Ecto-1K Back on the Road!!

Equipment Ectomobiles
1

I dunno how many of you guys remember the tale of the glorious Ecto-1K…

I spent the summer designing and september transforming my 1998 Subaru Outback into an ectomobile for Halloween. The project lasted a total of about 5 months (starting with research and lightbar shopping), and culminated in early October with the completion of the car.

The finished product… a sort of hybrid of the original car and the 1A. The whole outfit was removable, took about 10 minutes to set up and left the car without a scratch.

And then five days before Halloween it all went horribly wrong!

I was driving in Old Town and I was rear-ended by a semi truck… damage to the exterior of the car as well as interior (including the frame) rendered it totaled.

Mr. Bill voice OH NOOOOO!

The accident and our antics brought local attention from the newspaper, we had a pretty neat article on Halloween.

Anyway, mid november I bought a 2003 Outback and started working on it’s conversion. Bits I dislike about the new car is that it is off-white (this bit drives me fucking nuts… it is SOOOO close to being white), and that the accent trim is a deep bronze (whereas the accent trim of the original 1K was grey/black).

Improvements included having all the wires for the lights and sound system tucked neatly under the carpet and out of the back seat (which was occupied by a rather cumbersome subwoofer) and building the lightbar controls into the dashboard. The end result is a toggle switch panel underneath the cd player that is unbelievably shiney and looks ike it came with the car.

The new car was completed on the 12th of December (I think…).

Along came the big Blizzards right before Christmas. Most of Colorado was shut down and snowed in. People were stranded on the streets and in their homes.

But this Ecto is all-wheel drive, baby.

We spent our days and nights during the blizzard driving around looking for stranded motorists and people in need. We mostly got out and pushed their cars unstuck, but sometimes we’d rig up a tow rope to my frame and pull them out of drifts.

This garnered us a lot more attention. Here is the newspaper article(complete with picture of the original car) that appeared on December 30 (I think..)

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http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061230/NEWS01/612300321**

That’s the ahemResurrecto-mobile in all it’s glory during the second blizzard. The thing is a bloody tank on snow and ice, and we build the roofrack to be weatherproof, so no harm done.

Now we’re having a full coverstory being done on us that will come out in a week or two… gonna be awesome!

Anyway, tons of fun. I’ll try to get “official” pictures of the new car sometime this week.

2

Simply put

Awesome

3

That’s awesome. Would have liked to see their faces when 3 busters with an ecto come pulling up to help them out, bet it was classic.

4

i’m glad that your new ecto is complete , and its good to know that it was helping out citizens in need

5

That is the best!!! Way to give the Ghostbusters a good name! :smiley: Two thumbs up!!! :o

6

Lemme tell ya, that was the point of the whole thing.

We’d show up, pull someone out, then disappear into the night. The only thing that could possibly have been better if it was the Batmobile, ha!

7

Haha, yeah. Most of the time we drive around putting people on. “Are you serious?” “We’re always serious.” That sort of thing.

We also have a tiny kid that runs around wearing the brain colander, asking people if they are the gatekeeper, then running away shouting “You’ll perish in flames!”

Then we come looking for him.

8

Good to hear your Ecto’s back in action. We did some damage to ours while just playing in the snow, nothing comparable to what happened to yours though. Few scratches and dings, and a broken fog lamp. All easily repaired. :lol: and one knocked over fence, but we aren’t worried about that :lol:

9

That’s some cool shit man. Mad props.

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The new car outside a building at CSU that slightly resembles an art museum or library or… whatever. The place would look better if it was covered in slime, don’t you agree?

3/4 view of the right side. The left side of the car is what we refer to as the ‘hero side’ because it has dual tanks and the tubes, it has more going on. I am currently trying to think of some additions to the right side to make it more interesting. Ladders are out of the question, can you guess why?

SUBIE SAYS, “GRRRRVROOOM!” Ecto-1K plates are on the way.

Master Control. Anyone who gets the reference wins a biscuit. The controls are hard-wired through the firewall in the car straight to the battery. Power-out cables go under carpet and out the back hatch, a HUGE improvement over the junglefuck that was the old wiring system. Switch function in order from left to right… Front outer rotators, front inner rotator, rear outer rotators, rear inner rotators, master power.

Average night out with a guestbuster.

Whaddaya think?

11

that thing is totally wicked!!! great job! lets hope this one last longer than your first one

12

you and me both, brotha!

I’ll be working on more pictures and videos soon.

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There is also a hose on the right side, with a label.

14

This is true, I suppose I could work that out easily enough. I’d really like more stuff on the actual rack, though.

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Thought some of you guys might enjoy this…

Ahh, snowmelt in Colorado!

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:smiley: awsome

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Addition of the prop we refer to as the sonobouy.

image

Made of two 3-inch pvc end caps and a pvc connector in between… all glued together (oh god I hate gluing thing… give me bolts any day!). I then sanded the crap out of the resulting little tank, painted, added red electrical tape for the stripes… bolted to post… attached to rack.

image

The little black thing is a paintball ammo cartridge with a blue reflector (identical to the ones we have on the rear tank) attached to it’s lid… sort of neat, I thought.

More to come!

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Just HOW BAD is your gas milage with that satalite dish up there?

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Actually, it’s really not that bad. The only noticable difference is that my car has to work a lot harder at speeds of 70 or more. Other than that I only gas up about once a week, and that is including an 80-mile highway trip to and from Cheyenne. Gotta love Subarus!

The dish isn’t straight up, and the lightbars and rack are what really muck up the airflow, I believe. The dish is, for the most part, inside the pocket that the rest of the rack creates.