Custom Mike

Great idea Charles, I can see myself using that app to death!

OK, we have a near 100% bed! I've still got to find a way to fix the broken section on the lower edge of the driver's side at the tailgate, that's gonna be a bear. But the rest is done, enjoy the pictures! ome more prep work on the bumpers. the black was polished up, two more coats should cover the bare spots and then they'll be ready for some Alclad! And I tried something different for the windshield washer bottle. This was a clear part, and they always look bad to me when you paint the inside...the walls are just too thick and it looks weird no matter what. So I hit it with some 1500 grit sandpaper to give it a fine texture, and shot it with white primer. It looks better, now it kind of looks like the semi-smooth translucent plastic the bottles are made from..at least to me! Firewall wiring detailed... Same for the fenderwell wiring... Grille glued in place.... And the interior and windows place...we're almost done! The windshield was a real pain to get in place and glued down, but I finally got it! The back window went in perfectly, and is almost distortion free! The bed and cab have been glued to the chassis, and the bed cover was placed on it's hinge... And one of the mirrors has been pinned and glued into place...adding the tiny piece of wire to these was a real pain, there's not a whole lot to work with! They were de-chromed and painted with some Metalizer... And finally, the turn-signal decals were added to the hood! And these two pics are of the bed, hard to believe this was the same messed up piece of plastic I pulled out of that box!

More progress! I got the door panels completed and interior all assembled, the set out to do the foil work on the cab. I also got the hood masked off and re-sprayed with it's Candy Apple Green!

Sounds like it's gonna be a good one to watch Tommy! You should be able to use AMT's '68 Road Runner glass in this one with ease, if you can get your hands on it.

Awesome work James, the weathering is perfect for a "show-used" look, and it's incredibly an incredibly clean build! And thank you Gregg for unlocking this!

Thanks Bob, I've used the Dupli-Color Candy Silver and Candy Apple Green before, and it's an easy paint get a nice, smooth finish with! A bit of prep work and it lays down smooth as glass every time!

Alright everyone, we have everything polished up and ready to go together...except the hood, it's waiting to get masked and sprayed with some Candy Apple Green. Enjoy the pics, lots more to come! The rear fenders didn't even need any polishing, I just hit 'em with some Meguiar's #7 and called 'em good! The hole that the tailgate attachment pin uses cracked somehow, and left this beautiful looking missing area in its place...we'll see what I can do to either hide it or fix it.... And the cab. I'm very happy that I messed up the paint, it came out so much better the second time around! And in case I forgot to mention it, the boat is finished! The braided line from the fresh-water pickup to the water pump was a royal PITA to get in place, but it finally gave in! My lovely wife Pam's contribution to this build was this...some waxed thread for sewing leather! I removed as much wax as I could, added a hook, and put it on the reel...it actually works! I can hook it to the boat and crank the handle to pull the boat up, I didn't even plan that one, it just happened to work! And the last bit of work for tonight night, a quick mock-up of the bed. The floor still fits perfectly, and the fenders and bed cover are also good to go!

Great work on the bed conversion, and the crusty paint is looking beat, just like it should!

Nice start Gary, how'd you get the interior so grimy looking?

Ira, I've been watching this since day one, and held off on commenting, because just how many times can you say how awesome your builds are, or how cool it would be to have a tenth of your creativity? This is just another in a long line of simply killer builds from your fertile mind, I wanna be like you when I grow up!

Thanks Carl, it's actually not that difficult, you just can't accept defeat, it's only plastic...well, and a bit of wood too! The bed floor is actually ridiculously simple to make, the hard part is prepping the bed for it, especially with this kit! The next one that gets a real wood bed floor will be the AMT '57 Cameo, whenever I get around to building it!

And the last update for tonight, the bed parts and the roof panel wearing their final coats of Candy Apple Green!

I got all the parts together for the bed and laid down some Candy Silver painted, I forgot to take pics of the back fenders, but they came out great!. This should be re-masked and sprayed with some Candy Apple Green soon! A few more. I had to do a bit of fine sanding on the bed and tailgate, but nothing major that will require more silver, thank God!

I dug into into my tail light stash, and I dug out what look to be '55 Caddy tail lights. I cut some sheet styrene out, drilled two holes in it for some straight pins. The pins serve two purposes, they look like bulbs through the lenses, and they give me something to attach the tail lights with! Tail light laid on the fender... Styrene backer cut out and drilled.... Pins glued down... A quick mock-up, now to apply some glue! And the backer trimmed up. Once it's all done, the backer will get some foil! New tail light mocked up on the fender.... And an overall shot with both in place, these are my final answer, no more changes from here on out!

I capped off the back side of the bed cover with some half-round strip, blended it in and called it good. Then I glued the tubes for the hinge onto the underside of the bed cover, now it's all ready for primer. I added a prop-rod and hook for holding the cover up while I was at it, and it actually works the way my twisted mind envisioned it, who would have thunk it?

I mocked-up the entire bed to see how it all looks together, and I'm very pleased with how it came out, especially considering how horribly bad this bed was to start with. Looking at the back of the bed cover, I need to add something to cover that gap between the bed cover and tailgate...looks like I've got a bit more work to do on that part! This shows the tailgate, it pivots on two straight pins, and a good shot of the new bed floor in place, enjoy!

Now, back to the bed floor, already in progress.... I buffed the Aluminum Plate up.... And glued the wooden strips in place! A quick mock-up in the bed.... I left the center slats out of the bottom just so I knew which side goes up! Remember a few posts back I said I found a way to attach the bed to the frame just like the 1:1? Well, here's the proof. I took the original bed floor from the kit, and drilled holes straight through the mounting bosses. Once they were drilled, I laid the original bed floor onto the new floor, and drilled through the new floor using the original floor as a template. The next step was cutting some straight pins to go through the bed and into the frame. Turns out my modifying the slat layout affected this part, but it's nothing major. Turns out the bolts at the back of the bed would have ended up in the retaining slats, so I'll just find a way to attach the back side of the bed another way, but the front two "bolts" fit perfectly, and it looks good to boot! You can see where the rear bolts landed in this picture, look just behind the center bolts on the top and bottom retaining straps and you'll see where the drill bit landed in the straps instead of the wood. I just shifted the "bolts" inward on the top side and clipped some straight pins really short for those two. The last bit of work for the bed today was to add the cross braces back onto the bottom side. the old bed floor was once again used to show me where they needed to go, and some styrene c-channel was glued in the proper locations!

As is usual for me, I bounce around a bit waiting for paint to dry. I filled in the slots at the corners of the bed for the stiffeners that glue there, they looked horrible anyway! I also filled in the ejector pin marks on the inside of the tailgate, that was really fun! The next step was making a way to get the rear fenders re-attached to the bed. I started by holding the fender in place and drawing a line inside.... Then I glued some angle strip styrene to the line, giving me a place to glue the fenders to! A nice tight fit, this should work out just fine! And finally, I came up with a devious way to attach the bed to the frame, and get the bolts that attach the bed to the frame on the 1:1 in there to, here's what I started with, I'll explain the rest later, wait for it!

This is the tedious part, drilling 35 holes for the bolts that hold the retaining straps down. Then I get to work with the tiny plastic bolts...I'll need 70 of 'em when it's all said and done, 35 for each side! These are actually bolts, I sanded them smooth so they look like the carriage bolts that are normally in the bed. I modified the amount of holes a bit just to make it easier, I chopped two rows out, making it only 25 holes and 50 bolts....and it still took all day to do it! Here's the pics, enjoy! All the holes drilled and ready for the bolts....the first five bolts are installed on the bottom strap. Here's where you get to see exactly how small these babies are...yup, I'm cross-eyed right now! Once they were all in place, I laid down some Metalizer Aluminum Plate, next step will be a quick buffing and then the installation of the wood!

A quick shot of the bottom side, the retaining straps are glued down here also. I need to add the cross bracing and the mounts for the frame still. And a couple of shots of the whole assembly slid out of the bed, this was way too easy! I located my stain and prepped the wood for some color. A bit of sanding to smooth out the wood, and some stain was applied, making the boards look nice and pretty! A bit of 220 gets the wood all smooth and ready for... The stain! Easy to apply (I used a paper towel!), and it makes the Basswood look great! The wood is all finished, I'll hopefully be able to get the bed floor all together tomorrow. I've still got a lot of work to do on the retaining straps!

Some more work on the bed floor, and it's just about completed, I'm just waiting on the glue to dry...and locate my wood stain somewhere around here...and I can call it done! First up, the hinge for the bed cover is done, it just needs to be glued down at this point.... I started in on the bed floor by cutting my Basswood into strips and getting the retaining straps cut to length... The mock-up, wooden strip, a strap, etc, etc. All this just to make sure I've got a good fit before I use any glue. And the bed completely mocked-up...on the top side at least. Once I was happy with the various pieces, I cut the bottom pieces to match, and marked each wood strip's location so I know where they belong. Next up was putting one wood slat in at a time, then gluing the retaining strap tightly against the wood strip. It came out great, I think I'll keep this method, it works well! I removed the wood, and this is how the .010 sheet of styrene looks with the retaining straps glued down.

Now for some work on the bed cover. I finally settled on some quarter-round strips for the edges of the cover, which will take the place of the original rolled edges. I glued one strip down to the cover, trimmed it up, then glued the second strip down. I carefully glued everything down, and then mocked it up about a hundred times to make sure it fit nice and tight. The cover all trimmed up, and a hinge made for it courtesy of my Fatkidd Hinge Jig...I like this tool, I may be hinging a whole lot more in the future, it makes it easy to get a perfect bend every time!

Sorry for dragging my butt on this on Chris, but we're gonna do a bunch of updates, we'll start in on the bed floor! I grabbed my 1/32" (.040) basswood and cut two pieces out, and made a matching piece of .010 styrene to glue everything to. The basswood/styrene sandwich slid into the bed.... And fully seated. The next step will be sizing up the basswood and cutting it into individual boards, then making some slats to go between the boards. Next up was making a way to hinge the tailgate, since the kit doesn't have any hinges included. I drilled holes into the sides of the bed and the bottom edge of the tailgate, and slid some 26 gauge wire in the holes. I may go with some cut-off straight pins for more strength, we'll see about that later!

Jonathan, the original movie was written by Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis, this "remake" was written by Katie Dippold and Paul Feig.

Nice looking work truck, that weathering is dead-on! After reading all the complaining about this kit, all I see are beautifully built versions of it. so what gives? I trust your opinion Chuck, it it a good kit?