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Roadway C-900 - On to the Trailer 4-15-17


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So, progress has been made! I don't know why I'm moving so slow on this one, but it'll get done soon enough. Anyway, here's where we're at:

I got the interior together and gave it a light weathering job. My brightness settings must have been turned up a bit too high, though. You can't really see the light dirt and grime, can you? Eh, no big deal. I was going to add some work gloves, a bill box, possibly a lunch sack, etc., but decided against it because you won't see it anyway. Here's why...

Because this thing needs a bath haha. The windows in this kit were very badly scratched and had a bit of tire burn, and while a vigorous polishing helped, they're beyond total repair. That's actually half of the reason why this one is going to look used and abused. After some masking tape was applied, the window unit was misted from the front to back to simulate the truck getting blasted by dirt from the vehicles driving in front. Anybody who's driven through a northeastern winter knows all about this. The molded in trim was also painted to wrap up all of the paintwork needed for the cab, minus further weathering of course.

The underside of the cab also got a generous coat of pavement colored acrylic paint mixed with baking soda. A little black was added to the engine area to simulate oil/grease. I thought I went a bit over the top with it until I remembered seeing our guys pull into the terminal after 12 hours on Pennsylvania roads during the winter. After that thought, I think I may not have added enough. Man, do those trucks get filthy!

I also got the engine assembled, wired, and plumbed. An oil stain here, coolant stain there, some rust, a bit of grease, and a little tranny fluid were added to show a little wear. Overall, I'm actually pretty happy with how this turned out. I didn't want it to look like DOT would take it off the road immediately, but I didn't want a factory fresh engine in an old work truck either. After it was installed in the frame, I decided to add some air lines from the compressor to the tanks. I'm not sure if the routing is correct, but it will do. I also started adding some pieces for the rear suspension. That's about as far as I got so far. More updates coming soon.

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Thanks guys!

Nice. I need to be following this. What did you use to weather the engine/trans? They look great!

Thank you! I made some oil, coolant, and other fluid stains by streaking on a bit of acrylic craft paint. No thinning necessary, just a wet brush and light dip in the cap. Some super serious-type painters may yell at me for that, but sometimes being lazy works haha. The rest was just a bit of Tamiya weathering powders, dabbed, smeared, or whatever works, finished up the rest.

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Alright, as much as it sucks getting buried under two feet of snow and shoveling your life away, there's always a silver lining, such as being off of work for 3 days and getting some build time in. Well, that's what happened, and that's what I did. Here's this weeks progress.

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I decided to install a small support hook for the air/electrical lines. Not really much else to say here, just figured I'd share.

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I also sanded down the ridiculously thick mudflaps for a more in scale look. They aren't perfect, but after a coat of my dirt mixture they ended up looking fine.

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After doing a mockup, the rear frame rails looked a bit too open To fix that problem, I made a catwalk out of some plastic sheet and some wedding veil material. I don't know where or how I acquired the stuff, but it works pretty good in a pinch. After it was glued together and trimmed, a coat of flat black finished it off.

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Here, the finished chassis gets worse and worse in terms of dirt, rust, and grease. Here's a couple closeups of what's going on.

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The rear leaf spring were given a generous coat of a pavement colored acrylic paint/baking soda mix and dabbed with gloss black to simulate heavy grease buildup.

The front end also got its fair share. The rust and oil stain powders, pavement acrylic, and gloss black really came together to form some nice varying shades.

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The inside of the frame rails also got some "dirt" smashed in there. While I was doing that, the u-joints were just begging for some "grease"

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Doing the fifth wheel was particularly fun. The flat black base was rubbed with some silver Tamiya powders in the middle, and some light rust around the edges and underside. After that, a generous coat of grease was applied. I'm a little convinced I may be going a bit over the top for a functioning fleet truck, but man am I having fun doing it! Thanks for looking!

Edited by Tyler62990
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Thanks guys!

Thank you! I made some oil, coolant, and other fluid stains by streaking on a bit of acrylic craft paint. No thinning necessary, just a wet brush and light dip in the cap. Some super serious-type painters may yell at me for that, but sometimes being lazy works haha. The rest was just a bit of Tamiya weathering powders, dabbed, smeared, or whatever works, finished up the rest.

Thanks. That really does sound easy.

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Thanks for following along guys! The cab is finally off to the Under Glass section if you wanna check it out. Next up is the Trailmobile pup trailer that she'll be pulling along. Updates on that will be posted in this thread, so don't go anywhere! There's two pieces to this puzzle, so this thread ain't dead just yet!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Alright, so the time has come to get the trailer for this done. Just about every panel was severely warped, so that was project number one. After getting everything straight for the most part, some Rustoleum Metallic Aluminum was sprayed onto all of the major components. The underside got a misting of flat black just to add some depth and provide a base for the weathering to come. After that, I decided that the inside of the trailer was way too plain for my liking. After gathering up some supplies, I started building the inside up a bit.

Some plywood was cut to size and treated to varying degrees of enamel stains to break up the uniformity of the wood. After they dried, they were glued in place.

I also got a pretty decent looking finish on the floor with some Rustoleum paint for the base, then completely covered with an acrylic wash, finally wiping if away with a paper towel to give it an aged, stained look.

Some runners for straps/load bars were made from plastic sheet and glued in place. I'm not very happy with the "holes", but once some freight is in there it should be a little harder to see the mistakes. I also noticed that most of the trailers at my terminal are marked on the inside with some poorly done rattle can work. I tried to replicate this with a Sharpie. Not perfect, but it'll do. Well, that's all I have for now. My to do list is 1. Make decals. 2. Make the roll up door operable, but not AMT's ghetto idea of using a piece of tape lol. 3. Make various types of freight and corresponding pallets. 4. Apply generous weathering to match the cab. And 5. Actually get this thing together straight. Wish me luck!

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