leafsprings

Great idea and great work on the J 20 conversion. 8 lug steelies look right at home on this one.

Those look great! A perfect match for a 70's 4x4.

Good choice for a build. When looking for inspiration, I look at original factory brochures. Seeing a pattern on many 60's and 70's trucks, aluminum front wheels, steel rear wheels.

Yes, looks great, would be very interested in this offering!

Yes, old thread, but interesting, build shows how much better, IMO, the standard wheelbase bed looks. The stretch wheelbase F 350 bed was probably used on less than 10% of '73-'79's pickups, yet the geniuses at AMT used it. Probably not a good business decision. Oh, well, more opportunities for the aftermarket $$$$.

Looks good, your making a lot of progress, thanks again for your effort. The only 16.5 tire offered by AMT was in the Ford F 350 Super Camper Special kit in the mid 70's, shown in photo, a Goodyear custom hi miller bias ply highway tread 9.50-16.5. The rim diameter appears to be around 3/4". Sorry, don't have a micrometer. A tire, wheel and hubcap package would be awesome, we could build the truck in the photos.

The custom topper work is impressive. Rookie Resins once offered the correct base model C 10 hubcaps, would look great on this build!

Wow, that was quick. I don't know how you do it, but that is it. Thank you very much. Here are some close up photos of the real 3/4 ton 12" hubcap ( painted version) that might help fine tune it some more. I've always wanted to do a 3/4 ton Chevy camper special with all the recent '72 reissues. The popped out center blue bowtie shown is '69-'72 ( shown), later '73-'75. the center was pushed in with a gold bowtie.

3/4 ton hubcaps for Chevy pickups, 69-72. Used on Chevy 1 ton vans also. The AMT van caps are very poor representations and were never designed to fit a larger 16"-16.5" wheel.

Great job on removing all the "gingerbread". Model companies automatically had a habit of giving us high level trim vehicles.

The original paint green F 250 appears to be a "Ford of Canada" build due to its special color, a color not available in U.S. The originally yellow, to red to blue Flareside is very rough, much better examples out there.

Thanks everyone for the positive comments! Added wheels from AITM, replaced the wedge brakes with S cam brake chambers and oval hole frontal air intake system.

Great looking build! The classic lines on this IH really make your beautiful paint job stand out. IH styling was so much smoother than typical cabovers of the time, Dodge and Ford in particular.

Always wondered how the decision was made to choose an engine for truck kits. IMO, a Cummins was a much more popular engine in early Petes. The real 1:1 Pete that the original AMT non sleeper box art cover depicted had a 1676 CAT. I can see the logic with Detroits in Astros and Titans.

Finally out of the paint shop, interior is a goldish silver, exterior gloss black and white, CME fleet colors. Used the window less back panel for a more vintage look.

Great idea for a build. A clean working class vehicle with a slight touch of chrome looks sharp. All white cab and green debris box look realistic.

Very impressive job on the transformation. With all the details added, it really looks like the AMT model. All the colors, exterior and interior, look factory spot on.

Here is another shot of a '72 GMC. And here is the little devil that got missed by AMT. GMC called it an "extension".

Nice progress, chassis and wheels look great! When it comes to bodies and frames for light-medium duty type trucks, we really have to turn over every stone to find something that will work. Foreign kits. obscure American kits and resins usually come together to the rescue.

First photo '67, second photo '72. There was a chrome molding trim surrounding the grill added for '68 thru '72. Notice how trim lines up with edge of bumper. If Modelhaus was still around, I'm sure they would have offered the correct grill PLATED to their product offerings by now.

My biggest pet peeve is the grill, we did not get the grill shown in the photo below, the sides were never raked back at the bottom as the '68-'72's were. The grill used in the kits are closer to the one year only '67 grill minus the letters in center of grill.

Paint scheme looks great! Looks early 70's, when company fleets were proud to show off their unique colors.

An idea for converting the '53 Coke pickup to a '53 Coke flatbed.

I did pretty much the same on a F 350 conversion, flat panel with some putty work, but the back of '57-'60 cabs really have a lot of detail that is hard to duplicate.

The same Flareside bed ( stepside in GM ) was used from '53-'72. The problem with the stepside conversion is the '60 Styleside bed ( fleetside in GM ) was molded into the cab. The separation leaves you with no back of cab. Aftermarket never offered a resin back of cab panel for this, or a small back window back of cab panel, probably because there was not enough interest because it was a low production kit. That should change if it was re issued thru reverse engineering and they become plentiful.