Alright so this project has been 2 years in the making. One year of research, and one year to buy and collect all the parts for 2 pack builds. I have always wanted to build one of these for as long as I can remember. I’m not to much older than the first GB1, its been my all time favorite movie for pretty much my whole life.
And the second one I’m building as a x-mas present for my father. My dads one of those types of dads who buys everything he wants himself so its always a pain in the ass to buy for him on b-days or x-mas. How many dads get to say there son got them an unlicensed nuclear accelerator for x-mas huh?? Plus the oldest memory I have of my father is a photo I saw when I was about 3, It was him and 3 of his buddies from work, dressed as the 4 ghostbusters for a Halloween party his work work had put on. They had total scrap built pack with guns that looked like Tesla coils and everything I know its 25 years late but better late than never right. Not to mention he has also just finished a home movie theater that he’s wanted for ever and hes been decorating it with old classic movie posters and stuff, so I figured id build him a real, fairly close to screen accurate pack so he can start displaying movie props in there as well.
Kind of a sappy back story but 
lol on to the build…
Just to show you what im dealing with here lol
No expense was spared for these 2 builds. I bough as many real parts as I could as well as a bunch of machined aluminum parts and resin/fiberglass replicas. Everything was supplied buy tons of different people from the site, I’m sure they’ll know who they are lol. Both will have full lights and sound as well. It was either go big or go home for me on this.
So I figured on these builds I’d start with the pack just working from the upper right corner down.
First up was the ion arm, pretty self explanatory I measured out and drilled all the holes for the resistors and ion arm cap (the screws you see are what I used to secure the wood plug I built for inside the ion arms, they’ll be filled over with magic sculpt when I get to that point in the builds)…
Here is what it looked like with everything dry fitted…
Next was attaching the ion arm to the pack shell. Now I came up with my own way for attaching all these parts to the shell as you’ll see. I wanted to make sure everything was pretty stout so we wouldn’t have to worry about anything really breaking off of them.
So first I traced the shape of the ion arm onto the shell. I had already cut and fitted pieces of 2x4’s inside of the hallow ion arms as I said before. The double lines are the measurements for the outer wall of the ion arm so I knew where to drill these 4 holes…
Here is where the extra sturdiness of my build comes to light. Last week I had measured an cut a bunch of pieces of aluminum to use as large “washers” so to say. I drilled holes through the spacer matching the holes I drilled through the shell then I used 4, 1/4 inch lag bolts that will be drilled into 4 corresponding holes that I already drilled into the wooden plug of the ion arm…
Next came the booster tube/plug/frame. this part was a pain for me there might have been an easier way but this what the way I decided to go for ease of putting together after paint and sturdiness. First of course I had to sand the recess in the shell as well as a bit around the angled cut of the PVC pipe to get them to fit perfect. Then I measured the center line of the booster tube straight up the pack. and drilled out 4 holes that will hold the tube in place…
Then drilled the corresponding holes in the tube itself…
And again used one of my custom cut aluminum spacers inside the shell to hold it all together…
Here it is all attached and bolted up… (and yes I noticed it was crooked and its already been fixed)
Now for the booster plug, I wrapped electrical tape around the narrow part of it to space it perfectly inside the booster tube…
I then drilled a hole completely through the booster tube, the thick part of the booster plug and the shell…
then drilled 3 other holes through the booster tube and part way into the thick part of the booster plug…
What I’m going to do with this is for the hole that goes completely through the shell, I have a wooden dowel that ill push all the way through like this…
Then cut smaller dowels for the holes that aren’t drilled all the way through. I’ll 2 part epoxy all of them in place and just use my magic sculpt to fill and smooth the holes up behind them so you wont ever know once its all painted.
Then I wend ahead and drilled the 2 holes through the booster frame and tube and dry fitted the frame with the socket head cap screws…
Whew that part was a total pain in the ass and was the one part I was dreading when I laid out the game plan for these builds but now its all done and worked better than expected so its on to the HGA. first of course I drilled out all the holes for the socket head cap screws and both elbows…
everything dry fitted…
Then I drilled 2 holes through the shell and connected everything in the same way as I did the ion arm. I did have to cut some off my metal spacers to fit with the uneven fiberglass inside the shell as you can see…
Attached and bolted up, pretty easy (I kinda messed up the far left hole when I started to drill, was able to get it straightened out and the fittings actually sit even, you can kinda see the actual hole just a bit inside. I’ll just have to use a little magic sculpt to fill in a bit of the hole around the fitting, no biggie)…
Next measured the holes for the gun mount to coincide with Franchesky’s aluminum v-hook’s. I did have to enlarge the holes Franchesky had pre drilled in these v-hooks because they were to small to accept the right size screw but that was super easy…
Another super sturdiness washer (I’ll call them ssw’s from now on) inside the shell…
All bolted up ready for a gun…
And the last thing I did for the night was drill out the holes for the legris straights under the PPD (yea I couldnt find 4 or the 5/32 legris straights so went with 1/4 inch ones, if you have or know of any for sale I’d love to know lol)…
And I was pretty tired and my back was killing me after working most of the day to get to this point so I’m turning in for the night. Have another day full planned tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll have tons more to update tomorrow but since I have to do everything twice it takes a little longer than usual lol.
I’ll gladly answer any questions anyone has and would love constructive criticism. Thanks for looking.
Eric
. I forgot to mention that I think that what your doing for your father is great and I’m sure he will love it. Does he know your making it? If he doesn’t know your making it you should probably show him yours first on the day you plan to give him his and see how much he admires it and then surprise him in the end when your taking yours away with his own. Or you probably have something worked out, just make sure you surprise him if he doesn’t know.
