Biggu

Brian , I wish I could have taken you for a ride. The best nights were a heavy snow storm with LOTS of snow and pushing that one way for hours on end and watching the discharge chute and the thousands of tons of snow blasting onto the shoulder. It was a rush and I loved it. The more snow the better. Also knowing in the back of your mind you were providing some safety to the travelling public. I took a lot of people for rides , you know the ones, those that said all we did was sleep in the trucks? I changed many minds over the years. Most said they didn’t know how we did it and said they couldn’t do it. I think you would have had fun and really enjoyed it. I would love to do it one more time. Lol Jeff

And here is a pic of the engine and transmission finally mated getting ready for frame install. Note that I didn’t put the filter decals exactly the same as they never are in real life , at least never were when I did an oil change. I think it adds just a little dan of realism. Also airline for the range selector

The engine kit comes with a set of VERY small decals but incredibly detailed. So this is about as far as I could go with it out of the truck. Again sorry for the lousy pics, I’m fairly new at this game but you get the idea. The Bendix decal on the compressor is VERY small and you can still READ it ! Now thats detail !

So I have progression on the engine. It is a little jewel. It takes a little delicate painting of fittings etc but if my big fat puds can do it anyone can. With careful detail painting the brass fittings come out nicely. I have added some details but nothing like Randy and his build. His engine detailing is hugely inspiring. ( Floater truck thread ) so here are a few pics of what I was able to put together. I had to add a scratch made dip stick tube which is actually an aluminum tube that had to be bent to ‘spec’ to fit in the fitting in the block

Thanks Jeff. The engine detail is fantastic. I’m trying not to make a pig’s ear out of it. I was a bit pricey but as you mention head and shoulders over the kit one , but with that said I think my next one, I am going to see if I can kick that kit engine up a notch or two. Might be a fun challenge. Maybe … lol. I’m glad to hear you order from Paul too. The more of us that do the better it will be for all of us I think. I see he now has the KGS Loader and excavator. And getting more conversions, looks like I will have to save my paper route money, allowance , lemonade stand money too. Lol. Thanks for checking in I appreciate your comments. cheers Jeff

Thanks Gary. Boy you are sure right about the aftermarket and I am a victim of that. For all the years of building out of the box which is really someone else’s ‘vision’ so to speak, we can now build our own vision. And in some cases much more realistic and each kit can now be different. I have been on this site for a while and have watched a lot of builds and none really box stock and even the slightest modification inspires me to try new things and make my builds a personal thing. There is no wrong way to build and building it ‘your’ way is spot on. That’s why I spend hours here looking at the current and past builds and I gather all sorts of ideas and see new techniques. Love this place. Thanks for you kind words. Jeff

I can’t say anything. My jaw has fallen from my face and is planted on the floor!!!! I am in complete awe in your scratch building and superb engineering. Having had my buttocks in the seat of one of these plow trucks for more years than I want to remember, I can tell you from hundreds of hours and thousands of miles driven this is with out question the MOST stunning and accurate replica of one of our trucks. Your attention to detail and obvious love for these trucks and company is unprecedented, Brian. This is the best truck model I have ever seen. And I KNOW how they should be and look and this is IT! This should find its home at head office in PG as a tribute to the good job we old guys did and the new crews do today. YRB was the BEST company I worked for in my 38 years of highways maintenance. A pure delight to watch this come together Jeff

So in deciding what color I have that may be close to the Detroit color, I discovered that the early 60 Series were the old Detroit green and the newer units were the Detroit ‘blue’. I had a new bottle of Vallejo M-485 Blue Grey an acceptable color choice and with that gave the block a shot. This is my very first foray into acrylic paint as I am a die hard Model Master Enamel guy but someone decided that was to end so now I have to learn new tricks. I have to say so far the paint is good and went thru my airbrush smoothly …

On the block there are 6 1/2 million contact points that need to be nipped off and it takes some time and patience but the little gem inside is more than worth the time and effort to clean it up. There is a fair bit of waste but that is the cost of doing business as they say . The pic is of all the waste bits for the whole engine and there is a bit

So a while ago a fellow on another site mentioned that GP Modeling was in the process of designing a 1/24 scale 3d 60 Series Detroit engine. I aww what was being offered and ordered one, from Spot Model who were excellent to deal with and I had to wait for about a month for it to be in production and shipped to me here in British Columbia. The detail is incredible. And screams for extra detail. ( see Randy’s build in the Floater Truck thread, his is off the clock) so I thought I would give it a go …. Here are some pics as it comes

Thanks , Steve...................I totally agree with the tape , the duct tape should work as well, I have found that if I take a wooden dowel or something like that and really burnish the edges of the tape it seems to help somewhat and doesn't leave a sharp line and I use a circle template to cut the tape, nothing fancy......the brake chambers are from Kootenay 3D Model Parts.... Brandon does really nice work.... his site is down for a little bit by the looks of it, but well worth checking out....

Thanks Brian. Yeah the air detailing does add to the build but at times can be a bit tedious …. There is some “artistic license “ on this one. But I did a Kenworth W 900 to spec. That was a bit of a challenge but turned out quite well

So under a splash of paint and a few decals added to the frame and the Wabco Air drier installed and a few detail bolts the frame is slowly coming together

So now it seems to be air plumbing time. I buy my air valves and my aftermarket from STSupply as Paul is in Canada and it saves me the massive bank exchange fees to US Dollar. So all a/m including rims and tires comes from Paul . That is my main source for A/M. So valves installed and the plumbing started

Thanks for the kind words, Rick..... yeah I do have lots of trees in the yard, and I probably could make some timbers , not sure how good I am at 'whittling'.... BUT who knows, maybe another hobby in the making?? LOL, Good idea, and I will look around and see if I can find some suitable candidates.... thanks for the comments and dropping by Jeff

Sorry for the BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH pictures, just of my crappy phone....

Yeah, two sticks are fun to drive, been a long time, but I would love to give it a go once again....some guys could drive them and others certainly couldn't and really struggled...... they did keep a guy on his toes a little more than today's automatics...yuk Jeff

So for me I find sometimes the nice chrome on these kits is too bright and as I had 38 years driving trucks, mostly gravel trucks pulling a pup or our low bed truck and trailer. Neither of which had chrome tanks. Our newer units had nice clean aluminum tanks that didn’t stay nice, clean and shiny ….. but I do see some highway units with beautiful tanks. So with that said I did decide to leave these tanks chrome. But I was less than impressed with the seam on the tanks. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t hide the seam. So I sanded the seam and of course took the chrome off. So to cover that , I found some ‘chrome’ automotive tape and cut the appropriate size of the tank ends and put it on the end to make it ‘chrome ‘ again. Now it isn’t perfectly chromed BUT if you look at a real chrome tank, after a long trip the ends do take a bit of a beating from road grime rocks, sand etc. so for my application and my old eyes this seems to work for me and for the most prt hid the seam ….

Added a few ‘bolts’ here and there and installed the rear ends and made sure all four rear feet touched the ground

Gary , as the other guys have said this build is beautiful. And an interesting bit on the f/a. I built this kit when it first came out many many years ago and of course didn’t notice the f/a issue. I just very recently purchased the Sprite version but have yet to crack it open. I was also thinking of front floats…. Do you think an aftermarket f/a might make life easier for some of us? I have a couple and will have to measure and compare of course but maybe it might be easier for those of us who don’t have the engineering skills Just a random thought. Love your builds and always fun to watch and a learning experience. Jeff

Thanks Brian feel free to add anything that comes to mind. This one will be a fairly ‘plain ‘ build as it goes but I am always open to more ideas and thoughts. Thanks for checking in…

I find that some times the chrome is a bit bright and some parts chromed shouldn’t be. Case in point is the hubs on the rear wheels. Its obvious they can’t not be chromed as the hub in this case is part of the rim. So careful de-chroming needs to take place. So I carefully de-chromed the hubs and ten painted them satin black. I also decided to de-chrome the air cleaners and will paint them cab color with chrome hold down strips and some CTM photo etc screen on the air intake.

So the rear brake chambers are just not good for me and in my eyes totally unacceptable as earlier mentioned. So I found Kootenay 3d , a local fellow who does some printing of truck parts. When I saw his brake chambers I was sold. So I purchased a few sets and after seeing them for real will be getting many more sets . They are wonderful. And very well detailed. Altho a little care is needed when working with them the results are light years ahead of what comes in the box. I used the stock mounting brackets and it turned out well and at least they look the part

No I don’t think I will. As I ‘thought’ the molded kit ones looked ‘ok’ considering where they are located. As a second thought looking at it now that may have been a very good idea. It’s a little late at the moment as I have it all installed. So I would say it may have been an oversight.

The next part I thought could use a little help was to add a little ‘fluff’ to the front axle by adding some bolts for some visual candy and should look ok under a splash of paint