Above: The left side housing and the test section/battery box.
Note
that the two are connected via two small wires. You would
be wise to record their connections just in case you manage to rip off
the wires and need to re-solder them.
After seeing my reports on the VLocity vs. RadarChron a number of people have asked me the exact nature of the modifications I have made to my VLocity to make it a much more usable chronograph. Thus, in the interest of saving myself further typing I will take the time to try to describe the modifications. At the time I was making the modifications I didn't actually think they would work so I didn't take any pictures. Thus, the only internal photographs I have are of a VLocity that was diassembled simply to see what made it tick (courtesy of HaveBlue [haveblue@execpc.com]). As a result, some of this may sound a bit strange, but I hope it will make sense if/when you try to follow in my footsteps.
Use a screwdriver along the seam to pry open VLocity. You should end up with 4 parts:
Above: The left side housing and the test section/battery box.
Note
that the two are connected via two small wires. You would
be wise to record their connections just in case you manage to rip off
the wires and need to re-solder them.
With a hacksaw (and being careful not to cut any wires!), cut the test section into four pieces:
Carefully remove any plexiglass from the two LED/photo cell brackets.
Here one can clearly see a LED/photo cell bracket on the test
section as well as the battery box. Also visible is the plexiglass
tubing that must be removed from the brackets.
Get a roughly 12" piece of thin walled PVC tubing of 3/4" nominal size I am NOT talking about schedule 40 or 80 stuff. I'm talking about the very thin walled stuff that is used for cheap sprinkler systems. Its outter diameter is about 1". Its inner diameter is about 0.9". (Why is it "3/4 inch" pipe? Because it has the same outter diameter as 3/4" schedule 40 pipe.)
Using ABS to PVC cement, glue one set of brackets to the PVC pipe near one end.
Using a drill, drill through the brackets to create two holes in the pipe. Be sure that the holes go straight through the pipe and try not to mess up the brackets while you're at it.
Glue the other bracket to the other side of the pipe (Your holes did line up, right?).
Spray paint the inside of the pipe with flat black. You want to make it such that inside that pipe it is a very dark place indeed.
Now, take a file and start enlarging the holes at either end of the VLocity housings. The idea is to make it such that the VLocity will clamp around your piece of pipe in much the same manner that it clamped around those pieces you threw away . Be careful not to scratch the lenses on the photo cells!
Put the hole mess back together in the way that should seem pretty obvious by now and glue it up with some ABS cement.
Feel free to mask it off and spray paint the pipe. Do not paint the inside of the pipe at this point!
OK, you're done. You should have something that looks like the picture below (Yeah, I lost my battery box cover.).
To use, simply slide the pipe over your barrel, turn it on, and fire away. It works great on my guns, although I confess that it won't work if you've a barrel with a particularly large OD. In the picture below my modified VLocity is mounted on an ACI Hornet
