olsbooks

Good stuff! THANKS!

Stunning!

It is a great kit. There are just tons of threads with suggestions and pointers on this kit. My only major gripe with this kit is getting the tires/wheels to look right. It is a really goofy setup in my opinion. Best advice I ever got was to make each sub assembly like a model in itself. The results pay off. Good luck, welcome, and keep us posted. Lots of guys willing to help. Peace.

How in the world did you drill all these holes and get the spacing so good?

And how we do like mish mosh! I got to keep an eye on him though. Every time he goes to the restroom he spends FAR too long eyeballing the chrome water supply pipes and grunting something about "pretty pipes". And while still a long ways away, we are toying with empty 2 liter bottles and a bit of heat to make windshields. Has potential. Thanks for all the kind comments. Goes well on Lugnuts weekly check ins at the review board. Peace.

While 12v's will have 2 blowers, there is a "spanner" to make a single intake and single exhaust which is typical for industrial and marine applications. On this application it originally had 1 large turbo at some point in time and they just cobbled together an exhaust. Pretty poor setup in terms of flow and resultant backpressure....but hey, its a 2 stroke Detroit and will take it.

WOW!

Very cool. Any tidbits you can add on how you made "this or that" are greatly appreciated for us novices at scratchbuilding. Thanks for posting and looking forward to following. Peace.

Lugnut is getting close on a shell. Why just today he held it up to his ear and thought he could hear the ocean. The corners came out better than anticipated. They are not in line with some of the masterpieces we have seen but for fumbling around first scratchbuilder, it has a chance. Lots and lots of time sanding to pontificate, deliberate, and constipate all the problems of the world. The next challenge is to start working on the firewall cowl area. A thread has been started on 1:1 reference requesting pix. The firewall itself is not that big of a deal but the area where the wiper arms come out is long forgotten to time. Is there vents/louvers/screens up under there? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Peace.

Jim is correct. Simply too big of a load. But keep your eyes peeled on some "toy" trucks and trailers at places like Dollar General or the similar for a starting point and then hit some garage sales/craigslist for box full of glue bombs. Good way to jump in and try without spending big $.. Just a thought... Good luck and keep us posted!

Would love see this cab or the kissing cousin cabover. The Road Commode II/Western Star COE. A lot of shared metal between them and both in production for a long time under a lot of badges as the White name went way of the dodo bird.

This is just going to be SO cool.

Really sharp looking! I too like the "new" color scheme. It fits the truck. Ditto the comments about painting the wheels the frame color with silver trim rings. A painted "half bumper" and minimal chrome would fit it well. Just begs to have the AMT "doubles" behind it Just an opinion though and we all know what that is worth.. Again, really nice job!

Incredible. And thank you so much for the detail on "this is how I made thus and such". That is such a HUGE help for us wanna-be's.

How did I (and Lugnut) of all people miss this one? Absolutely fantastic! It will be real interesting to see what kind of paint job goes on all these builds. A sound effects chip perhaps? If you are so interested, see below. Very cheap and very small. This is from www.electroschematics.com. Say "Hi" to Oscar! Peace.

After finally getting tired of playing the plastic noisemaker (actually he broke it), Lugnut got busy on the left rear corner. For a first time scratchbuilt complete cab, it is actually starting to show some promise. Granted another round of bondo/sanding will be required and this is an area Lugnut and I need lots and lots of practice. Well, by gosh we get practice now! One thing that is helping greatly is a little trick taken from the 1/25 AMT tanker recently finished. I am using very very thin stock as cheater/locator tabs. Parts are cut to fit the best we can and then the thin stock is glued onto the "backside" of the area to receive the panel. Then liquid glue is applied. With the cheater tabs, there seems to be a much stronger bond and of course a backing so that bondo does not ooze thru. Anyhow, after breaking his musical toy, Lugnut realized that the sliding piece (which we also are using for exhaust piping, had just about the right radius for the rear of the cab roof to rear wall. And so, we dropped those in as transition pieces. Against my better judgement, Lugnut was turned loose with matches and heated some of the solid round stock and was able to pull off a decent bend and thereby eliminate another horrible transition/compound curve area. We wont discuss the experiments he conducted with the matches after eating beans for lunch. Fortunately, no damage or injuries. While we wont go back, if we had to do it over again, we would have done the same on the roof to side transitions as they seem just a little bit too tight in radius. What really concerns me is that Lugnut is starting to whine about wanting the 5 Star interior package. Truckers.....geesh.... LOL. That means a pretty headliner, complex door panels, and all that.. Well, if he pulls off this cab shell in line with some of the fine builds you guys have done, well, we will see. (Positive reinforcement). After his temper tantrum of kicking and denting Dipsticks quarter fender on the Gold Nugget, sometimes a little give is in order. Besides, since he never takes off that hat and mask, I might come to realize he is the one on the most wanted list for going on stealing sprees taking the "Do not remove this label under federal law" from mattresses and cushions down at Freddy's Furniture Emporium.. Heaven know we could not have a deranged lunatic going around committing such horrific crimes. Peace.

Man is that pic a trip down amnesia alley. Leaseway....uugghhh! Man were they some rough rigs with equally rough drivers. For what it is worth - that photo is somewhere between '85 and '88 based on the cars. Ooooo....cold shivers down my spine. Flashbacks, nightmares, etc. And some good ones too. A visual image burned deep into my fried brain. . Certainly not to take away from your work. It is a MOST impressive build you got going. Between you and Pavel on these Astro's/Titans, my work is cut out to get the aero astro up to snuff. I thank you for setting such a high bar to shoot for. Excellence in action...or as GM had the audacity to put on the GM logo on the trailer, "Mark of Excellence".. Mid 1980's from GM? err...only by accident or by the few still around that were willing to go to the chopping block taking a stand for it. Anyway, thanks for the memories (I can now look back and laugh) and certainly drool over the great looking build. If you are going "later style" with a big grille, here is a good pic to help with the skirting, updated exhaust, and air filter system should you go for the later look. I don't recall for sure but the skirting option came out shortly after the so called "big grilles". It was not long after that the whole heavy Chevy line was dropped. So for what it is worth, big grille Titans with skirting were very rare. They never built a Titan with the SS package which had all this and then some..but GMC did indeed call it the "SS." Sorry to ramble...therapy I suppose. Peace.

Great to see this thing back on the front burner. 16V71 huh? Loud and proud! Very nice! Stick with it!

Building a 1/16 semi with operating roof clearance lights. I wanted bulbs instead of LED's and the lenses supplied with the kit were clear. Everything I tried looked way too fake. I wanted the light to be diffused more like the real thing. So, orange candle drippings were poured all over the bulb and then "shaved" to shape. Once I had it close, I gently used my fingers to "polish" it out. Did the same on the tail light lenses. And to get a textured pattern, while the wax was still just a bit soft, I just put a fingerprint impression in it.

This is going to be sharp!

Dont know how it would line up, but WHAT IF you put a IH 4300 Transtar or Paystar 5000 cab with W900 hood? Seems like it would get you in the ballpark.

You did an incredible job on this one. It has been a pleasure to watch on the workbench. The shoe horned in engine the detail on the firewall is superb.

As a teen, this was always one of my favorite kits. This is looking really good. Peace

Great topic. How about the old Cheech and Chong skit (off the 33 LP with a most interesting jacket) of them at the drive in? For those of you that remember.... "Hey....roll down your window man.....we locked some dudes in the trunk...." Would be so cool to see this "skit" built as a dio.

I have finally been able to put my tongue back in my mouth and clean up the slobber off the keyboard. This thing is just incredible. And so I offer (for what little it is worh) kudos, applause, waving my bic lighter, throwing roses at the stage and other assorted fanfare. A HUGE inspiration and swift kick in the butt for me to get busy. Your "this is how I built thus and such" is to me, what makes this thread such a wonderful resource and teaching tool.