So here’s another picture of my budget pack and a sneak peak of my original pack that has been redone. The budget pack is made of foam board and is super sturdy. I filled all the pieces with canned foam insulation and it’s feels very durable. Also here’s a pic of my finished pack from last year, I repainted it and went easy on the weathering. I also added some clippard valves thanks Thiago for that one and added new hoses that i recieved from Irricanian. Thank you too!! I built a new bumper, repaired the Nfilter because it broke off and reinforced the ion arm because last year it broke off the first night. Now it’s super reinforced with wooden dowels and gorilla glue.
Total cost for budget pack around $120 with light kits on the way!!
Two questions on the “foam board budget pack”…did you seal the edges of the foam board at all? I noticed when I was working on my “lil’ ghostbuster pack” for my son that any edges I didn’t fill with bondo reacted with the spray paint. Just curious…
Also, did you use gorilla glue for the whole construction or just the ion arm?
I’m seriously considering building my first full-size pack out of foam board and filling it with spray foam like you have done.
That is a problem associated with styrofoam which is why I always stayed away from the stuff. I too am curious what you covered it with so the paint didn’t “eat” the foam.
I’m assuming by Foam Board he means the foam poster board you can buy at Wal-Mart in which case I use it a lot and the slick paper covered edges spray paint fine and the cut edges do too. They may get eaten a little but in general its not the same loose foam as in Styrofoam and since so little is exposed it looks fine.
i dunno whats really going on with this build, but on the parts of my pack i did with foam board[which wasnt much] i sealed the edges over with silicon caulk. it worked out great.
I filled the edges with vinyl spackling. And yes it is cheap foamboard from Michaels. I used high temp hot glue to glue it all together and then filled it with canned foam. The glue is super strong and with the foam it’s build like a rock. The But the spackling kept it from dissolving. I didn’t use gorilla glue on the budget pack at all. Only to reinforce the dowels holding the ion arm.
