Another Midwest Ecto in the works . . .I swear there's something in the water!

Rhett J Martin

Sr Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
Hi Gang!

Been away for a while as I've been all over with other projects, but I'm finally getting back to my prop stuff!
I recently had the opportunity to nab a MIller Meteor Cadillac, and have started to get her restored. I was drawn to this car as a haunted house project/prop, and a great way to test my skills on a car. When I saw her body online, I was disappointed that she probably would make a terrible Ecto, so I figured buy, fix, resell. Once I received her and saw her up close, my mind was blown. This car is more 59 than 61, and would easily make an Ecto. The guy who sold her to me confirmed that he was also going to build up one, but had too many projects on the table. So after much thinking, trolling pro car forums, and checking all available info I decided to start converting her into an Ecto-1A.

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I've started on the interior, and while I improve and repair the exterior, the mechanics have been climbing in and out of her fixing and bringing much of her back to life. The car will be a great addition to our local haunted house for the next two years. Once that wraps, she'll go back to Maryland for her panel swap to a 59. The 61 panels will live again on another ratrod. My 59 is already there!!

A little history on this girl.
She's a Series 6890 Commercial Chassis. The Chassis was built the 4th. Week of March 1961 and is Chassis Number 1,862 out of a Total of 2,204 for the Year (Michigan born).
The chassis was then Shipped to Miller Meteor (Ohio bred) for the coachwork to be accomplished. Her id number is Z61746. One of my favorite moments since receiving her has been finding '746' scribbled everywhere. Most of the car is in such good shape that chalk and pencil have survived on these different surfaces.

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She spent her life as a hearse in North Carolina, and after the death of her owner in 2012, it went to a Rat-Rodder in Maryland. He's got quite the collection of hearses and other cars. She is in running condition and still has her original brake pads, engine, and only has 42,000 miles on her. Her trip mileage oddly enough sits now at 666. OoooooOOOOOoooo!!! Her power plant is a beaut, big ole' 340 V8 in there. She really rumbles. Brakes have just been repaired, carb and engine getting tuned up. Needs a new gas tank and exhaust, but I'm in no hurry.

Body wise, her floor pans and rocker panels are gone, or just about to go, and there's ALOT of junk (bondo and latex paint) all over her. Chrome and stainless are solid though, and she'll get a new paintjob next summer. I'll be welding new panels and rockers in round about the end of May.

I've started pulling out the interior over the last two months. Everything was badly water damaged from leaks on the windows. Those have been repaired. She's sealed tight now, and has two rainstorms under her belt to prove it. Two pieces of glass are cracked, and one vent piece has to go too. The biggest hurdle I recently accomplished was getting the floor out, which had rotted away to the point of dust in some spots. At this point I had a choice to make. Keep it a hearse, convert to combo, or just go straight to ambulance. After asking around, I scored stainless trim and accurate jump seats to do a new floor and convert the interior to and Ecto-1A. I've alos made some interesting headway on all the odd panels on the interior, but more on that later.

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So at this point, I've removed the entire interior of the rear, pulled all the door panels, repaired my headliner, id'd my vinyl (and subsequently the Ecto 1A's), and have started cleaning, restoring, rewiring, and on, and on and on. More to come, our next stop will be cleaning the chrome and stainless, then getting it painted and back into the car!

Stay tuned!
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Here's a few more pics of the interior as pieces came out and all the rust and debris was cleared out.
Rear door pieces pulled
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It's an odd mix of primer and rust under all of these door panels. But nothing heavily damaged. This rear door however, has badly rotted weather stripping that needs replaced.

All the window sash stainless trim came out, and are all getting scrubbed, sanded, polished and more. Door handles and window cranks as well. They look beautiful!!
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To test my skills with interior work, I did a small test on the driver and passenger side arm rests. Not too shabby for a rookie!
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All the above took place over the course of the last weeks in March and into early April. The big work started once I discovered just how rotted the plywood floor had become. It all had to come out. The rear sections simply crumbled in my hand, but up front had to be pried and talk into it. Many hammer whacks later, the front section (and its complicated curves and cuts) came out. I'll use most of it as a template for the new floor.
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In this photo, you can see that the headliner has a tear and in this shot I just started unclipping it from the body. It actually has been repaired already. I'll get pics of that up soon!!
In this shot you can see spots of the steel are getting scraped and rust proofed. I'm not very interested in sandblasting this thing, and doing a full restore. It's in good enough condition that it can simply remain a touched up survivor.
You can also see in this shot I'm fiddling with the Ecto tint, mostly just to size it up and get it just right. It actually looks really cool.

Truthfully, I'm getting away with murder on this interior redo. It's been very, very cheap. I've just about touched $1000, and don't have much left to get. While polishing and cleaning everything is great, the interiors of the Ectos were painted black. Even the trim. So all of these gorgeous pieces will be coated in black acrylic enamel and satin sealed, so if a future buyer wants to strip it back off, they can. Bonus for the interior picking up weathering and scratches.
 
Just out of curiosity, where in Maryland was it?

Also, good luck. Excited to see the progress.
 
Couple of updates on this.

The floor work continued along at a nice clip, and on one of my days off while she was still at the shop, I completed the tear out and clean up of the rear of the car. Lots of chipped away rust and debris, and one whole chunk of wall came out. Once this wall chunk was out, the conversion from hearse rear to combo rear officially started! After a quick brush down and a re-sweep, I lay in some rust preventing black paint, and then coated with several coats of Rustoleum to seal up and protect the floors.
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Couple of days later I got to drive her for the first time, and she glides like a dream!! Once a Caddy, always a Caddy I suppose!

I've done on or two other little thing in the last few weeks, a panel here, a re-vinyl there. Nothing huge. Then yesterday, I had the whole late part of the day to myself, and I crawled in a got to work using scrap wood to layout a pattern for the new flooring. There's some wild cuts in there!

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I've purchased the hardware for the combo floor panels, and will pick those up sometime in September, unless I can make the trip to North Carolina sooner. I've also ordered the vinyl for the flooring, and the ribbed rubber matting to match the Ecto-1A.

Jump seats are pulled apart and will be getting cleaned and repainted, and once my custom vinyl arrives in white and black, the seat's will get new coverings to match the 1A.

Check out the vinyl!! WILD! They think it's an old Chrysler pattern, but no one knows what it was called.
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Here's my current pile of parts either waiting to get painted, polished, or bust ghosts!
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Not see here are the pieces for the side tanks, a few strobe lights, dash laser, and a few more bits and bobs. I've been able to solve a lot of problems on how all the various roof rack pieces will be solved, and even managed to figure out how to do a fairly accurate representation of the side LED signs. Lots of cheating will be happening there.

The biggest challenge I have before me know is the stainless pressure tank on the front of the roof rack. I can't find anything even close out there. I'm proabably just going to build it and have it chromed. :/ Oh well.

More to come!
 
Here's some cool updates! Lots of ID's!!!

I've been running around getting the floors cut and in, and managed to score some combo panel trim pretty cheap, but a lot of work has been id'ing the Ecto stuff in the interior. All the great reference shots that exist out there (GBFans, LucasFrancis Studios) have been really helpful, but the info itself is all pretty much derived from the pics themselves. So I had to go from scratch. I got to work, and tracked down where this stuff all came from.
Here's some great shots of the 1A when she sat at Universal. I pulled them from Google, and would like to credit these to someone. Post or PM if you would.

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We've always known the panels were from Trio-Tech, a lab equipment manufacturer in Burbank. But the individual panels haven't turned up in any searches all these years. Computer searches yielded less, and I finally gave up and emailed the company (still going strong) begging for info and sent them as many shots as I could, and lo and behold, they recognized everything!! I asked if they had any blueprints, manuals, photos, etc. and they up and mailed me the original manuals! Each had a clear shot of these obsolete panels, and from these, I'll can easily fabricate and light replicas!

The largest panel is from a centrifuge:
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Got 4K lying around? I found a surplus one! Lol!

The rest of the panels are all out of one giant Processor Oven.
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An interesting side note, the crew at Trio-Tech didn't remember any of their Ambient Testers having the Orange lights on them. My best guess is they slapped some Orange hat lights on them (same as Particle Thrower) for some more interest? Who knows . . .

I also wanted to track down what kind of radios they used, and screencaps and photos only show the rear of the various radios. There is one pic out there on LucasFracis Studios website that shows four radios piled on top of the dash of the Universal Ecto. What's odd, is I couldn't id ANY of them, until I asked a old firefighter/ham radio guy. He laughed and said they weren't radios, they were siren/pa/light controllers!! I id'ed them in about 5 minutes!!

My theory is they were all taken out of the Ecto-1A and used in the Universal Ecto-1. Sure, it's a long shot, but most of my reasoning points to this. One, it's a common practice. Two, it's happened to other famous vehicles, from the Delorean, to the MKVIII tank at Disney. There's also no reason any of these units, each currently in the hundreds of dollars range, would be purchased or used for a theme park vehicle (show me the Code3 arrow stalk on the USF Ecto!) They match sizes, and brands of lights used on the 1A, and two of them match up to the rears of the radios. The left over Velcro even seems about the correct size. Lastly, mostly out of desperation, I checked the model kit pieces of the 1A, and they even looked kinda close! So I figured, lets go for it and nab them and use them, and fill out the interior!

Common Federal PA300
Front dashboard most likely.
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Very common Motorola Business band CB
Probably under dash. This is a flat out guess, as I can't find a single shot of it, or spot where it may have been removed from. But it was on the dash! *shrug*
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Code3 Vcon Siren, probably sat in the back next to the HP monitor, and controlled the big Dash arrow on the rear of Ecto-1A (no controls under dash with switches)
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So there we go!! Now I have to track down the HP computer monitor and keyboard!! More to come!
 
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Well, here you go! Floors nearly complete and interior pieces going back in. Partition also recovered, stainless polished, jump seat latch installed. Windlace and existing viynyl all repaired too.
 

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Slower than I'd like it to. Front floors being worked in now, then the engine gets pulled for paint and gaskets. She still hasn't her original cork gaskets.
 
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