Warren D

Found on Wiki under former equipment: HR 70 "The General" – 1980 GMC, Holmes 1801 (45 Ton), sold June 2021 to Hustler Towing in Olds Alberta

Update photos. I finally got the cab fitted after almost 8 hrs of adjustments. Not sure how it will look in the long term, the material seems to return to a pre-adjustment state after a few days. It's been sitting for a few days now and the super-glue is holding the shape. The bad news is I can't get the doors to fit. So, I decided to attach them in the door-open position. Next decision is color. The model was designed as a Vietnam era military grader but I'm thinking I may just do it in civilian yellow.

Last I had seen, Jamie sold the General a couple of years back, to someone in the USA IIRC. An internet search might reveal who bought it.

I asked a local wrecker collector this morning when I saw him at an antique truck show. He has 4+ buildings of wreckers but not one with an 1801. He didn't know of anyone in the Northeast with one, as you already know they didn't make many and when they wore out they were scrapped. If someone is going to the big show in Macungie, PA next weekend, maybe they could ask around. I doubt I'll go this year, forecast is calling for rain on Sat (which would make 14 or 15 in a row).

Excellent!

Thanks Jim.

Calling it done, though I do need to glue the hood down.

Calling it done. In spite of the issues with the aftermarket conversion kit, I'm happy with the way this turned out. Cab and chassis from the AFV Club M54A2 5 ton kit, wrecker conversion from Hobby Link.

It's 9-1/2" as shown in the pic.

Almost done but hit a problem when painting the hood yesterday. The paint from the same jar as the rest of the truck doesn't look the same on the hood. I suspect it might not have been mixed enough but bottom line is I have to wait a day or two, re-mask and re-shoot it before gloss coat and decals.

Another day of work (it's been raining here for what seems like 3 weeks) and some guessing on the intent of the minimalistic instructions and it's coming along. The cab is in bad shape and will require a lot of tweaking to make it look decent.

I had purchased several kits from Hobby Link before building my first one. I'll not do that again. QC issues seem to be rampant with these, warped parts, soft, sticky "resin" in spite of being 3D printed. They do provide extras for the small parts but the larger ones always are the worst. The frame had a noticable twist which was helped by a relief cut. Before and after pics below. It's not what it should be, but it's better.

Thanks Charles, the base truck for this is an M54A2 5 ton cargo truck. It's not big enough for these old eyes and shakey fingers!!

Nicely done, looks great!

Got the primer on this morning, along with the finish coat on the soft-top and the yellow for the nose as this will be an 8GP truck. I still have some Pollyscale acrylics left and I find they work very good for priming resin and 3D stuff. I rarely use greens in my commercial truck builds so I have a few jars of OD left to use for the primer. I added a little black to my home-brew FS24087 so it should be closer than the last one.

The bed seemed cured but there was some soft/gooey stuff inside the bottom beams when I cut. I thought about getting a cure lamp, Amazon has one for under $20 but it seems to have a narrow wavelength. I have an old UV bulb from back in the blacklight days but all it seemed to do was make the pieces softer.

While there certainly is a lot more available, the quality seems to be a bigger issue. Maybe I got spoiled with high quality from folks like Dave at AITM and Karl at Global......

It's ok now, the deck still has a little turn-up at the nose end but considering what it looked like, it'll have to do.

1/35 as is most of the military stuff. I do wish it was 1/25, not only easier to work with but it would fit in better with the rest of my fleet.

I tried logging out and back in and it seems to work now.

Ok, not sure why but it worked this time. (I did log out and back in). I thought I could fix the warped parts with the old hairdryer/quench method and it seemed to work until I noticed all the warps were back a few days later. The outer boom section was the worst and I had to remove 1/2" from the inner end to get it to slide into the base section. The deck was shaped like a banana but a couple of relief cuts, squeezed together and set with superglue got it as straight as it will get.

After searching the internet for Vietnam Gun truck stuff, I came across a conversion kit for an M543 wrecker. I decided why not, as I like wreckers. The base kit is the AFV Club M54A2 and the conversion is from Hobby Link, a 3D resin print. Quality isn't good on the resin, large parts are warped and many of the parts feel sticky. No sun here in a week so hard to say if it's just not cured. I'll post more later but had trouble posting this so keeping it short for now.

Yet it let me do this one, not sure why. Original issue is with WIP Big Rigs

Got everything typed out, hit post and get a screen saying page can't be found.

Not sure what the original problem was, I think the cooling system was inadequate.