A little… I say little… bit of progress:

Sanding paint off the hood, roughing out the clearcoat. At first I was of the impression that I had to get the entire car down to bare metal. This disheartened me because I did not think I’d be able to get it all done before friday. Then Josiah, my painting mentor, came over and told me that the car really only needs to by splotchy and smooth, for the primer. What a relief!

Logan behind the wheel, watch outs! I think it looks awesome without the rollcage. I’ve always wanted to have an old willys to paint green with a big white star on it’s hood. Then Austin could dress as a soldier and I could wear a generals uniform and ride around with my arms crossed all the time.

Ah yes, these came in the mail the other day, along with some old Jurassic Park key chains. The raptor claw originally looked like this:

It looked okay, but I wanted it to be smaller, sharper, and more menacing. Plus I wanted to be able to fit it between my fingers and scare little kids without pulling guns on them. Ahem. So I dremmeled it down and painted it. I need to respray it a flatter color, methinks. This will be hanging from the rearview mirror in the finished car.

Will (or as you know him, Benwahballboy) is making the vector art for the logo I’ll be puting on the doors. He sent me an unfinished version today (the holes in the trees at the bottom were missing), and while I work I made this little thing, I figure we’ll put it on a few tshirts or something…

That’s all for now, more later.

I did it. With the Ecto finally more-or-less 100% at-long-last totally “completed” in early spring, I went out and laid the foundation for my next movie car.

On Saturday I bought a 1990 Jeep Wrangler…. and hopefully sometime in July it will have made it’s transition from this:

to this:

I’ve got a lot of work to do, work that is completely unlike anything I did while building the ecto. I’ve got to swap out the rollbars, replace a side mirror, and completely strip all the paint. I’ll sell the tires I have on there and replace them with the stock set the dealer gave me, buy new seat covers, and generally restore the whole vehicle.

The mechanical parts of the jeep (engine, transmission, etc) are all in perfect working order, so at least I don’t have to worry about that part of the restoration.

Things on the to-do list include:
Rhino-coating the floor
front bumper
new rollcage
new windshield
new side mirror
seatcovers
center console
lightbar
winch
side steps
fog lamps
wheels
whip antenna

Some little fiddly bits that will be part of the car:
Raptor claw hanging from the mirror, combination-lock waterproof crates in the back that store Jurassic Park raincoats in case of weather, a crate with flares and other survival gear from the movie, mock-up nightvision goggles, and my personal favorite, a mosquito-in-amber shifter knob.

I’ll make maps of Isla Nublar and I’d like to build a mock-up tranquilizer gun to store along one of the rollbars… but the challenge I am most excited about is finding a way to produce a very very loud, very very high-quality t-rex roar as the car’s horn. I assume it’ll be a combination of a bullhorn and subs mounted somewhere inside the frame.

Of course I’ve already scoured eBay for all the cool Jurassic Park merch, like keychains, maps, resin raptor claws, park patches, etc.

So yeah.. here we go!