cm here.  I need to do this because then I can mark out on the drill piece where to stop when drilling.

Now on to the metal washer mentioned earlier, because this new screw doesn’t have an outer metal layer to cover over the circular plastic piece that slots on top, the metal washer makes sure it is covered and secure and acts as the out ring under the screw.

Now we are nearly ready for the drilling on the press.  As you can see, the front valve piece has three plastic ridges poking out; they need to be rested on something with holes in, as you don’t want to crush them.  For this a piece of wood was used with holes cut into it with the drill press so that the ridged parts can slot in, leaving the valve piece nicely flat and more stable when drilling.

Now back to the drill piece, a 2mm drill piece was used; the 0.5cm was marked off with electrical tape so I know where to stop.

Now with some steady hands and help, it is now to drill the extended hole into the front of the nozzle piece.

While not pictured, the hole in the smaller front piece that broke off was also drilled larger.  This is important as now it is no longer the part where the main secure connection is, so it just acts as a pass through.  The screw needs to screw easily through it without getting stuck, as if it does as I found out first time it won’t screw through all the way because there is too much friction.

Now nearly finished, the front where the new hole had been drilled needed to be just a bit larger, so a slightly larger than 2mm drill bit was used, same process with the electrical tape again.

The final part is assembling it all together, make sure all the parts are in line and back on.  I had help on this, when I had the small broken off piece at the front lined up (very twitchy), with the plastic circular piece and the washer on ready, the nozzle selector piece was quickly put over.  My Dad held the small nozzle piece while I screwed in the new screw.  The end result was this.

It is now tight and secure again, showing no signs of coming off, everything is working.  Lamination will never be the most perfect, but at least it is fixed and I am now able to sell it on eBay for a decent amount still in the Summer. Oh, and putting it back together, when you screw the valve back on, because of how much of a faff it is getting it off in the first place, you need to coat epoxy all around the outside of where the two halves connect when screwed in to prevent any any coming out when pumping as I found out. It is not hard, just messy, mind you this is epoxy we are talking about here.

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