View new posts | View your posts First Packbuild - It starts (Noob questions incl.)

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I purchased an Exoray shell with all necessary parts... Before I will paint it, I try to drill the holes for the parts and try to attach the parts safe to the shell. So I have a few questions:

1. Is the Ion Knob only attached to the bumper or to the cylotron, too?
2. How to attach the N-Filter, this thing is hollow, so just glue it or glue a wooden part into it, that I can screw it? Does the N-Filter light up? What should I use for the holes, in the screenused pack it looks like white plastic or something...
3. How is the Booster Tube attached? Glued? Screwed? and if so, with the same bolt as the Booster frame?
4. Same question for the PPD? How it is attached?
5. Is it better to glue the Resistors, the ion arm is a finished part and it looks like, its not so easy to screw something into it, because there is too less space to act in it...
6. Does the ribbon cable just lead into a simply hole on the pack?
7. What parts should I own before I start to build? Is it a good idea to glue on the painting or glue it first?
8. On which position is the bumper attached?
9. Is there a system to make the crank knob movable?

Thanks, I will let you know about updates...

These are 2 of my all-time favorite build threads, you'll find just about everything you need inside.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=21988

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16457

Thanks, especially the 2nd helps a lot... I see everyone uses L-Brackets for the injector tubes, is it necessary or just a better way to make it safe?!?

Aside from it being screen accurate it also helps to protect an area on the pack that's subject to a lot of abuse.

Thanks, I guess I have to order the first parts and start then... Not so easy as I thought...

Not as hard as you might think either

Thats, what YOU say...

Seriously... I thought a pack with shell and parts is like a big puzzle, just screw and glue the parts together, but there are still problems, I never thought of...

One problem is still the N-Filter, this thing is hollow, how can I attach this thing? From the side with a screw? Just glue it on the shell and fix it with some acrylic paste?!? If I screw it, I hope it won't break in pieces...

Next is the booster tube... I doesn't fit exactly to the back wall, if I attach it exactly to the back I won't fit in the hole on the Exoray shell... Should I sand a part of the tube away, that the angle is correct or is the tube too short then?!?

Mounting the HGA was annoying to me, but another member was able to lend some good advice. I pretty much just cut a small piece of wood that I glued inside of it. Of course when I tried to put some screws into it from the inside of the shell I couldn't get the screwdriver in there except at an angle. And when I finally did the pressure of the screw ripped the wood free (since its not exact to the inside of the HGA). To solve this I redid the whole thing, but I used two more screws that were through the back of the HGA at the bottom. Now it holds perfectly and they're impossible to see.

And for some reason I also had a HUGE problem getting the ION ARM mounted on the shell. I could not get it to line up right. Just had to keep doing it until I had drilled so many holes I almost ruined it.

Yup that is what I say

Don't get me wrong I come up against things I'm not sure about how to preceed either, What I usually do Is go back over my fav pack builds like mburkit's or Bigi71 or Plough through all the extensive ref images on here.

Honestly though alot of your problems could be solved by looking at Libtechinit's pack build. I think he might have an exoray shell, I have grabbed a few ideas of my shell along the way like attaching the ion arm.
check it out viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16457&hilit=umoribawar

also you can see my build here in terms of another exoray shell build viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23581

I tackled the booster tube in a slightly different way as I chose to attach a much more accurate aluminuim tube, but then had to alter the height of the eda to match...basicly as you can see in Libtechnit's build you just need alot of custom bits of metal here and there to reinforce and screw into.

Soooo when i'm stuck for a "how do I install this thing" question I generally look at his page.

Hope that helps.

The HGA is no problem, there is already wood in it...

If I glue a piece of wood in the N-Filter, I can screw it to the shell, but I need to know if the N-Filter is lighted in the movie, sometimes it looks that it light up with a bright white light inside...

I will try tomorrow what I can do with the Booster Tube... thanks for your links...

I don't think they lit up in the movies.

Yes I'm fairly darn sure it wasn't lit

for the iron arm and nFIlter, I cut out sements of round wood. I made sure it fitted snuggly inside each and then put lots of little countersunk screws to hold it in place..The screws on the nfilter are hidden by parts of the pack shell and the ones on the ion arm are then filled in with epoxy putty and sanded. With the ion arm inside wood block, I drilled a larger hole to fit the large washer that seems to come with the large dale resistor. So when the wood block is inside the ion arm, the dale resistor is able to screw into the washer making it very secure.

having the wood on the nfilter also makes it easy to put a white paint roller and metal netting inside...gives you soemthing to glue or screw into

Here we go again:

I need the distance from the top of the booster tube to the Booster frame or maybe the first hole for the frame...
Would be helpful...

Has anyone a list for the correct screws? I dont believe that the screws are always the same on the whole pack...?!?
I need the sized of the heads, especially for the HGA, booster frame, screws to hold the pack on the motherboard, the screw from the ion knob, so ALL visible screws... Can anyone help out?!?

Well for the screws I sure you can find that out. For starters look at the stickied thread near the top of this pack forum on installing the motherboard. The screw size is mentioned in there and I pretty sure the ones on the HGA are the same.

Seriously though please try eye balling some details based on the lovely abundance of reference pictures particularly the ones at the top of this pack thread. There are only so many choices in terms of the right socket screws you can choose from so in many cases you can work it out.

As far as the ladder frame fitting on the booster tube and where to put the holes...I did just what I have told you. If you look at the angles in relation to each other in the reference pictures. Ie the EDA, powercell and the ppd you can see quite clearly where the frame goes and also where to put the screws.

I certainly don't mind helping you out from time to time, but alot of the questions you are askign are ones that I have had to find out myself just from looking at the ref pictures.

If you read through the stickied Master Parts List Thread, you'll find most of the discussion is about the screws used for the pack. Kind2311 has a post in the thread on the first page with each screw, where it goes and how many.

KInd of my point...

The sticky threads are there for a reason. Soooo many people seem to miss them

By the way...the accurate screws with the fine ribs on the sides of the allen heads seem to be pretty hard to find in germany unless you want large quantities, so if you still have to order something from the us you might be able to get the correct ones too that way.

I know, I know... I have a really bad eyes and my 3-dimensional thinking is not very good, so I have build a too big ghost trap, a too big proton pack, an inacurate sniffer, and changed 3 times the slime blower tanks, because it always was too big or too small... So, I dont want to make any mistakes now... Stefans plans were very helpful, but not everything is mentioned in his plans. I have some reference pics, but its really hard to see all the things you need to know. I dont want to screw only one screw or drill a hole if Im not sure, that it's 100% correct...

And as bigi said, I have to calculate everything in mm and Im pretty sure that its hard enough to find something useful, what comes close to acurate...

hmmm in that case I can give you measurements on what I did. But I wouldn't swear that they were 100% accurate( as they are not) But then again accuracy is always one of those things thats hard to achieve with out 100% acurate plans ... a constant topic on this site :p

As I said before I eyeballed the holes for the screws for the ladder frame but I will be happy to measure for you. bare in mind that I used 2.5 (63.5 mm") aluminum tube for my booster so if yours is different you might need to make minor adjustments.

Ill get round to that tonight hopefully

Thanks... It is really not easy, because most of the parts are not 100% acurate to the parts I have... So hopefully everything will fit...

Still the same screw problem... Of course I can get some screws from oversea, but nothing will fit then... I have to get a tab from the USA, I have to get a drill bit, everything only just for some screws...

So I start to ask myself, what people do in UK oder in other parts of the world where they have the metric system...
It is really complicated, I cant go in a store and get some screws, and even if I need one more, its possible to get one more in just a minute...

So, it would be helpful if someone can tell me a good alternative to the US standart screws for the HGA, Bumper, Mobo to Pack, Boosterframe, etc.

It would very nice, if they have the standart DIN Norm or just the M sizes (no, we just have even numbers like M8,M10,M12, etc.), the DIA/size of the head would be helpful, too...

After a long time just sitting and watching reference pics and other packs and pack builds, I thought it was time to start...

There are still a lot parts missing, so I tried to start with drilling works and some pre-works for the drilling parts.

First I glued a wooden part into the Ion Arm, so into the booster Tube, so I can screw through without problems...

I started to draw the drilling holes with the help of stefan plans, but only the holes I already have the parts... I want to get sure, and check it with the correct sized parts, a wrong hole can be filled again, but is still annoying...

For the first screws, I took standart EU size cross screws for all parts, where you dont see the screws (so, the inner screws)...

First was the Crank Knob, I glued an inbus screw inside, and attached it to the pack...



I screwed the Ion arm to the pack, hopefully after receiving the resistors and the end cap, this is the first part I can finish. Of course I will secure the ion arm with epoxy glue when everthing is finished...





Next I drilled the holes for the Booster Tube and tried to attach the tube... I dont know, but the tube looks not really straight to me... I tried to change the position a few times, drilled a bunch of new holes, but it still looks crooked to me...








Dont know, maybe I have to change it again...

Drilled the holes in the bumper and for the tubes..



Next I could paint the N-Filter to finish it up with another wooden part in it to screw it safely to the pack...

As I tried to drill the holes into the HGA, the drill broke... Typical... I tried everything to get that broken part out of the HGA, but no chance, so I gues this thing is lost... Otherwise I would screw that part already to the pack, too...

But the alice frame is already finished and painted...

Next I think I have to get some parts finally, I dont want to drill holes before I have the parts on hand to check if everything is correct...

Still thinking about the screw problem, hopefully I find a solution. I found good screws for the HGA, but they look too big for the booster frame, so i dont want to screw the holes for the frame not as soon as I have the correct screws and of course the tube for the PPD...

I attached my N filter with black RTV silicone. It is very strong and smoothed out to look like it isn't even there. If you ever need to remove it all you need is a razor blade and it pops right off.

Good idea, I thought of acryl. you can'T paint normally over silicone?!?

Well, I think I will take a close look, when its attached, if I take something to fill the gaps...

Finally (after 1 year) I ordered some parts, they arrived today, and I played a little bit around...

How do I attach the blue tubes to the long Resistor (GB2) on the Ion Arm?!? I looked at the photos of the original prop, it looks like they used barbs for the upper tube, but I see no way to atach the barb safe to the resistor...

So, anyoe can help out?

Got my machined ion knob. I calculated the middle of the bumper, and checked if it looks ok. It looks like I placed it too much to the right... So anyone got a pattern or something for the bumper, where to drill the hole for the ion knob?!?

I have some of these white "F1 10A1115V" and "F2 5A115V" Labels on my decal set, but I don't know where to place it... Can someone help?

They go on the guntrack:

They go on the gun track.

EDIT - I posted a moment too late. My apologies.

Thanks...