Hey everyone, I like dressing my car up for halloween, last year I built it fangs, but I’ve decided that since I’ve been a GB fan since before I was born (mom saw the movie in 84 while 6 mo. pregs) I thought I’d build it into an ecto for Halloween. It’s not going to be permanent, the roof rack will all be one large hunk of welded steel and such, and attached by I figure six-95 lb rated magnets. Thing is, I need your help. I want to build something fairly accurate, though I’m limited on space as it’s a small car. The car I’m using is my '96 Ford Mustang, hey why couldn’t the guys tool around in a fast car, right? Well I was wondering if you guys could help with links for lightbars, I know streethawk is similar, I think I know of a good one to use. I’m having the most difficulty figuring out the tanks on either side of the rack, no, and I mean absolutely no idea what the heck to make them out of. Other than that, I figured I’d use mostly sheet metal welded to frames of square channel to build just about everything else, and I need some help finding a good loud outdoor siren that runs on 4 Ohms like a car stereo, that I might be able to put inside the lightbar for authenticity.
Lots of people are down on others who convert cars that aren’t 59 caddi’s, but a 20 year old college student doesn’t have the kinda dough to buy something like that, let alone restore one and make an ecto, so I’m makin the ecto stang and already have a ton of ideas ready for powering the lights and stuff. Thanks for all your help guys.
Hey gang, saw a bunch of people looked at this thread but nobody replied So I did a photoshop (somewhat decent, somewhat crap) Of what I’m going to try and make my ectostang look like, tell me whatcha think! ^^
If your going to build a roof rck the first thing you need to do is to buy a roof rack from pep boys or some other Auto pats store. The roof rack would originally be for holding lugage for travel. But after yo modify it using wood and other crap from home depot it could look like an Ecto roof rack. Check out the Ecto van I had for a couple of years. It should be on here.
Hm.. Maybe, but like I said, I’m going for something removable/alterable, so that when I get rid of my rustang, I can mod the rack a bit, and slap it on another car. I’m very skilled in welding, so that’s absolutely no problem to build it out of steel myself, probably cheaper too, since those racks run what? In the 100’s, I could build the rack part for maybe, thirty bucks, including a few welding sticks to boot. But thanks for the ideas, and thank you Ectoman for the compliment on the crappy photoshop I did lol, I hope the ectostang will look something like that, and once I start building, of course I’ll have pics Probably gonna draw up plans and stuff, so when you other guys wanna build something like this, you can follow or modify, wouldn’t hurt to have something to go off of, as I’m still thinking of what to build some of the stuff outta, so it’s permanent and sturdy. For the gun and dome on top of the car, I’m putting those on hinges to lie down on top, so I can pull into the garage at night. Dunno, going to have plans in the works soon, I hope. Thanks again though, guys.
Oh, I forgot to mention, in that photo of the car, the teeth in the grille is something I built for last halloween, it’s steel that bolts into place in place of the mustang pony emblem. I had a spare emblem with no chrome, so cut and welded some steel to it, painted it with auto pain, and it looks good, I think. If I have time, this year I’ll take the teeth off the old pony, and put on a no ghost emblem.
Actually Ecto96,my bro RealLIGhostbusters is right the roof rack on our ectovan was removable to turnback into a real van. but also after we sold that van a ford taurus station wagon was bought to be our new ecto and the roof rack that had been overhauled went on it but the base of the roofrack is transferable that way. Well at least that is what we did.
Hm, interesting. What type of damage does it do to the top of the car? I.e. paint scratches/holes etc? I plan on making everything one piece, there’s going to be two shoots off the roof rack to which the lightbar will be mounted, that way it’s one large solid piece of back-breaking to lift ecto rack. Lol, I’ll have to look into stuff like that, any idea on price range? Once again, thanks for the ideas thrown, I need all the help I can get building this stuff, I have 0% for everything I wanna have done by this halloween which is Car, 2 suits, 2 packs, 2 traps. I’m in over my head already. Wish me luck x.x; The car and suits are the main things, but ya gotta have the packs! As Winston once said, “Guys, what about the packs? What about the packs?!”
I hear ya man. Well to be honest when we overhauled the new Ecto. it was to be perminant. So the light bars are not a part of the roof rack now. Although that’s not a problem you’ll see when you get the stuff ready. The main thing you’ll need to do is run some serious wiring into your car so you can go through other methods, if you don’t want to put a hole in your car. (If it’s not perminant I woudn’t suggest doing this. I comes rather easy once you get started. Instead of light bars you might want to get some of the sirens at Autozone and rig it through the doors. If you check out Real LI Ghostbusters Ectomoblies in this site you’ll see what I mean. You will just have to get an adapter for mutiples to go into your ciggerette adapter. If you have any questions just let me know I’ll give you a hand.
Well no see, I got a new alternator recently in the car, the stock usually pushes 80 amps, the new one is 105 amps, and the lightbar I’m going to use, will use a max of 10, all lights on and siren/stereo working. The doors for the mustang, look like they have a support for the top of the door window, when in fact, it’s an illusion. The doors, when opened, only have the glass, if you rolled one down, you’d only have the main body of the door left, just like a convertable, so I can run the wires in through the top of the passenger window, to the box which will have light/sound controls, run a cable under the car through the door, carefully attached, to the battery from the control box, and blammo, instant and removable ecto lights. Just need to wire them into a central box on top, and run a single cable (Black cable on the passenger side of the real ecto 1) and tada, instant reality for the roof rack, I thought of the bubble lights for stage one, but decided to go all out this year. I’m trying to go for accuracy, minus the whole caddilac ford thing… >.>; Probably only have room for one lightbar on this car, I only have about 9 sq ft to work on, but that’ll be enough til I get something like a hearse or station wagon. But, thanks for input, I think I’ll be building the entire rack, because I can’t find something in pepboys or autozone that fits a mustang a, and b, I could build the entire rack for less than just a rack from those guys, and it’d better/more accurate, cuz I can weld gewd
Good for you Ecto96. Have a good time doing it and it sounds like you have a reall good plan for it. I really look forward to seeing the finished product keep me posted.
Thanks Ectoman, tonight when I get home from work I’m going to be taking/posting the pictures of the first modification to the Ectostang! You guys are going to like this, I think. It’s not original Ecto, a little custom, but no less cool nonetheless, plus the fact I can’t put an ecto emblem on the back, the bumper’s made of plastic.. Oh well, you’ll see.
Ok gang, here it is. In the back window of the car, hanging from the ceiling, to the left and not centered (So I can see) is an item with the no ghost logo, as well as the letters GHOSTBUSTERS on it. You can’t see too well because my webcam kinda.. sucks. It lights up, by way of a power inverter (As it’s meant for inside) an extension cord for ample reach, and a large magnet on the ceiling of the car. The first picture is the light with the garage lights on, and the sign off, the other is vice-versa. In the picture, it seems to look like it lights up white, but the light in the top of it is a red flourescent bulb, which, once it burns out, I’ll more than likely replace with a white bulb.
Let me know what you guys think. The reason for this, is the only place I could put a emblem on the back would be either the window, or the bumper, the trunk door’s hella small, and also where the plate goes. Bumper’s made of plastic, so a magnet wouldn’t stick, and I like having some visibility out the back of the car.
That is pretty cool, and thanks for the idea, but there’s nothing on the roof to strap anything on to, that’s the problem. And I don’t know if there are any ski racks for mustangs, I know there’s luggage racks for the trunk, but like I said, I’m going to build my own, and I want to have a fairly good screenlike rack, I want the two yellow tanks on one side, and one on the other, as well as the dome and that gun on top, as well as the dish on the back, if I can. Can you guys tell me approximately how large the logos on the doors of the Ecto 1 are? That’s the ecto look I’m going for.
Impressive work, you guys have put a lot of work into the conversion, and nice use on amber lights in the space of not being able to use blue or red ones.
It’s unfortunate that the print quality of the logos are somewhat disappointing.
I’m ordering mine from signs now, and for 3 logo’s at 1’x1’ they’ll cost me 85 bucks, so two would be in the 60’s I’m thinking, but I need exact dimensions and a good high res of the no ghost logo plz, thanks guys.
That is good work on your van though, I like it. According to my state’s laws, you can have any color lights on your car you want, it’s just that they CAN NOT be in operation while driving on the road and also CANNOT make your car easily mistaken for a squad car. I’m going to have to be careful on this, I’ll have a blue lightbar and the roofrack, but I’m sure some police out there have mustangs for squads, so I’ll have to be sure that rack’s noticable as non-police gear. Good work on your van though, good ecto.
So I did a photoshop (somewhat decent, somewhat crap) Of what I’m going to try and make my ectostang look like, tell me whatcha think! ^^
Probably gonna draw up plans and stuff, so when you other guys wanna build something like this, you can follow or modify, wouldn’t hurt to have something to go off of, as I’m still thinking of what to build some of the stuff outta, so it’s permanent and sturdy. For the gun and dome on top of the car, I’m putting those on hinges to lie down on top, so I can pull into the garage at night. Dunno, going to have plans in the works soon, I hope. Thanks again though, guys.
