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Hi everyone! within the last month, one of the shells from the line of HMS shells that have been floating around the community for the past year came into my hands. Originally I was building up a heavily modified Bigi330 shell to have as my "cherry" pack for display at home; it was going to be the proton pack on the cover of the OMNI Magazine during the montage of Ghost Busters. With acquiring this new shell that has supposed lineage to the GB1 production, I decided that this new shell would become my display pack at home. And so begun my usual dive into insanity with modifying something to be how I want it to be. . .

The shell came to me looking like this:



This shell boggles my mind when I stare at it. On one hand, it has certain things that look like they got right with this mold, but then other things that are either missing or completely wrong along with all the deformities.



I wanted this pack to look like a Hero fiberglass shell from the production of GB1. To do so, I had to remove, change and/or add to the shell. The above photo has the things I wanted to change circled. Once the shell was in hand, I began to modify! First came filling in the 2 holes that are on the pack for the vacuum hose on the crank knob and the top of the sync generator. Next came the "nipples" on the EDA Discs, as well as sanding down the spot for the PPD, which was shaped wrong. After those things came some bigger stuff, such as removing the deformed Clippard Valve disc and the cast in N-Filter. Lastly, I tried my best to get rid of the "bulge" that's on the side of the sync gen, near the clippard valve. The real packs didn't have this and it always bugged me every time I saw a pack built from this shell.



I clayed in the hallow N-Filter and fiberglassed over it. Once that was all set up, I flipped it over and cut the N-Filter. The result of that process is in the above photo.

Another thing that I noticed yesterday was the top rib of the PowerCell was missing the connecting material between the rib and the EDA.



So I filled that in too!



And with that, I felt confident enough to texture the bugger.



After texturing, I added a few of the "tells" seen on the heros. These consisted mostly of sanding marks on the ribs, some cuts on the bottom of the crank gen, and visible nails on some of the ribs of the crank gen and powercell.





After a coat of Lacquer and then a coat of primer, I am brought to this lovely point in the build:


The shell is now much closer to what I feel was what the production shells for the hero packs in GB1 were. Now I can start building it all up! Some of the next few things I will be doing is cutting out a motherboard for the shell and mounting it on there with aluminum L-Brackets. Stay tuned for more hijinks!

Looking good Matt!

Are you a wizard?

Good thing someone has eagle eyes and noticed the top of the powercell!


I saw the pre-texture changes Matt did, and it's pretty neat, though it opened some other questions that made us want to throw Jack out the window.

ChapterMasterTu'Shan wrote: I saw the pre-texture changes Matt did, and it's pretty neat, though it opened some other questions that made us want to throw Jack out the window.

Not my fault the lineage of that shell is crookeder than a $3 coin. That's what happens when you make something from destroyed stunt molds and measurements. Figuring out what's original and what's been made up is an excercise in frustration.

Looking good Matt, she's going to be a beauty.

Heck yeah, Matt! That's going to be a fine build.

Bumpers on, as well as the powercell window has been cut. Hopefully I can cut a motherboard for it today too then I'm kinda out of things to do unit I get my order from mcmaster-carr.

Last update for a little while... hand cut motherboard!

Small update. I have the shell mounted on the hand-cut motherboard and all that mounted on a LC-1 ALICE frame.





I also got the Clippard Valve on there with the male v-hook and crank knob, but I'm quickly running out of things to do on this pack until I get the rest of the metal parts for her. But I am liking how its coming along so far.

Very clean. I'm liking this so far! I can't wait to see more on this one.

So I did some work on this pack today! I basically got all the metal parts I have attached to the shell at this point.



Here's the N-Filter:


And the plate that it slides over, like the hero packs:


A little from the left:

And a little from the right!


And now, just for fun, some side by sides against my Ray Stantz Pack.






That's for a little while with this pack, until I get more parts to slap on it! Thanks for looking.

Great job!!

It's really looking good, the OMNI has always been my fave pack and is what I'm basing my build on. Great job, can't wait for the next installment!

This appears to be the start to a tremendous build!

One question though. Does the plate riveted to the shell, within the n-filter function as a mount somehow? If so how and is it a part of any gb1 hero pack? After all my research, I can't say I've ever seen it.

KyleS wrote:This appears to be the start to a tremendous build!

One question though. Does the plate riveted to the shell, within the n-filter function as a mount somehow? If so how and is it a part of any gb1 hero pack? After all my research, I can't say I've ever seen it.

I answered my own question.

KyleS wrote:

KyleS wrote:This appears to be the start to a tremendous build!

One question though. Does the plate riveted to the shell, within the n-filter function as a mount somehow? If so how and is it a part of any gb1 hero pack? After all my research, I can't say I've ever seen it.

I answered my own question.

Yeah, sorry. I was on vacation (and maybe doing a little bit of research) in Los Angeles, CA and only really had my phone, so I was unable to really respond the way I wanted to when I saw you post this. But for other's that may have that same question, you can see in this photo of the Spengler pack, that they pop riveted a plate onto the bottom of the cyclotron and glued the N-Filter onto it.



Now that I'm back, I'm going to start working on this build a little more; most likely on the electronics until I get the last of my metal parts I'm waiting for.

Soooooo I've been gone for a while, but I figured I'd return with a small update on this pack that is still being worked on.

Once I finally got everything dry-fitted onto the shell, I took it over to my uncle's shop to get the ion arm and booster tube welded together.



Then she came home and on the last day of October that we had 60 degree weather in the North East United States, I got everything painted and re-assembled.





(Since these photos have been taken, I have installed the lenses in the pack as well)

Next thing to do for me is finish designing the electronics and start dry-fitting the wand for this sucker.

Very nice looking pack!

Very nice! Well done!

Pfffft

It's all right I guess....

:p

Ahhhhh I ked I ked, Nice Work Matt! she looks great,

and also welcome back... sniff

Fantastic work as always.

Super small update on this pack.

I was up in New Hampshire this past weekend for my birthday and Jonny Ruckus had a surprise for me! He made us blue fuse labels for our latest GB1 packs!



Lets take a step back quick.

In Ghostbusters, one of the 2 packs that Bill Murray is seen wearing is a pack that seems to have a blue fuse label on it.





Now 2 caveats:

First and foremost, I am pretty sure that there is no such thing as a "blue" fuse label on any of the packs in either film. What I think we are seeing in GB1 is the red of the fuse label had peeled off and left only the bare brushed aluminum label base. "But Matt, why is it blue then!?" Well, any time we see the label, its exterior shots in NYC. I would bet money what we are seeing is the blue Fall New York City sky reflecting off the aluminum of the label. BAM, "blue" label. But since a bare aluminum label would be boring, Jon and I made the mythical blue fuse label instead!

Second, I know the OMNI pack is not the pack that this "label" is seen on throughout GB1; it was the pack that became known as the "Murray Pack". But I always thought this detail was neat, so I decided to add it to my OMNI pack, regardless. This is most likely the last movie pack I make for myself, so its my last chance to have this detail on a pack.

That's it! You will probably see more of this build once it gets warm out and I can start painting the wand for this as well as work on my game pack build.

This is really, really cool, Matt! I like it a lot. Unique and clever, and it's your pack so do it how you like!

About the N Filter plate, if you don't mind an extra two pennies...

It looks like the plate was welded to the n-filter originally. And at some point got knocked off, you can see they used the same 0.063 used in the gun and ion arm. It's too thin to hold a 3" tube, especially since it's softer than normal because of the weld heat. You can see how it pulled on the corner from the left.

The glue there must have been just a quick repair that avoided removing the rivets and re-welding the plate, which would also require stripping the old paint, and repainting after the re-weld.

Matt, how did you go about adding the "nipples" to the EDA disks, did you add rivets or a couple of bolts/screws which you then filled in the holes of?

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I drilled 2 holes and put a pop rivet into each disk. Then I did an intentionally crappy job cleaning them up with Squadron Putty. That's all really.

Looking good Matt

I guess I have had this project collect enough dust on my work bench. Time to get this sucker finished!



I need her finished because she may be pressed into work soon. . .



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