DRIPTROIT 71

Regardless of the purpose for creating the cabover, some drivers preferred the cabover. Sometimes for visibility reasons, sometimes other reasons. As has already been said, long wheelbases were popular out west. Of course the long wheel base had a better ride, but some drivers such as the famous Joe Mustang used the longer wheelbase to allow some of his flatbed loads to extend slightly over the front of his trailer. Today of course most of your custom trucks have long wheelbases.

If you will notice the dual fuel filter set up is just mounted to a plate that could be mounted most anywhere, sometimes even the frame. Most of the old cabover KWs that I find reference pictures for don’t have any filters in this area, so most likely they were mounted low enough to be hidden by the frame. You could always do like I did on the last two of these that I built and put a Detroit in it.?

Oh yeah!!!

The DM600 kit has the old interior, if that is the kit that you are referring to. Most often as has been mentioned, they were green, however, a friend of mine had one that was black from the factory. It was a 72. For the tan on the newer interior, I always match up something from the Testor military flat colors, but I don’t remember which ones for sure. Looking forward to seeing this one!

Great looking rig! It looks like it is ready to bring a load of gravel to my house. Great looking fleet too! Excellent work!!

I’m not sure how much you are wanting to get in to on this build. If you want to keep it simple you can build a pretty respectable U Model by just lowering the front of the DM a little and swapping out the rear suspension. Now like you said, to be 100% accurate the R-Model frame should be used, I wish I would have on mine now, but oh well. You probably already know all of this, but the R Model has the bigger cab and the DM has the flat back cab. Both were available on the U Model. The R Model has the newer style dash and the DM has the older style. Use which ever one based on the year that you are wanting to replicate. You need to decide if you will use a short breather or tall one. The short breather will require mirror brackets to be scratch built. There is also the issue of the notch in the driver’s side of the hood if you are using anything other than the original release of the DM. The one thing that I wish that I would have fixed on the U Model that I built is the passenger fender. The rear needs to be extended downward for the DM or the U. MPC got it a little short and it makes the truck look a little off. The R Model bumper goes a long way in finishing off the U look. I hope some of this helps, Brian

Looks great! I really like the vocational look that you came up with! Nice work!!

I really like what you have come up with here!! I like the weathering! I remember these trucks always looked rough, probably because they rarely stopped. I knew a guy who retired from CF and he had a little cart about the size of a battery charger that had his CB and his AM/FM radio mounted in it and his antenna was welded to a pair of vice grips. When he would come in to the terminal, often times another driver was there to take the truck on another run. So all of his personal radios were set up like this for quick hook up and unhook. The trucks kept running. Excellent work on this one! I don’t think that the sleeper cabs were as common as the daycabs, which makes this one even cooler.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!!

Looks great so far!!

Looks great from here!!

Looks great! I like the stack!!

Man I like this one!!! The weathering looks good!!

Looks awesome! I really like this build! Great work!!

The black fenders look great!! Cool truck! Great work!

Man that looks good! Top notch building and the weathering is out of the park!! Excellent work for sure!

I always draw the door out with a pencil an assemble the mirrors on that and then attach them as one unit. The AMT mirrors are usually a little beefy, sometimes I will make them using smaller rod. I like plastic rod better than metal because I can flatten the ends with plastic rod.

Nice clean build! Nice work!

Depending on the resin. I have found that soaking in bleach white (usually overnight), then scrubbing with a cleaning powder like Comet and a toothbrush is the only way to get paint to stick on some resin, especially what I call “milk jug” resin (white almost clear).

Looks great!

I like this one! Looks great!! Excellent work!! I really like your work bench!

Looks like a great collection! They all look great but the yellow Diamond Reo is my favorite!

Almost ready for snow!!

Looking good!!