Chariots of Fire

Here are a couple of update photos. Got started on the supports for the front brush bars and finished up the front mounted winch.

Now that is scratch building at its finest! Great work and congratulations on a well presented work horse.

Painting it the right colors will be a challenge. Red here, silver there, everywhere a bit of it. Glad it's still in pieces!

Work began on the brush bars use on this rig. They are made of 3/16" wide channel backed up by small gussets and pieces of sheet stock at the joints. It's pretty flimsy at this point but once all of the bracing gets put in place it will be much stiffer. The smaller bars that go over the top of the cab will be made of brass rod soldered together. They in turn will be joined at the top brush bar. Below the top brush bar will be the extended front bumper. There will be braces between them as well. A front mounted winch will go in between the frame rails so the front bumper treadplate will have to be cut away for it to fit in. I also made up the tread plate pieces that go under the cab and between the front fenders and the body. They form a step for getting in and out of the truck.

Got some additional work done on the body. Lots of fiddly fitting and sanding for parts to fit right. The running boards are basically done as far as the cab. Two small cabinets were closed in on each side. The small rectangles are for Don Mills Models square latches. Windshield wipers on the cab are made from common pins soldered together and bent to shape. Small hex nuts raise the wiper arms above where they enter the cowl. The back side of each door handle was cut out. They were painted with Molotow chrome. The rear of the body has been worked on as well with two compartments built up as a separate piece. It will be kept separate for painting as it is much easier to reach recesses while the pieces are apart. The side compartment on this side is slightly smaller than on the drivers side. An opening is left for the exhaust pipe.

Must have been fun doing the de-icing during a snow storm!!? Good scratch building!

Very nicely done! Great work

Here are a couple of updates. The body sides are now glued to the tank bottom and a step has been added to the rear. The front of the body is also glued in. It sturdied it up a lot.

Got some work done on the body sides. I had taken a full side view photo of the body years ago and took some basic dimensions. The photo was transferred into my graphics program where I could draw lines over the body outline. Once that was done I scaled it down using the dimensions as a guide. Working in metric 1/25 scale makes it easy. Wheel base was 176 inches and that translates into 176 mm in 1/25 scale. So far the measurements and photo are yielding good results. Here is one side mocked up with the materials for the other side waiting to be put together. Sheet stock is 0.030" Evergreen. Diamond plate is from Don Mills Models. Strip stock is 0.040" x 0.186" Evergreen. A full side view of where the body will sit on the frame. The front has to be cut off about 2mm to give some clearance behind the cab. There is a lot more work to be done to make up the pieces under the cab doors and around the front. The strip stock will pass just outside the front fender line and will have several side braces that run back to the frame and front bumper. The tank is from the Ertl ALF kit. It straddles the frame just right so it made centering the body sides easy. I had to add some 0.100" strip stock to each side to push the body sides out enough to be over the rear tires and to clear the fenders in front.

Finally the cab is done and is in paint. Still some minor details to go but the bulk of the work on it is done. Next up will be to draw out the body and begin to collect the materials needed for the construction.

Got just a wee bit more done on this rig with the dash board done and ready for installing, doors painted on the inside and the inside of the cab painted. I did that part with a brush and some insignia red. It's flat red but that is ok. When I paint the outside of the cab It will be covered with some of the Duplicolor red that I picked up at Advanced Auto. Rather than try and cover the entire inside with the spray and get a lot of extra paint there as well doing a brush paint job inside helps a lot. Details can be picked up later. I also did some hood latches with some brass wire and a couple of straight pins.

Hey, Bob. Yeah, I'm sure. Got plenty of photos to use for verification. The dash board is taking almost as much time as the rest of it. A very poor resin casting with gage bezels not aligned or straight. So off they came. Once the dash is painted I'll add some photoetch bezels and some decal gages. Lots of fit and sand, fit and sand to get it to line up with the inside of the windshield. More pix soon.

IF you need some Oshkosh name tags for the hood sides let me know. ?

Lots of trimming, scribing and cutting this weekend. Using a Dremel and small bits an inner cut out was made behind the windshield trim. This left just enough material that the windshield plastic could fit against. With that done I used the resin kit template to trace a windshield from clear stock. With a bit of trimming and fitting it now just pops into place without glue. There is a bit of reflection to show that the windshield is actually there. Next the doors were scribed and cut free. Lots of material had to be cut away as the casting is quite thick. It took a while but the back edge of the Xacto knife did most of it. A small razor saw did what the knife could not. Then it was necessary to clean up the edges of the door openings and the doors themselves. In the scribing action quite a bit of material is lost so to close up the openings some 0.010" strip stock was glued in and then trimmed. Some sanding here and there made the doors fit uniformly. Small brass hinges from Micro Mark were glued and pinned in place. A temporary stainless steel pin keeps the hinges in alignment for now. Later on the pins will be cut to length.

How come everyone's topic heading is in nice bold print by mine?? I can't seem to make it work.

I'll bet you could cut that hood loose and then fit the '56 Ford pickup hood from the kit right on it. Probably where the master came from for the resin casting that you have.

Jerry: Do you do your building on a flat surface? If not may I suggest a trip to the hardware store and get a piece of glass about 12" square. Place it on a cutting board or some other surface that is equally flat so that it rests evenly. Use the glass surface as a building surface and a small square to help with making 90 degree joints. Hope this helps.

Tires and wheels have been painted up and have been installed. The frame has been painted but is in dire need of some weathering. They don't stay this clean for very long, especially after a couple of trips into the woods. Some light washes will also bring out some of the highlights. The cast in place headlight surrounds needed to be changed also. They were drilled out, sanded and then replaced with chrome bezels from the Ford kit. They will be permanently mounted after the cab is painted. The exhaust pipe and muffler were painted aluminum and then were given a wash of Model Master acrylic rust.

This is scratch building at its best. Keep going, Hermann!!

WOW! That is an awesome build. I had to look twice at the dozer to be sure you hadn't photoshopped the actual one onto the lowbed of the model! Outstanding work! Fantastic!!!?

After a lot of trial and error in getting a hood for the truck I ended up making one of sheet brass. It looks much better than thick resin or a casting that is thinner. Also it is much easier to hinge in the middle. The hood is made of 4 pieces; two on each side. They are soldered at the ridge line that runs longitudinally along the hood sides. The small brass piano hinge is soldered to each hood piece and is joined by a small stainless steel pin. The pin is long enough so that it can be inserted at each end into a small brass holder; one in the grill shroud and the other in the firewall. Shaping the hood after the soldering was done required a lot of fitting, sanding of the grill shroud and firewall to square them up and a lot of fine trimming along the way. Now I have a satisfactory hood that opens into the engine compartment to show off the IH engine and details.

That is pretty cool, Jeff! What a great build!

I've moved the other posts on this subject here so that you can see them all together. This is the start of the construction of Mashpee 354, a 1967 IH R190 brush truck that was built by the Thibeault Company in Canada. It was used on Cape Cod for many years and has since been put out to pasture. I work as a consultant to Mashpee so there is a bit of a connection there. This build started out with constructing a frame that needed lengthening and casting a full set of tires. Several items have come from the Ertl IH kits as you can see. The frame is from one of the Ford snowplow kits. Here the frame has been cut so that an extension can be added to the center. This truck has a 176" wheel base to the center of the tandems so the frame had to be extended. It also has a frame extension at the rear that is a support for the rear mounted pump. I made up some movable front hubs using brass channel and brass tubing. The axle pivots from inside along the vertical pin seen in the photo. The small screw will hold the tire and wheel in place. A bushing was inserted in the wheel that is somewhat smaller than the head of the screw. It allows the wheel to turn but captures in on the axle. Here's a look at the components of the hub. The parts were made from much longer pieces of channel and tubing. Doing so helps keep things at right angles. After all is said and done, the pieces are carefully cut to length using a cutoff wheel. Going slow in the cutting process assures that the solder does not melt and things don't begin to fall apart. The first engine I built used a Mack block but it was way too big resulting in the firewall being significantly out of position. So I opted for a 1950 Chevy engine with the transmission relocated to the other end of the block. This allowed the manifold to be on the right and the spark plugs to be on the left like the IH Red Diamond 501. The other two pieces in the photo are the top radiator hose and the air cleaner. This is how the engine looks in the engine bay. The firewall is from the Chevy also and fit with very little trimming. Below is the hood that was cut away from the cab. It's easy to see how thick the casting is. To correct that I have made a mold to re-cast the hood much thinner. Then I can separate the two halves and put in a hinge. Inside the engine bay I added some malleable aluminum sheet to act as inner fenders. Holes were drilled at the edge and pins were inserted from underneath. Since superglue does not adhere well to aluminum I mixed up some two part epoxy and ran some between the resin and aluminum. It sealed the openings and added strength as well. The underside the fenders with the pins in place. This aluminum is so soft it can be easily bent to the contours of the fender. Once the cab and engine are in place, it won't matter that the inner fenders could be bent out of shape since there will be no real way to get at them. The IH engine sits in the frame. I turned three double pulleys for the fan belts from aluminum rod. The fan belts are black electrical tape cut into thin strips. Next up are the driveshafts and exhaust. After that the steering connections to the left wheel hub along with the steering box and rods.

I just got through doing some of what you have been doing! Working on the IH brush truck I built up an engine using a old Mack block. Got it all done but quickly found that it was way too big! The firewall would have been sitting about 1/2" behind the cowl! Tried moving the engine forward and that didn't work. So it was a couple of steps backward to get another engine. Back in 1967 when this truck was built they were still using relatively small gas engines for this type of use so I dragged out one of the 1950 Chevy pickup kits and rebuilt its engine. I had to cut the transmission loose and put it on the other end of the block though, because the IH manifolds and plugs are opposite to the Chevy. Here is a comparison of the two engines and you can see how much smaller the Chevy engine is. Notice where the transmission sits in the first photo. It is way up inder the raised cross member. In the second photo that's the transfer case that sits under it. And here is a look at the engine inside the cab area. The firewall also came from the Chevy kit and was only trimmed a small amount at the corners and sides to get it to fit. Much of the thick resin cowl was ground away to allow it to fit better. Note how thick the hood is that was cut loose from the cab. I made a mold and have cast the outside shape of the hood. I'll slush cast it so that it is thin all the way around. That way I can cut it down the center and add a hinge.

The details on the frame really pop now that you have primer on it. That's a lot of widgets!!