- November 4th, 2009, 12:34 am#180471
O.K. so regardless of if you dig it of not, most of you know my car but may not know how it got to be what it is or why. This is a thread that will answer all of that and will also be used for future build updates and the like.
Before we can know Ecto-1G we must first meet Spectre-1. I had owned hearses most of my life but after getting into doing the Ghostbusting thing for a while I decided we needed a car for events. Being that my '81 Superior Landau was so far from being a '59 Combo, I decided to go custom. I used Dan's original concept for the Ecto, a dark sinister car with purple and clear lights. Since it was SO far from being an Ecto I dubbed it "Spectre-1" and life was good.
Unfortunately before I could build a roof rack and add more lights I was T-Boned on the way to work. The wreck caused some minor LOOKING body damage but bent the frame, totalling out the car.
We went ecto-less for about a year then I decided to do another car...a Magnum. I traded my 2006 Mustang in on an 07 Magnum...that night I had the logos on. I then sent it to the guys at Macon Communications (the same guys that do our Sheriff's cars) they had put the lightbar on the hearse and as a tribute (though I knew a strobe would look better) I had the very same lightbar installed.
What I had not realized, was that the magnum has a layered interior, meaning to get under the headliner you essentially have to gut the inside.
After all that they charged me $85.00 for the install.
Now I've never been a fan of big wheels, but knowing several who have 22"s on their magnums I got to thinking they fit the wheel well much better so the 1-G went from this....
to this...
The next thing I added was vertical doors. Like big wheels I've never liked these before, but on the maggies I thought they looked great. Plus I got in on a group buy, so the kit which normally costs $2,000 cost me $780 installed. And the install wasn't a big deal...
You take the fender off, grind down one bracket, then replace the factory hinges with the new ones and viola!
The next mod was the most crazy.
I've always loved the look of lowriders but never the ride. How could you have both? 2 answers...Hydraulics or Air Bags. Both do essentially the same thing but bags are cheaper and typically more reliable (the trade off being hydros give you a nearly unlimited playtime) At a car show in Florida I won a raffle...a raffle for 2 new air compressors. A month later I was "bagged out"
It stayed in that state for months then I felt it was time for a roof rack. I knew I wanted a custom rack, after all the bulk of the car is custom so why not? I started with a "low profile" rack with a wooden "motherboard"
I did semi-accurate side tanks out of PVC and added a bunch of circuit boards then took it back to Macon Communications.
The Macon Communications guys alerted me to the fact that the circuit board would mold if left out in the weather so they came off, and I let those guys go crazy...here are the results...
I'll be making some minor more screen accurate changes, adding a sniffer, radome, moving stuff around etc. But the next thing will be red side stripes from the tail lights to the doors and new logos all done in reflective vinyl.
So that's the car so far. I called it the 1-G partially because it's Georgia based and partially as a joke about it being "G'd up"
more to follow as additions occur.
Before we can know Ecto-1G we must first meet Spectre-1. I had owned hearses most of my life but after getting into doing the Ghostbusting thing for a while I decided we needed a car for events. Being that my '81 Superior Landau was so far from being a '59 Combo, I decided to go custom. I used Dan's original concept for the Ecto, a dark sinister car with purple and clear lights. Since it was SO far from being an Ecto I dubbed it "Spectre-1" and life was good.
Unfortunately before I could build a roof rack and add more lights I was T-Boned on the way to work. The wreck caused some minor LOOKING body damage but bent the frame, totalling out the car.
We went ecto-less for about a year then I decided to do another car...a Magnum. I traded my 2006 Mustang in on an 07 Magnum...that night I had the logos on. I then sent it to the guys at Macon Communications (the same guys that do our Sheriff's cars) they had put the lightbar on the hearse and as a tribute (though I knew a strobe would look better) I had the very same lightbar installed.
What I had not realized, was that the magnum has a layered interior, meaning to get under the headliner you essentially have to gut the inside.
After all that they charged me $85.00 for the install.
Now I've never been a fan of big wheels, but knowing several who have 22"s on their magnums I got to thinking they fit the wheel well much better so the 1-G went from this....
to this...
The next thing I added was vertical doors. Like big wheels I've never liked these before, but on the maggies I thought they looked great. Plus I got in on a group buy, so the kit which normally costs $2,000 cost me $780 installed. And the install wasn't a big deal...
You take the fender off, grind down one bracket, then replace the factory hinges with the new ones and viola!
The next mod was the most crazy.
I've always loved the look of lowriders but never the ride. How could you have both? 2 answers...Hydraulics or Air Bags. Both do essentially the same thing but bags are cheaper and typically more reliable (the trade off being hydros give you a nearly unlimited playtime) At a car show in Florida I won a raffle...a raffle for 2 new air compressors. A month later I was "bagged out"
It stayed in that state for months then I felt it was time for a roof rack. I knew I wanted a custom rack, after all the bulk of the car is custom so why not? I started with a "low profile" rack with a wooden "motherboard"
I did semi-accurate side tanks out of PVC and added a bunch of circuit boards then took it back to Macon Communications.
The Macon Communications guys alerted me to the fact that the circuit board would mold if left out in the weather so they came off, and I let those guys go crazy...here are the results...
I'll be making some minor more screen accurate changes, adding a sniffer, radome, moving stuff around etc. But the next thing will be red side stripes from the tail lights to the doors and new logos all done in reflective vinyl.
So that's the car so far. I called it the 1-G partially because it's Georgia based and partially as a joke about it being "G'd up"
more to follow as additions occur.
Last edited by Chace on September 22nd, 2014, 10:57 pm, edited 21 times in total.