wayouteast
Sr Member
Having previously attempted the Blade Runner Police Spinner and the 1989 Batmobile, I've added to my growing collection of 1/25th scale movie vehicles with another iconic car from one of my favourite movies. This time 'Ecto-1' from Ghostbusters.
I've had this on my 'work-in-progress' shelf for ages. Like the other cars, I wanted to light it as fully as possible and if possible mount it on a small diorama base, ideally with figures of Venkman, Stantz, Zeddamore and Spengler. It was finding a fantastic set of 3D-printable STL files for the ghostbusters themselves that finally got me revved up to finish the model. They were beautifully accurate, and scaled down to 1/25th, would give me just what I wanted for the final look.
The kit itself is relatively straightforward. I opted for the original 'Ecto-1', seen in the first movie. The car had a lot more detail and 'busyness' added to it for the second movie, but I like the simpler lighting rig, 'roof-rack' and markings of the original. It's 'purer' somehow. Polar Lights make kits of both versions of the car. There was one issue with the Ecto-1 version, however, which was that the headlights, sidelights, rear lights and all the various spotlights are all solid mouldings on the sprue of chromed parts. So adding all the lights I wanted would take some work...
The first thing to do was to make moulds of all the lights - or at least the parts of them that should have clear lenses. I used 'Blue Stuff' for this, a thermoplastic moulding material that softens to a putty like consistency when heated in hot water, but cools to a firm but slightly flexible state which retains even the finest detail. Using these moulds I cast all the light lenses in clear resin. The only lights that turned out to be imposible to make like this were the 'square' main rear lights so I had to use a different technique for them at a slightly later stage.
Replacement lenses made, I carefully drilled and filed out the moulded lenses in the chromed parts. Filed to fit, the clear resin inserts pushed into place. The signature Cadillac conical rear lights were cut away and the lit areas of the square rear light clusters were carefully drilled out. As I said, I didn't have clear inserts for these, so instead I taped the back of the part and carefully dribbled clear resin into the lenses from the outside using an eyedropper. At this stage, I also removed the moulded strobe lights in the front of the front radiator grill, drilled holed behind them which would eventually house white micro-SMDs and replaced the 'bulbs' with short lengths of clear perspex rod to form new lightable strobe flashers.
For the various spotlights I used a similar technique to the one I used on my Spinner. The moulded lenses were drilled away along with a 'hollow' in the spotlight itself. Then a small hole was drilled in the base to allow a micro-SMD to be added to each spotlight (these were coloured SMDs to match the final colour of the spotlight - mostly blue but also a red). SMD in place and tested, the resin replacement lenses were glued to the front of the spotlights and the seam lightblocked and hidden with a thin strip of self-adhesive aluminium tape. All the new lenses were tinted with transparent blue, red and amber Tamiya paint.
For the headlights and sidelights I used 3mm LEDs and built them into short plastic tubes wrapped in aluminium tape to block any light except from the front. These would be glued into place just behind their respective lenses (there's not much room as you have to avoid blocking the front wheel wells - otherwise the car won't fit together later. I drilled out channels from the inside in the rear wings to insert four red micro-SMDs so that they rested just behind the four conical tail lights. The larger tail lights were lit in the same way as the headlights, with red 3mm LEDS inside plastic tubing. The wires from the rear lights were run along the inside of the body to meet the wiring from the front lights so that I had a single point of connection for all the 'static' lights.
Main lights wired and attached, I went to work on the car itself...
I've had this on my 'work-in-progress' shelf for ages. Like the other cars, I wanted to light it as fully as possible and if possible mount it on a small diorama base, ideally with figures of Venkman, Stantz, Zeddamore and Spengler. It was finding a fantastic set of 3D-printable STL files for the ghostbusters themselves that finally got me revved up to finish the model. They were beautifully accurate, and scaled down to 1/25th, would give me just what I wanted for the final look.
The kit itself is relatively straightforward. I opted for the original 'Ecto-1', seen in the first movie. The car had a lot more detail and 'busyness' added to it for the second movie, but I like the simpler lighting rig, 'roof-rack' and markings of the original. It's 'purer' somehow. Polar Lights make kits of both versions of the car. There was one issue with the Ecto-1 version, however, which was that the headlights, sidelights, rear lights and all the various spotlights are all solid mouldings on the sprue of chromed parts. So adding all the lights I wanted would take some work...
The first thing to do was to make moulds of all the lights - or at least the parts of them that should have clear lenses. I used 'Blue Stuff' for this, a thermoplastic moulding material that softens to a putty like consistency when heated in hot water, but cools to a firm but slightly flexible state which retains even the finest detail. Using these moulds I cast all the light lenses in clear resin. The only lights that turned out to be imposible to make like this were the 'square' main rear lights so I had to use a different technique for them at a slightly later stage.
Replacement lenses made, I carefully drilled and filed out the moulded lenses in the chromed parts. Filed to fit, the clear resin inserts pushed into place. The signature Cadillac conical rear lights were cut away and the lit areas of the square rear light clusters were carefully drilled out. As I said, I didn't have clear inserts for these, so instead I taped the back of the part and carefully dribbled clear resin into the lenses from the outside using an eyedropper. At this stage, I also removed the moulded strobe lights in the front of the front radiator grill, drilled holed behind them which would eventually house white micro-SMDs and replaced the 'bulbs' with short lengths of clear perspex rod to form new lightable strobe flashers.
For the various spotlights I used a similar technique to the one I used on my Spinner. The moulded lenses were drilled away along with a 'hollow' in the spotlight itself. Then a small hole was drilled in the base to allow a micro-SMD to be added to each spotlight (these were coloured SMDs to match the final colour of the spotlight - mostly blue but also a red). SMD in place and tested, the resin replacement lenses were glued to the front of the spotlights and the seam lightblocked and hidden with a thin strip of self-adhesive aluminium tape. All the new lenses were tinted with transparent blue, red and amber Tamiya paint.
For the headlights and sidelights I used 3mm LEDs and built them into short plastic tubes wrapped in aluminium tape to block any light except from the front. These would be glued into place just behind their respective lenses (there's not much room as you have to avoid blocking the front wheel wells - otherwise the car won't fit together later. I drilled out channels from the inside in the rear wings to insert four red micro-SMDs so that they rested just behind the four conical tail lights. The larger tail lights were lit in the same way as the headlights, with red 3mm LEDS inside plastic tubing. The wires from the rear lights were run along the inside of the body to meet the wiring from the front lights so that I had a single point of connection for all the 'static' lights.
Main lights wired and attached, I went to work on the car itself...
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