If I could find a similar heat sink in my collection of greeblies, I'd swap it out in a heartbeat... but I couldn't find anything to fit the bill, unfortunately.
Once you pop out those screw caps on the base, it unscrews pretty easily:
As you can see in my previous post, I already had too aluminum side disks for the wand... so I thought I'd make a disk for the other side as well. If found some junk in my greeblie box:
I glued the two thinner disks together to make a thicker piece:
I sanded the edges, drilled a hole and counter sink. Here are all the pieces before painting:
The original plastic disks were screwed to a plastic piece that held them in place to the side wall. So I used this same piece to attach my new metal disks:
Time to replace the Clippard valve! Unfortunately, when I tried unscrewing the plastic one on the wand, the nuts were spinning inside. I tried EVERYTHING to unscrew the bolts & nuts but I think the nuts on my wand were actually GLUED to the bolts... so I only had one choice:
Dremel cut off disk did the trick!
Now, unfortunately, I don't have the correct model Clippard, but I do have this:
So, my idea was to use the top of the Hasbro Clippard since it is aluminum. The top unscrews easily... popped it into my vice and got sawing:
Here's the top piece successfully sawed in half (the bottom piece will be saved in my greeblie box for a future project!):
Unfortunately, the R-431 valve does NOT have a screw off top, so I drilled through the bottom to remove its "guts":
I chopped the top "bubble" off with a dremel and drill:
I drilled a bit more into the Hasbro tip and found an old bolt that would allow me to attach the two pieces:
Here's a comparison between the old piece and the new one:
While I was trying to dig out that original clippard, I found another easy mod I could do... remove the plastic thing from the three vent slots on the top of the wand.
The first step was pulling out the white plastic piece with a pair of needle nose pliers:
Next, I used a dremel with a pointed bit to route a line around the three vent holes:
Successfully removed:
Testing the electronics (to make sure I didn't screw anything up while fidgitting around in there)... and really happy to see that bright like peaking out through the vent:
And a final shot of the new Clippard in place attached with hex bolts:
Very nice build. Will you ever consider building a wand from scratch that includes the proper lightbar sequence? This thread brought me back to when I built my back and I honestly felt like building the wand was as hard as the pack itself.
I'd never say never... but for now this wand has certainly scratched my itch (though there are several mods I still want to do to it). If a full aluminum kit showed up at my door one day... yeah, I'd totally dive into that build!
I started hacking off the front grip with a dremel and had a bit of a Bob Ross "Happy Accident":
The wire running to the front switch is actually taped to the grip... so I ended up cutting through half of the wire. I was planning on removing that rubbery thing and replacing it with a wire as on the original... so now I could use real wires serving a real purpose:
The resin grips I had were a bit oversized, so I cut them down and reshaped to fit the Hasbro wand:
After a bit of black spray paint, I glued the new grips in place with plastic weld:
To fill the drilled out holes on the base plate, I used a leather punch to make some little foam fillers:
These could easily be painted black, but I left them "as is" for now. Also, seeing this shot... next time I work on this wand I am definitely sanding down all that "Made in China" text!
I changed a few stickers and the green hose. I'm still planning on changing the two banjo fittings to brass and hopefully the tip to an aluminum one and then do my own weathering but, for now... here are some comparison "Before and After" shots...
My loom hose finally arrived, so I'm getting close to finishing this up... drilled a 20mm hole in the pack and used dremel to open it to match the hose size:
For the vac hose, I taped a pvc pipe to give me something to glue better into the vac tube:
Drilled another hole into the bottom of my shell (decided not to cut all the way to the edge as I figured this will give better grip to the hose:
I taped another pvc tube piece into the hose (on the inside of the pack) to keep it from slipping. You can also see my temporary red film I taped in until I get my lighting set up:
I connected the hose (about 3.5 feet worth) to my wand using Hasbro's connector piece and added some tape at various points of the tube:
Looking good!
I finally decided to do the final aging. I started by spraying some silver chrome spray paint onto a palette then dry brushing the pack with a 2" brush. I added additional distressing using a brown acrylic wash (just brown paint with a little water) and brushed it into all the nooks and crannies:
And here is my nearly final beauty shot (just need to add lights, which will include cutting the window for the blue LEDs):
Just posted this to our social media and thought you guys would like to see it too:
NB: The color differences between the GB1 and GB2 khakis are exaggerated in this photo due to the photo processing. I liked the contrast so left it as it was. And the lights on my pack are photoshopped... I'm still figuring out how I'm doing this part of my pack build.
The holes for the cyclotron were already cut and covered with a red thin plastic sheet (as seen above), but I need to dremel out the window for the power cell lights (and cleaned it up with a file):
I had these plastic shelves in my greeblies pile:
Cut one corner off (with my trusty dremel):
Hot glued it into the corner and used some foam to pack in the motherboard (it ain't pretty, but it does the trick):
Since the cyclotron holes already had that red film, I could use the clear plastic shelf to strengthen that area and give a "shelf" for the red lights:
Some pill bottles got trimmed down for the next step:
Hot glued into place:
Finished pack!
I realized half-way through this build that I had set the cyclotron lights into a counter-clockwise and after a little research realized that both ways are accurate... so I guess I've got a Venkman-inspired pack now!
Another little mod to my wand: the plastic painted tip and banjos always annoyed me. I may replace them with genuine metal parts at some point but, in the meantime, I decided to refinish them with my new favorite method: nail polish powder! You can see more on this method here: https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/m ... er.344733/
Here's the factory finish:
Masking the area:
Sprayed with gloss black:
After silver powder applied:
Did the same thing for the banjo pieces (masked off and spray painted gloss black):
After gold powder applied:
While I was modding this part of the wand, I figured I'd mask off the plastic tube and hit it with some sand paper to give it that striped look of the original:
The sanding effect was quite subtle, but that doesn't worry me. Also I replaced the red tube with a nicer one:
The metallic effect is hard to photograph, but looks MUCH better in person. You can really see the reflective quality of this powder when the light hits it:
These powders are fantastic, super cheap ($2 would do an entire Mandalorian helmet, for example) and has great application for other resin or 3d printed parts for the proton pack!