My buddies and I have decided to to recreate the Ecto-1 using my friend’s recently purchased '91 Ford Crown Victoria Wagon Ltd. The car will be dismantled soon after Halloween so we’re not going all out trying to recreate it, budget-wise…not to mention the fact that we’re all poor college kids, lol.
So far, about 90% of everything is in place–the car is painted white, I’ve ordered the ‘No Ghost’ decals, some yellow and black hazard tape, whitewall tire paint and we went on a totally open-minded shopping spree through Menards to look for anything that we could use to reproduce stuff on the roof rack. Here’s the stuff I still need help with, circled in red:
For the life of me, I can’t figure out what any of that stuff is or what it’s supposed to be. Any help on what can be used to recreate that stuff, preferably cheaply?
Also, what could be used to recreate the black ladder on the side of the car? Short of buying an actual ladder, of course, which I feel would probably be too expensive, heavy and cumbersome.
From left to right: Radome, Sniffer tower, Radar. Look on ebay for a plastic/acrylic display case/dome. The siniffer tower is easy to make on your own with stuff you can buy at Home Depot or Lowes and then the radar is just a semisphere cut in half. As for the ladder, just make it out of square plastic tubing.
Hmm…Thanks for the advice. However, I have no idea what a Sniffer tower is, nor can I find any information about it online.. Is there another term for it?
It’s not a real part. The Sniffer tower was fabricated for the ecto-1’s roof rack. It’s all metal tubing with some metal mesh on the side of it. You can replicate it out of PVC pipe you can find at home depot or lowes.
Thanks! I was thinking about maybe using a sprayed down bottle of Sunny Delight or something like that as the base of the tower. Not ideal, but it could do the job.
Yep, I’ve been to that site. Thanks for the suggestion. I think I’m looking good for now. The only thing that’s going to be a pain in the neck is the ladder.
The police Siren is a Federal C5GB and there is one listed on ebay right now. When you say ice box and A/C, what specifically are you referring to? For the TI box all you need is a 17"x8"8" box with knobs on it.
The large white rectangular box at the bottom of the roof rack in the picture from my original post and the smaller white box at the upper right hand corner in the same picture.
The “large white rectangular box at the bttom of the roof rack” is no more than just a sheet of plywood with 1" wooden rods on top over the motors that rotate the radar and sniffer tower. The fan box at the top there are measurements for over on theecto1.com, you can have that made a fabrication shop
What about the thin raised areas on the white box at the bottom?
And also, are there any cheap alternatives that I could use in place of the police siren? Remember, I’m on a budget, so spending hundreds of bucks on something I’ll use for two days tops is out of the question.
Are you talking about the louvers??? There really aren’t any cheap alternatives to the siren. If you’re on a budget then you’re gonna have to get creative because accuracy is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
Or, if that’s out of your budget range, go to your nearest big box hardware store and stare at the plumbing/sprinkler system section. I’ve even seen ceiling light housings that look similar if you want to keep it cheap.
Thanks, Boomer! I actually managed to dust off something I found in my basement called a Diaphragm Sprayer (and no, it has nothing to do with women’s fertility) that looks like it’s from the 1950s. Taped off all the labels and gave it a nice coat of a metallic paint and it passes for an old police siren!
Last couple questions:
Any ideas how I could replicate the fan box in the upper righthand corner? At this point it’s a more of a minor detail and I don’t really even mind if it’s not on the car, but if it can be done for cheap using a hodgepodge of random object drilled/glued together, it’d be perfect.
Has anyone bought whitewall paint to apply to your Ecto’s tires? If so, what’s the cheapest type available? I have acrylic paint but I’m not sure that would work.
I constructed some fins for the car out of foam board. What do you think would be the best way to mount the fins to the car?
For the a/c fan box, chichi around for hvac surplus stores, if you live in a metro area, you’ll have one. Cheapest thing that comes to mind would be metal rods from home depot, bent and attached to a cylinder. Break the parts you’re trying to build down into simple shapes, then browse the aisles until you find something.
For the white with red striped dome part, we used a outdoor winter plimbing cover from walmart for about two bucks. We painted it white, plugged the open end with a bit of styrofoam, cut a hole in that, and mounted it on a piece of PVC. We found a pvc adapter with a flat bottom, bolted that to the bottom of our roof rack, and then just slip the other end of the pvc pipe in.
Its withstood 85 mph, and probably 60-80 hours of drive time now.
We came up with a small sniffer (the thing with the red rods) using just pvc pipe, a 3 way, and 2 45 degree angles. The 3 way goes on top of a bit of pipe, which used the same mount as the above sonar dome. Both are removable if we need to take them off for weather or low parking garages. I capped the front ends of the pipes with styrene cuts (from a plastic for sale sign) so they wouldn’t catch the wind.
Our roof rack was budget and quite small.. you can see pics of it in the link in my sig.
