Chuck Most

A few more pics I've "rediscovered" moving my stuff from Fotki- the White Freightliner would be an easy one to do with the AMT kit- the newer non-White Freightliner might be too, but a little less easy. Either would be fun, though.

It brings you about two winter's worth of firewood. At least, that's what happened with me.

I actually started this last year- added the front fender extensions and cab extensions, did the bodywork and paint, and installed the grille and headlight bezels before it went back in the box for a year. This might be the worst-fitting kit I've built in a while (not worst of all time for me though), but once I had it all figured out I was pretty pleased with the end result. I always hear of the old timers talking about building models and then blowing them up with firecrackers. I never did that as a kid, but there were a few times during the building of this one that I got to thinking if there's really ever a bad time to start...

It is mostly box stock, with the exception of the front wheels (cast iron spokes from a Diamond Reo) and the mirrors (from a Ford C-600, after the kit's passenger side mirror mysteriously walked away during the project). The paint is White Argent Silver, the color used on White's line of farm tractors- eventually the plan is to pair this up with a Loadcraft lowboy loaded with a John Deere tractor... let's just say a 1:25 scale farmer came to his senses and decided to trade up from that green monstrosity.   Some '70's style WFE logos and dealer markings will likely end up on the doors once that happens. I was going for a simple, basic look... a little on the plain side, but not quite "fleet spec" plain. I won't say I nailed the look was after, but it ended up better than I expected.

All in all, not the most fun to build kit ever, and the resulting model isn't the finest looking semi tractor on my shelf, but despite all that (or maybe because of it?) I'm still fairly pleased with the outcome.

Anyway...

Just a little project I'm throwing together for giggles, using mostly spare parts.

Modified the grille to represent another style from the stock AMT kit part.

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Cut just a hair over 20 scale inches out of the hood, and added some raised details to the new grille opening.

And of course the fenders needed to be modified- I just held them up to the shortened hood and determined where to cut them. I also added a new/old paint job to the cab. Of course, the rear suspension/axles were moved forward, and the frame was shortened behind the rear axle.

Not sure if these are the wheels/tires I'll end up using on it, but they'll keep the chassis up and out of the dirt for now anyway.

Here's the thing- a buddy recently got a bunch of Corvette built ups, and this one has been nagging at him.

Note that the model has no gas cap detail on the deck lid- while every other AMT '63/64 he has does. There's no evidence it was removed from the body, and he's never seen one with a separate cap. So the fact this model doesn't have one has been baffling him- I know next to nothing about Corvette kits, and it has also stumped a friend of his who is VERY knowledgable about early Vette kits. My best guess is that they may have added one later on in the production run.

Anybody know what's going on with this one?