Cornbinder

Nice! Been a while since I've seen someone do a 377.

Very cool! That's a great kit, all it takes is a little talent to make it a real standout.

As of now, the driver's mirror is repaired, the dump bed is painted, weathered, and permanently installed, and the tarp has been fitted. The barrels are residing in the dump body along with a couple of shovels and a road cone, I'll be adding a bit of residual gravel and rocks to the edges of the bed. Amazing how much progress you can make on a project when you actually work on it, is it not?

S'pose one more update for the evening. Added a few appendages to the dump body. And filler. Quite a bit of filler! Also shown here are some other items- two shovels, a traffic cone, and a barrel, all of which may or may not end up in the bed. I also made a tarp- it is a piece of Scott blue shop towel wrapped around some 3/32" aluminum tubing and painted flat black.

Well... A month or so ago, the White took a tumble and lost the appendages shown. Fortunately it was easily repairable, and the only AWOL piece is the lower driver's side mirror bracket. The mess was boxed up and forgotten about until earlier today. A few hours of fiddling, fitting, and cursing under my breath and.... I'M RIGHT BACK AT THE POINT WHERE I LEFT OFF BACK IN JANUARY! Well, I did make a few changes. I reinforced the mounting points of the rear axles- they were pretty weak to start with (we all know the gluing surfaces on these old AMT kits can be more "theoretical" than "certain"). Any loose parts were reglued and reinforced if needed. I also added a couple of wooden planks for the dump bed. The strips are real wood. The sausage is, of course, Jimmy Dean. I still need to reattach the driver's side mirror, not sure if I'll check around to see if I can find the missing piece or bite the bullet and rob one from another kit or make one from plastic strip.

Oh, worse. Way worse.

One of the parts I make at work are the rear engine mounts for Navistar. Let me tell you... Moebius got them totally wrong.

For me, the only real problem with trucks is that I don't want to mess around with parts for little ones when I spend all day making parts for big ones.

Yeah- seems like a lot of modelers- particularly US modelers, are all about muscle cars or '50's stuff. And I have absolutely no problem with that. I've built my fair share of both. But these microcars are kind of like heavy truck models in the respect that they aren't something you see all the time at model contests and shows. I think that's one of the reasons I gravitate toward them. And a lot of them are unusual. I can go to any car show and see as many '69 Camaros as I want... but I have yet to see an Abarth 695 or a 2CV at any of the shows I've been to.

Very cool! And now the song by Stories is stuck in my head.

The California Hauler was the first full-detail 1:25 scale kit of a Peterbilt... so I guess it's fitting that the first Peterbilt model I've ever built (or is it bilt?) is a reissue of that kit. I took a few liberties with mine. The cab visor is a later model meant for an 1100 Series cab, but it fits the Unilite well enough. I stretched the hood, and swapped in a Cummins engine. IIRC the "long" hood was only available with the Detroit V12 on the early 359- back then you couldn't just order the long hood. If you wanted the long hood you ordered the big engine and that was that. The kit's front fenders looked a little dainty, so I went with modified front fenders taken from a Revell 359 snap kit. I also set aside the kit's short, skinny Firestone tires and went with some girthier-looking Goodyears. Though it's a "California Hauler", the kit includes Michigan plates and registration stickers, which was nice for me, living in Michigan and all. In hindsight, I wish I hadn't gone with a brown interior. It's factory correct, but I'm just not fond of how it looks. And if I did it all over again, I'd paint the visor to match the cab rather than foil it. I may add some door graphics later on, but so far, I'm as pleased as I can realistically be with my first Pete. I know exactly what I'll do differently on the next one, that's for sure.

This is just a basic buildup of the reissued AMT kit. I wanted to do this as a White Farm Equipment dealer's rig, so it was painted to resemble a White farm tractor- black undercarriage, with authentic White Argent Silver for the cab and hood. Other than the cast spoke front wheels (from a Diamond REO), it is box stock. After I finished it, I realized I forgot to put the front turn signals on it. So while I was waiting for the WFE, Oliver, and Minneapolis-Moline decals to arrive from Bossen Implement, I added them. The "Great Lakes" graphics came from an old Monogram Porsche race car kit. Eventually this will be paried up with a lowboy and loaded down with a tractor or two- there are some pretty nice 1:25 scale diecast tractor replicas out there, including an Oliver 1955. All in all I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, even though I'm not a fan of how the Road Boss looks with a long hood. I have the 108" BBC hood on order from GW Trucks, so the next one I build will be the medium model. Here it is before the lights and lettering were added. And here it is with the lights and door markings in place.

This one's basically done- I still need to settle on what to stick on the back, at which time I'll do the sides and any signage. The wheels,tires, crane, and tool boxes are from an Italeri parts pack, and the Todco liftgate is from the base kit- the C600 city delivery. I used that kit because of the longer frame. The flat bed itself is from a C600 stake truck. The Italeri toolbox is a full-width type, I cut it down to make two side-saddle boxes.

I started this back in May of 2012... I took a couple of year-long breaks from it during that time. It's going to be weird seeing this finished on the shelf, after seeing it sitting around unfinished on the work bench for so long! The idea here was a custom tractor, but I didn't want to go with the long frame and polished everything look. Don't get me wrong, I like that look, but everybody's doing it these days. I went with a modest wheelbase, and used as little chrome/polished/stainless "shiny stuff" as I felt I could get away with. The day cab and Harley grille are from Models By Dave. I had originally planned to add the round Harley headlights, but I liked the look of the fenders without lights of any kinds... so let's just say the headlights are now in the spots where the factory fog lights used to reside. I blacked out the bottom part of the bumper, and went with Duplicolor School Bus Yellow/Tamiya Semi Gloss Black throughout. The fuel tanks are from a Peterbilt 359, as is the (modified) headache rack. The diamond plate rear fenders are from the Revell Kenworth snap kit. I made new mud flaps from thin plastic sheet. The diamond plate tool boxes came from AITM. The smoke stacks are polished K&S aluminum tubing. The idea here was a "mild custom" semi tractor, something that could be taken to a show, but could still be used to pull a trailer and earn its keep the rest of the week.

Found some photos of a truck I built about nine years ago. This was built from the Lindberg reissue- the one that came with the flat bed trailer and the '40 Ford Coupe, and the whole mess was molded in this weird, brittle dark grey plastic. I bought a couple of lengths of Plastruct C-Channel strips to make longer frame rails, and used the rear half of the trailer for the flat bed deck. Other than that the kit is box stock. This pic was taken several years after the model was finished. Both the Dodge and Ford were painted with orange from the same no-name-brand rattle can. Yes, the doors on the Dodge open and close, though the gaps aren't terribly consistent!

Wrapped this one up just a few minutes ago.

If you followed the WIP (or if you didn't) here are the basics- Revell snap kit for chassis and hood, cab and bumper from an AMT glue bomb, Front wheels and all tires from an Ertl Transtar, rear wheels from a Diamond Reo. It has a Cummins NTC 475 from a Revell Black Magic Peterbilt and a hydraulic tank from an MPC Gravel Trailer. The paint is distressed Chrysler Intense Blue Pearl. The idea is an older rebuild (thus the old style cab with the 8-bag rear suspension) that's in need of a second rebuild, but still in usable condition.

It looks like it's just the exhaust pipe, flopped over the frame rail.

I've been wanting to throw together an old James House cement hauler for a while. I was glad to find that Jerry at modeltruckin.com does the proper decal graphics. I figured converting the hood to the SBFA configuration would be fairly simple, but GW trucks makes the hood in resin, so I opted to try that first. The base for this is, of course, the old AMT DR. I'm using the early 90's reissue. First, here are a couple tractors I'm using as reference. This one will likely be #69, though it may end up being unit #65... if you have ever seen the movie "Collision Course" starring Jay Leno and Pat Morita, you have seen James House #65 pulling one of their custom-built powdered cement dumper. James House was part of Rex Transportation, so I'll also be using some photos of single-drive Rex Diamond Reos for inspiration. Here are a couple of 1:1 photos, courtesy of Tim Gibson. Now, onto the model... I kind of eyeballed the wheelbase, and used the hood to position the front axle. I don't think I got the wheelbase 100% correct, but it'll do for me. I also don't think I'll get the Anti-Sail mudflap quite right, but I can get it close, lol. Rear axle and suspension were pirated from a Ford Louisville- I may or may not use the fifth-wheel setup shown here. As far as tanks, battery boxes, and the like, it's basically just a matter of shuffling things around from their position as intended by AMT. #69 had the early style grille, so I made up a new insert. The AMT kit is missing a small chrome trim strip along the vertical centerline of the hood- on the real hood it is there to cover up a row of rivets which attach the skin to bracing underneath. To tell you the truth, I never even noticed this until Tim Gibson pointed it out to me... and he said he never noticed it himself until he bought his 1:1 Diamond Reo. I used the same thin square strip I used to make the details on the grille insert to make this trim piece. Naturally, it will be foiled after paint. I am not sure if I will do the model to look as it appeared in the junkyard, as it did in service, but I will say I'm not terribly interested in doing it in "as-new" condition, so let's just leave it at that.

I'll dig it out later, but I'll say that there really isn't much "detail" on the lift axle. I just added what I knew would be visible.

They look way better than my resin casting experiments, I will say that.

I keep looking at this on the bench, but can't bring myself to work on it! Oh well... I guess I have all winter.

Yeah- you can use pretty much any Italeri kit with the FLD chassis... that includes the Fords and Western Stars. I don't know if the FLC chassis is the same as the FLD kit chassis, but I'd imagine they are. Just don't use one of the Pete kits and you should do just fine.

Already looks nicer than the average four-footer, that's for sure.

Thanks. I've seen those on some of the "stripped" fleet-spec models, and thought I'd give it a go on this one. Figured they'd fit better with the overall municipal theme.