Force

American Industrial Truck Models is no more since Dave Natale passed away, Doug Wagner at Keystone Aluminum Model Miniatures had AITM stuff a while but there was a glitch somewhere and he closed up shop and some of the AITM stuff got back to Dave's family.

No rivets, or huck bolts as they are refered to.

Years and years of modelbuilding and research on upcoming and planned models. I like to get my models as accurate as possible. Another thing, I've been around and been tinkering with cars and trucks all my life and I have an adjucation in cars and body and also have a class 1 license to operate both trucks and busses, and wheel loaders and excavators...so I have learned how these things work.

No problem. The engine in the AMT Peterbilt 359 1100 series cab truck is a NTC 350.

Don't mention it, if I can help I will. Most of the engines with turbos back in the day only had one, the twin turbo setup on inline six engines is a more recent thing, both Caterpillar and Cummins had twin turbos on some of them and Cat still do on some engines, but Cat stopped doing engines for on highway trucks back in 2010 so after that you couldn get a Cat engine in your truck. V8 and V12 is another thing, they could have one or two turbos...or none at all. That looks convincing enough so go for it. The engine in the AMT Kenworth W925 and K123 is a NTA wich is not that common, the most common Cummins is the NTC version wich came in different horsepower ratings, but you can of course use the NTA if you want to, both are 855 cui engines and the visual difference is mostly in the oil cooler area. I don't know what engine was in the Bruhn K100 and you can't see it so use whatever engine you like, engines available back then was Cummins and Cat 4 stroke, and Detroit Diesel 2 stroke, all in various configurations.

You are welcome.

Here is the oil system. The scavenge pump wich suck the oil from the pan is at the front, the forward outlet goes to the oil tank and the rear is where the oil from the tank gets back to the engine through the standard oil pump, the filter housing is not used and replaced with an adaptor for remote filter and oil cooler. Here is the adaptor for the remote oil filter and oil cooler and back into the oil gallery in the engine, one out one in, the brass piece is the oil pressure sensor for the oil lamp and the outlet for the oil pressure gauge.

Here is a couple of öpictures of the cooling system.

U bolts, yes that's a good idea. You forgot part number 3 right in the middle of the breakdown picture wich the springs are attached to, it's called leaf spring equalizer and it's kind of a hinge in the middle hanger and are crucial for this suspension to work properly and smoothly. Leaf springs can't be solidly mounted, the arch of the spring gets flatter when loaded so they grow in length and has to be able to slide in the mounting points, and this equalizer wich is a pivot point between the front and rear spring are on every 4 spring suspension I have seen. Here is another picture so you can see how it looks, the equalizer has number 4 in this picture, this is a trailer suspension and it's similar to the truck suspension, but the U bolts holding the axles are the other way around. Otherwise it looks convincing enough.

Nice build. If they do as bad job as they did with the 1:12 GT40 Mk II they don't need to bother, the 1:24th kit is better but also on the crudeish side and I don't really like the parts breakdown. The best bodies by far are the Fujimi ones and if they had gone the whole nine yards when they did the Mk I and Mk II they would be close to perfect.

The Revell Top Fuel Dragster kits from the late 80's early 90's has small front wheels that might do the trick, they are a bit narrower and maybe a bit small but they are the only ones I know of. First was the Don Garlits Swamp Rat XXX from 1987, then came the Castrol dragster, the Valvoline dragster, the Jolly Rancher dragster, the Mobil 1 dragster and the McDonalds dragster, all these has small aeroplane style front wheels but the later ones don't. Here is one I built back in the early 90's.

Revell and Monogram has been the same company and under the same roof since 1986, they sold their respective kits under their own brand names for a while but they have branded Revell kits as Monogram and Monogram kits as Revell now and then, more of that lately. But Revell did never do any kits in 1:24th scale so they are originally Monogram kits.

Motor Wheel Spyder at the rear and Fly up front.

I had high hopes for the Meng kit but it's not so much better than the Trumpeter kit, maybe a little. But there are several inaccuracies on the Meng kit, much of the ignition wiring and plumbing in the engine bay and the rest of the car has lots to be desired as most of it is totally wrong. The Meng kit has a distributor but the people at Meng obviously don't know the firing order of a FE engine, 15426378...how hard can it be, they have grouped the ignition wires left and right side and divided the wires on the distributor cap right in the middle...no no no, 2 wires for each side should cross over for it to be right as the cylinders are 1234 on the left side of the engine seen from the front (that will say drivers side on a GT40 as they were right hand drive) and 5678 och the right side of the engine seen from the front. Many of the oil lines are routed strangely and comes from and goes to strange places on the engine and gearbox...some from the engine, engine oil cooler, gearbox are shown to be connected to the water cooling expansion tank on the firewall behind the drivers head...naah, that's not right, the oil cooler on the left side of the car is for the engine and the oil cooler on the right side is for the gearbox, the kit also don't have any oil filter housing or the part for a remote filter either..crucial for a FE as the main oil gallery goes out and in to the oil filter housing and back in the engine. And the oil tank for the dry sump oil system is marked to be the fuel tank in the instructions!?!?!!???...the fuel tankS are in the side pods on a GT40 for crying out loud, not under the front hood, and the fuel system from the tanks to the electric fuel pumps doesn't have any connection with the carburetor either. Much of the parts are crude, flat, angeled and has a lack of surface detail, so the "feel" is not there when you look at the parts. So the designers at Meng and Trumpeter has obviously not seen a GT40 Mk II or a FE engine in real life and obviously have designed the kits from photos and wild guesses instead of doing the research thoroughly and do a correct kit...wich isn't that hard to do with todays technology.

Here is mine built years ago sometime in the 90's, long before I had internet and I did not have any references at all other than the Jo-Han boxart, everything except for the lettering is painted. I will build a more accurate version sometime in the future as I have several more of this kit.