Leaderboard

I have "embraced" PE (photo-etch) and am learning to work with the new material. Every part is now a learning experience. The details are removed. The fuel tank steps and straps gave me lots of trouble with adhesion. Most glues do not work well, and the steps had to be soldered. A piece of bathroom tissue is used with Elmer's Glue mixed with water. I have also taken the leap into adding some plumbing and wiring to this build. Thin thread for electrical wire, .020" & .030" styrene rod for air lines, and telephone wire for the transmission. The interior sub-assembly is finished and set aside.

The boredom has worn off, and I am back on the bench. A new journey begins. Now beginning my 4th build, IMO I have realized the painting and detailing of the cab is the most critical part of the model. This will be an experiment. 5 kits will be built. Some of the mundane assembly and painting will be "production-lined" to save time with set-up and clean-up. I will try new things and test the limit of my skills. Failure is learning. One (or more) of the kits will probably be sacrificed and end up in the junkyard. I will try different paint schemes. It will also allow me to choose the "best of _____ part" for a showroom build. At the Cummins factory, holes are drilled for brass rod. It will be nice to not have to relearn every step. Some of these are from other kits with variations. "The Seem" First attempt at cutting out the doors was done with an X-Acto knife (an impossible task). The panel scriber worked much better (but still required an insane amount of patience - be prepared to take your time). A template of the floor is made for quick fabrication in the future. Pockets are fabricated for the new door handles. A thin piece of sheet is glued to support and guide an more natural curve on this PE part. The windshield wiper is carefully removed, I am getting lots of practice in manipulating the styrene.

Calling it done until I figure out what it's going to haul. I meant to build it out of the box except for the Moebius singles, but things happened lol Scratch built the mud flaps, the mudflap girls, and the rear bumper light bar. Combined both kit supplied stack tips into one taller unit. Lost a cab light somewhere, so I robbed a set out of a damaged K123 kit. Swan ornament purchased here (awesome quality on those! Love em) Rebuilt the mirror hangers with .040 styrene rod.

OMG, five kits at once, I can’t finish them one at a time, good luck. Will be watching.

Built almost entirely with left over parts from other kits. Holmes 750 style wrecker unit entirely scratch-built.

This was built from an old Mark Savage cab. It has an M11 Cummins from Gary Wallace.

This is currently my only truck build. It's meant to be a Post Apocalypses RV that was patched together from various bits to roam the wasteland. I started with an Autocar Dump Truck and Italeri 20' Container. Reefer unit converted to HVAC system, Air Filtration, Power Fan, Custom front bumper and a frame mounted generator to name a few of the upgrades. Stretched frame, new wheels and tires, pusher axle and many 3d printed parts leads us to where we are today. Occasionally I add a few more bits to it as I find or design files. Hope you enjoy, I know it's a bit different from what you're used to.

Just a box stock rendition of the Atlantis reissue, finished with Tamiya paints and Monroe weathering powder. This is the first one I've built out of the box, and now I've started a second. 🤣 Now I need to go through my back issues of Model Cars Magazine and find the series from the 2007 NNL.

I finished this build right before Christmas last year. No frame stretch, just removed sleeper and scratch built the flatbed and fuel tanks.

Holmes came out with their '750' unit' in 1962 and produced them until 1990. Tow truck operators loved them because they were rugged, and many have been quoted as saying "the 750 would break something before it ran out of pulling power". Quite an endorsement. I always liked to look of the 750 and decided I would try my hand at one...with a couple of practical additions. I found out from research that the extendable booms the 750 had were notorious for being difficult to extend by hand and operators often had to rely on something more powerful than a man to pull the telescopic booms out, usually another wrecker had to do it. My solution was to add small hydraulic cylinders to the side of the square booms to extend the telescopic boom. Also in the 21st century world of trucking any wrecker not having an underlift is limited on what they can actually tow. So I added one. The wrecker bed/body is a modified "big stick' unit. Everything else is scatchbuilt. Here's my rendition.