Spirit full size proton pack mods?

[joeyvenkman]

Wow that sound system looks insane! Love the smoke effects too, super cool stuff.

I’ve been working on my spirit pack for the past few months as well, mostly focusing on cosmetic mods. Lots of stuff from Chris Bosh’s etsy page. I also got the crank knob upgrade from GreatScottPropShop, & a slip-on cyclotron upgrade from Extrud8. All the upgrades ended up super well integrated after priming & painting (and texturing!)

Here are some progress pics:

The whole hassle with texturing the pack was totally worth it. I followed Chris Bosh’s guide (How to texture your pack shell (Tutorial) - Tutorials & Guides - GBFans.com) using homax wall texture & got really nice results. I also tried sanding down the harsh edges on areas like the power cell & crank gen to give it a softer, more rounded appearance.

I didn’t bother with cutting off the cyclotron to accurize the bumper too. Just felt like it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Considering other “fused” areas like the booster tube & HGA I’m pretty OK with the way it looks now.

To get some of the parts to look like aluminum, I wrapped them in foil tape & used a scotchbrite pad to roughen the surface & give it some directionality. It works surprisingly well on flat surfaces like the ion arm, gun mount block & ribbon cable clamp.

I didn’t like how inset the motherboard was after removing that soft padding, so I added some washers on the inside to make it level with the back of the shell. You can also see the JBL speaker I put on the back to get better sound. I followed this guide (https://youtu.be/lmxhETyjxLw) to mount the pack to the Alice frame.

Speaking of sound, I ended up scrapping the stock wand entirely & just got a spengler wand instead. Added an audio jack to the end of it & combined the audio with the pack’s audio via a basic passive mixer I built on stripboard.

Overall I’m pretty happy with how it turned out! I’m gonna experiment with replacing/covering the stock tubing next. It’s just kinda wimpy. I did experiment with simply slipping some real tubing over the included stuff & it might look ok. Still waiting for a full set to arrive & we’ll see how it looks then.

Other than that I think I’m mostly done with this pack! Maybe. For now.

[joeyvenkman]

Tubing upgrade was successful!

The biggest difference is definitely on the injector tubes. Huge improvement with the thicker tubing. In some areas I also slipped on bits of corrugated tube to act as those strain relief fittings (I guess that’s what they used on the original packs? Not sure)

The thinner tubing hasn’t changed as much with the upgrade although it is more vibrant & shiny now! To remove the old stuff I basically just twisted & pulled it out, then drilled out the stuck glued bits. A good amount of it seems to hold well with a friction-fit like the red tubing on the elbows for example. And for anything that wouldn’t hold or didn’t seem sturdy enough, I cut & glued some electrical screws of different lengths for the tubing to slip over.