Hot Wheels 1:64 Ghsotbusters Ecto-1 Customization

And I'm back! And finished.  This little car took much longer than it usually does because there was just so much to do to it. So many great little pieces molded onto the car that needed some extra love and attention.

We'll start right off with the interior.

The 4 proton packs...which will never be seen through the windows were touched up a bit. Some basic coloring to give the hint of what they are.  They're just far too small to pain the ribbon cable on.

The roof rack. The most fun, but also challenging.  At first I had planned on cutting out the space between the rungs of the ladder. But then I found out that there is extra plastic behind the rungs that help keep this in place and lock in the windows. So I left that part black. But fully detailed the rest and weathered it some.

This is just a test fit together. The blue lights on top were painted...blue. And the silver piece in the middle.  No white walls yet. And at this point there is no decal on the back. But over all it looks to be shaping up really well.

And here is the finished product.  A back view so you can see the detail of the tailights, rear roof rack and back door.

And here you can see a bit of the wide 1950's style whitewalls peeking out of the front fender.  This little care was a bit more challenging but a lot of fun to spruce up.  I think it came out much better than I anticipated and I'm very proud of the work.

On to the next!

Hot Wheels 1:64 Ghostbusters Ecto-1 Customization

I know what's going to happen first off.  I'm going to get yelled at by all the collectors out there for cutting open the card and removing the Ecto-1.  Then they'll get over that and really become irate when they see that *spoiler* I'd taken the whole car apart!

Well, breathe. It will be ok. I understand the feeling of panic though. These cars are getting harder and harder to find.  They were made in 2009 and I think that's the last time HW made an Ecto. I'm probably wrong.  I think they are coming out with one this year, but I have yet to see it. Hopefully they'll make more because I want to customize more.  For now, this is my first attempt.  Here she is still on the card:

And here is the car, set free from it's confines! It's a pretty detailed car. Just very one color when it comes to the roof rack and interior. 

You'll see here that the ladder on the side is also molded with plastic between each rung. Upon further inspection I think it will be easier to paint the negative space white than to try to carve it out.  We shall see.

Notice the missing "No Ghost" logo on the back door. I'm going to have to find a way to fix that. I'm confident in my painting skills, but not on something this small.  Why would HW leave off the rear logo!

Here we go. The good stuff. After separating the chassis from the body some more interesting things about this car start to make themselves known. It's far more detailed than I anticipated.  Good for you HWs. However why would you go through all this trouble and just paint everything black?

The first thing that really jumps out at me is that the chassis is silver. completely silver. I supposed this is because the bumpers, which were big chrome monstrosities in the 50's, are a part of it. Easier to make it all silver/chrome I suppose than to try to paint it 2 different colors.  I'll definitely be repainting the chassis a flat black after taping out the chrome bumpers.

Looking closer at the inside of the care, you'd never guess what was there.  Four tiny Proton packs. All lined up on the rack ready to go. Seriously, so much detail wasted.  This project is going to take a little longer than the Delorean because of all the detail that's molded into these pieces.  But it's a good thing. There is SO much to play with in this little car.

That's where we I am for now.  This week if I can manage I'll try to start work on this. Probably with the chassis and body first.  Those will be the easiest.  Headed into the holidays it feels like free time vanishes.

...more to come! 

Proton Pack 2.0 is in the Mail!

It has finally happened.  I finished. And to say I'm proud of this one is an understatement. It came out WAY beyond my expectations. It's much cleaner and more detailed than my original. After all, the original was for my own enjoyment and this one was for a friend. Gotta make it look good, no?  The correct ribbon cable for starters makes this stand out from mine. A better stand. Updated electrics.  It's just over all superior.  My first go, the switch isn't an on off switch. You have to hold it down in order for the pack to light up. This one is a true on off, SO much better.  So without any more rambling, here is what you're all looking for. The pictures!

To start. The stand. Mine was a quickly cobbled together stand made of wood and shot with some grey paint. This one is of plastic, much sturdier and black. (By request of the owner, but a smart choice)

Packs side by side! I love mine, don't get me wrong, but the one on the right is a beauty!
I tried to emulate the packs of GB1 so you can see right away that the wand is afixed a little differently. In the first movie they were on a more severe angle. In GBII the angle was increased to make grabbing them easier.

A nice side view with the "yellow lights" on the side of the powercell from Ray's pack. A lot of people thought these were actual lights, but it's just the casing being too thin and the light bleeding through.

Close up of some of the warning labels and aging of the cyclotron. 

And here is what you've all been waiting for. It's a live! Lit and glorious and pretty bright. Those lights'll hurt your eyes if you look directly into them. (taken with flash)

Without the fill flash there are so many more details picked up in this picture. I like to think that I succeeded in getting the aged/worn look of the pack correct.

Just another angle with the gun off to the side.

A few people have asked me for size comparison. So here it is next to my much smudged S3. Saying 1:7 scale doesn't really mean much until you see it next to something.

Lastly, a shot of the gun. 

And there you are folks! Finished. And as we speak it's flying (driving) down the road to it's new owner who I KNOW will give it a very good home.

Proton Pack 2.0 Finish line is in sight!

Been a while since my last update but I've been busy working away. This is the point where it takes a lot longer because I'm working on a much smaller scale. It's fairly easy to get the main parts created and fitting together, but come time to wire...it's a headache.  What follow are pictures from the past few weeks moving oh so close to the final product. At the time of writing this I'm actually only left with creating a stand for the pack.

My friend who this is for has requested a black one and I'm hoping I can improve on the hastily put together stand I made for the original one I made.

So here we have the bumper being created. This is always one of the harder pieces because before there are layers of primer and filler and paint...it's pretty fragile. Here you can see it's basic shape coming togther

Let there be light! The power cell is lit and glowing and looks amazing. Successful test indeed.

This is a quick test to see if the barrel of the gun will light up with the LED. It's basically like a huge fiber optic. I'm using a cell battery for it's unique ability to illuminate a single LED without the need of a resistor.  It works, trust me. The flash is just causing too much light to see the glow.

Successful test of the cyclotron lights!

This initial wiring had to be taken a part and redone as lighting LED's can be tricky if you're not paying attention. And I was clearly not paying attention during round one. When I tried to hook up the gun, it wouldn't light up. Remember, different color LED's do not play well with each other when on the same circuit. 

Lesson Learned

The Ion bar and it's mount. Just sitting around saying, yeah, I'm done. 

Yup...Hermione. Don't judge.  Some of the labels are being applied to the main body.  This has been requested to be Ray's pack from the original Ghostbusters.  There aren't too many differences. His HGA is straight up and down as opposed to Egon's which is at an angle. And you can see in this pic that the label is correct. The bolts will be painted on accordingly as well. 

The gun coming together. Adding a few little cosmetic details. I love that half the wires on this model are functional and the other half do nothing. I'm assuming the original prop was the same way.

It's officially all together! I use tape to clamp things together when drying. Rubber bands or actual clamps would damage the pieces. Tape is harmless but applies enough pressure.I believe in this pic the mount for the red and blue hoses on the left side is slowly drying.

HANDLES! There is so much wear and tear on these that when making them I tried to keep them a little rough. There is some red coming through from underneath to mimic the actual screen grabs and prop images that show them as such. It's a simple thing to do. Use a base primer of red and then just lightly sand off the final coat until you get some bleed through.

Shock mount...pre-paint. Ray's is actually bent in some scenes and normal in others. There is so much discrepancy between the hero packs and the foam stunt packs that I chose to make this normal. 

Almost done!You can get an idea of scale too in this pic. As this was taken, the ribbon cable was being heated up in order to make it more malleable so I can attach it. But this is a great shot of the almost done pack! All electronics work by a switch in the back. Along with the battery housing (bit of a tight squeeze, but what ever) And almost all detailing is done.

More to come...

First Commissioned Proton Pack

Well folks, it's happened. I've been contacted by another HUGE Ghostbusters fan (and specifically a fan of the heart of the Ghostbusters, Ray Stanz himself) to create another miniature proton pack. My very first commissioned pack.  I've had offers but it's been more the type of "hey make me one." While this is truly a labor of love, it's a labor. As you can tell from the original build. They take a while, but the end product is something I'm very very proud of. And this time around I hope to improve on a few little tiny issues I had when making the first one.

So here is the build of version 2.0

First up the motherboard. I chose to cut this out of a sheet of plastic this time around to give the pack even more stability and to make it easier to create a cover for the batteries.  We'll see how that works out when we get to that step.  In the original pack there was a planned cover with fell to pieces in my hand. So this should fix the brittleness of wood.  One hopes.

Here is the cyclotron and possibly the biggest piece of the pack. It's made of several layers of wood in order to build it up high enough and allow me to fully carve out in the inside to make room for the electronics.

This is just a rough fit to see how spacing is lining up before priming and sanding. So far so good. Looks a big plain but that'll change soon enough.

This is after the first coat of primer and a little filler. I use Primer and gesso to fill in the wood. It helps to strengthen it and gives a nice base for the pain to stick to. Only down side of gesso is that I feel like halfway through each can it's such a thick substance that no more is willing to come out.  Anyone else use this and find they have this problem?

A couple close ups of the cover to the cyclotron in it's primed and filled stage.  Right before another coat of primer was shot onto it.

After a few more coats of primer and here is a side by side comparison to help me make sure I'm on the right track. I like to use different colors of primer to hilight sections and to help me see what needs to be done. Using one color tends make everything blend together.

And here is an un-primed gun mount box prior to detailing. There is some detailing that needs to be done to the top now that the basic shape is there and the edges have been rounded.

And that's where we are so far folks. It might not seem like a lot, but it is. There is so much sanding and cutting and priming and waiting for each section. And that gets repeated over and over again. More coming soon.  But this is an excellent start to another pack.