so, here she is, all naked and new. ECTO 81 (because Jersey doesn’t allow hyphens on plates anymore…) is a 2008 Magnum SE… and is going to also be my work horse, so I can’t permanently have her as an Ecto all the time (except for the license plates and some red detailing I’m having done).
My plan is to have everything removable. Door logos, light bars, and eventually a roof rack. I have logos being made (second set since some savages stole my last pair… my fault for not taking them off overnight), but I really need some suggestions on light bars. I’m looking for full sized LED or something similar and this is where I am CLUELESS. I tried looking through Boomer’s thread to see what he used, but I couldn’t find the brand.
Thank you, Boomer! Good news, I got my replacement door logos today. Bad news, a bus decided it wanted to try to phase through my car and forced me off the road. No body damage, but the driver side hub caps shattered. So, those are getting replaced tomorrow. Hopefully I can get a set of lightbars in July when my work goes on a more steady schedule.
I, too, have a Magnum with all-removable gear. You’ve beat me to the punch posting about it though! I do see that you don’t have a factory roof rack, so it looks like you’re going to need a clamp-on one.
So until I make my own thread, let me give you an idea of what your car’s going to look like with a removable roof rack and magnets.
I might be skipping the clamp on and have a permanent roof rack mounted as it’ll actually be useful for non-Ecto things. First I just need to make sure that kind of thing is even possible..
well, I’ve read stories about this happening with other people with Ectos and today it happened to me… parked with the logos on and when I came back, there was a woman waiting for me. “Oh my god, I had no idea you guys were real…” and then proceeded to go on and on about stuff that happens to her… and UFOs that hover over her house because she’s an alien princess.
I think I’m going to keep the door logos off for a while…
That said, car updates! Nothing major, sadly. Had to replace the air spoiler under the front bumper and oilpan cover this week. I was driving along when it felt like I ran over a block a wood and then this AWFUL grinding noise… I pull over and look under the car and there was a LOT of shredded rubber. When it sheered off, it bend the front bumper, so now I have cracked and shattered paint in spots, but no damage. I replaced both today and figured out what had happened.
Before I bought the car, the car lot said they had the oil changed a couple days before I bought it. What probably happened was when whoever changed the oil, they didn’t replace the pan cover or left off two of the front bolts… which also help keep the air guard in place. it was an easy fix, but the paint damage is annoying as ■■■■■.
As for equipment plans, I think I’m going to opt for a clamp system to keep things to to roof… I’ll need more research but between the clamp roof rack Rich is using and then seeing a local sheriff dept Magnum with clamped on lightbars, that seems to be the way to go for me. I’m actually nervous that if I use magnets, they’ll slide and damage the paint. With clamps, I think it would be more secure and I could line them with cloth or rubber to protect the roof better.
Again, this is something I wanted to cover in my long-delayed thread about my own Ecto Magnum, but I wasn’t able to make a non-invasive clamp mount work with a 48" light bar, even after I bought longer adjustment bolts for the door clamps. I had to come up with an innovative solution, one that works VERY well for a removable rack. Your mileage may vary.
Rich, how didja make your 48" lightbar removable? Also how did you do the wireing hookup?
We have a 48" right now, and I’m pretty sure I can make the hookup removable, but there are 20 bazillion wires coming off it, and I’m not sure how deal with that thick cable.
(I’ve considered just using the ground, power, and two main switch wires that drive the takedown switches, and just bundling the rest up in the lightbar itself. That cuts the number of wires down more than 50%.)
Odds are we’d never use the individual separate light options anyway.
Rain gutter clamp mounts are available for most light bars, but it requires your vehicle to have rain gutters (sucks to be an HHR owner… no rain gutters.) Sounds like he had to fab something custom for the Magnum though.
As far as the lightbar itself goes, Whelen made so many variations of the same bar that I doubt the wiring harnesses on any two models are 100% identical, but this is guide I had leftover from our wiring overhaul before EAA3 in 2010.
Red - corner strobes
While with black stripe - secondary ground
Blue - front flashers
Brown - rear flashers
Green - drivers side alley light
Orange - takedowns
Yellow - passenger alley light
We merged a lot of the wires so that the switches are setup like this:
So we took 30 light options, picked the 12 ones we’d like to use the most often and condensed them into 6 switches. Just cut off the rest, cap them, and tuck them away.
I tried a pair of rain gutter clamp mounts, but a 48" light bar is too narrow for that to work on a Dodge Magnum. At least, I couldn’t get it to work. It simply wouldn’t clamp tightly and probably would slid off the roof the first time I tapped the brakes.
What I did was actually mount the light bar to the underside of my roof rack, where the siren would be mounted. I then put some padding between the light bar and the roof, to prevent rubbing. Unfortunately I had to learn that the hard way.
It’ll make sense when I post my thread, but in the meantime I did post a photo of the car earlier in this thread.
I’ve considered that.. mounting th elightbar to the rack itself. Since we no longer have a hatchback, the only temp way I can supply power though is through a window which looks like hell, or come up with some perm plug system so it can be plugged in.
The “cable-through-the-window” look is absolutely terrible, I’ll agree to that. Gary, since doing the Ecto/Ghostbusters activity is pretty important to you and Marcy, I don’t think a half-measure is a good idea. You ought to drill into the roof. In the long run it will save time taking the rack on and off, and you can hide all of the interior wires under your headliner, running them down the A-pillars and through the dash. Paint the area where you drill to prevent rust, and find a really good sealant for the cable plug.
When you’re all done with the Civic, pull the wiring and do some light bondo over the roof hole. Then cover it up with a cosmetic plastic shark fin antenna.
As for your new Streethawk lightbar, it is way, WAY too big for your car. Your lightbar should be as wide as the trim channels on your roof, no wider. Lightbars that hang off the edges of cars look incredibly goofy, and it’s going to take up space for a decent roof rack.
Streethawks (and similar models) are AWFUL for cars. They belong on tow trucks and SUVs. Do you see what I mean?
Hell, the enlarged lightbar currently on the Sony car looks terrible
when compared to the right size…
I think that wolo bar is PERFECT for your Civic. It looks great. The car does not look top-heavy AT ALL when it’s what you’re rocking. Plus, if you kept the Wolo then you’d have that much more space for additional lights on the front of the rack, something I’ve been working on for years but have never been able to get around to.
SCALE and PROPORTION are two thing that few custom builders take into account, and it’s the difference between “that car has some equipment!” and “look at all the ■■■■ piled on that car!”
Sorry for the OT but lightbar related reply in advance.
I tried our wolo bar on the car, and it looked like hell… its way too narrow, and needs to be wider.. Part of the problem in those pics you posted was the mounted position of the lightbar. Its supposed to be mounted from mid front door to over the driver’s head.
I did a size check on the car when we got it, and positioned properly it looks pretty good. ( I needed to move it actually 4-6 inches further back though for proper placement.)
Lower profile would have been better, but we really wanted rotators. Because we have the 4 door, that also gives us a little more roof space on top.
The plan is to make an actual roof rack this time, and use those black rubber chair feet on the ends so it can rest on the roof without marring it. That will raise the profile up of the rack, and hopefully make the higher profile of the lightbar look more like it fits.
Wolo makes a larger lightbar now, but its almost the same size as what we picked up last month, and the deal we got on our new bar was half the cost of a new Wolo full sized bar. We just REALLY wanted a real lightbar this time around, and the green lightbar means we don’t have to worry so much about having it attached while in motion. (The local police said they had no issue with green actually even being on while in motion. the only issue they have is blue or red.) We probably won;t run it while in motion anyway, except when we do the city halloween event.
Odds are I will take your advice on wireing though. I really don’t want to mess up the headliner though. (I just helped a freind install a K.I.T.T. console I wired for him, and the headliner was a pain in the rump, but it needed replacing anyway.)
Have you seen a 1-4 switch smaller switchbox for lightbars like this? (I haven’t searched for one yet.) We aren’t concerned about resale at the end of the car life.. odds are we’ll run it into the ground, or Marci will total it like the last two cars she owned before. :sigh:
Here is a quick mockup I did to see what we wanted to do with the car. the roof rack will need to be longer to extend to the top edge of the back window, and it needs to sit about 6 inches higher than on the tib.
(I stretched an old pic of our rack side and light to fit the car’s length and height.)
We replaced the light covers and already have the caution tape (It’ll cover up where the door bumpers are now, which we both hate with a passion.) The logo will be slightly larger and lower than shown, and I already have a vinyl guy lined up as well who does great work, and has killer prices. I just need to get the artwork to him to have it done. (That tail stripe shape was problematic, but we found a solution to getting its shape and size down.)
I also want to get the rack parts at proper angle this time. Since the last rack was thrown together in just a week’s time, it served us well, but I’d like something better (Even if downsized from the original.) this time around. Getting rid of the MDF base will also reduce the weight a lot, since that had a lot of metal reinforcing the part connections on the bottom of it.
