cifenet

Great progress and it is coming out nicely. I really like the blue finish on the truck too.

Excellent information! Appreciate the effort and initiative. 👍

Nice update! The paint job is gorgeous.

Simply brilliant! Nothing more to say here! 👍

Great work, I enjoyed looking at all the customization work put into the truck! The yellow and black color combination is nicely done too. 👏

To be honest, I never thought of the rivet details to be super "important" on these trucks. I actually think they are way too pronounced and noticeable, almost making it look like it is out of scale... Believe or not, I intentionally sanded them down so I don't see them very clearly. In addition, I usually polish the surface also and those rivets are painful to polish around (I end up stripping paint on the rivets during the polishing process anyway). You can always go without them and I don't think it will make the truck anything less. However, if you really want to restore the rivets, I suppose those rivet decals can be useful. My thinking is, you want to make sure your surface is all taken care first. And this means you do want to get your primer applied and taken care the surface. Then clear can be used to improve adhesive of the rivet decals. What I do not know is, how much you can polish once the base coat and clearcoat is applied on top of the rivet decals...

Great interior details! I really like the tinted glass here, did you paint the clear part?

Beautiful execution, Brian! The box looks sweet. All these details parts are candy to my eyes. 😁

Jeff, I really appreciate your support and it has been one of the biggest motivating factors for me to complete this truck! 👍 Thanks Tommy, I wanted to mention that your knowledge and feedback have been both helpful and beneficial for this build! Thanks again! Thank you, Larry! Thanks for your positive comment on this, Doug!

Technical, sophisticated, and bolts glore! Looking very nice!

Great progress and build initiative so far! I think you should take out the word “mild” from your title, it is as custom as it can get! 😄

Realistic result! Great craftsmanship building this up!

Thank you guys for your feedback and interest so far! I have already post the final work in the "Glass" section (link at the end), but I wanted to properly end my update here. From this point, most of my work is going to be attaching things. And this update would be mostly about my experience on attaching things. Starting with the exhaust pipe, I used the photo-etched mounting parts and they were very difficult to mount. I had to make sure I position the exhaust correctly and do not slip (otherwise the adhesive will ruin the painted surface)! Because of the exhaust pipe being made out of aluminum, the adhesive I was using had to support the heavy weight also. I used the "2 min cure" epoxy shown here and I was holding the exhaust motionlessly onto the surface for at least one full minute. Once the epoxy started to cure, I was able to perform some micro adjustment to make them look proper. I mounted the bumper and made sure the hood operation is working as expected. This took some time fine tuning it, the hinges were adjusted multiple times so they go over the bumper with minimum clearance. Now that I decided to keep the air canister as is, I began mounting other parts to it. I added the rubber hose and connected to the super charger unit. Also started mounting the torpedo lights and air horns on the roof. Ensuring that I do not leave any glue residue on the roof, I used Tamiya's X-22 acrylic clear paint to stick these parts. While Kristal Klear is also effective, but it is rather thick and bulky. Tamiya's X-22 has sticky characteristic and most importantly dries super clear, I use them often where I need small parts to be glued. Now that I had most of the components built and painted, I concentrated on small objects that required metallic shine finish. It is also good idea to paint these at the same time to prevent any deviation on metallic shade. For the headache rack, as an exception, I want it to have some reflective shine, so I must prepare the surface to be more glossy black (it could be glossy white also). For this, some polishing work is required where I start polishing the surface using 6000 polishing cloth working all the way up till 10000. Once I am satisfied with the base surface, I gave thin layer of chrome silver paint using low airbrush pressure of 8-10 psi. The idea is to expose the base coat to provide the shine as the metallic paint is applied somewhat translucent. Once two exhaust pipes were mounted, everything just got much easier. I attached almost all the parts I needed to complete the truck build. The clear UV resin was used to add "clear oval glass look" on emblems. Lastly, I lost one blinker (again) and could not locate one. I gave up searching the part quickly this time without getting mad. I quickly built a pair using some aluminum tubes and clear resin painted in orange. I think they turned out to be decent. Thanks again for following this WIP so far and I hope I was able to contribute the forum with some interesting photos and techniques. If not, I am hoping at least it was somewhat entertaining. The final work is now posted under "Glass" section:

Thanks always, Jim! Germán, appreciate your positive comment!! Thanks, David! I have been looking at your yellow Mack build and you got something super special going! Landon, your support has been a great factor motivating me to accomplish! Thank you! I am still new to the truck world and there are so many great choices to tackle... I have been also looking at Kenworth kits as well, and I would definitely need your knowledge and feedback. Thank you, Brian! It was pleasure having you checking on me and also seeing your epic build updates throughout! Thanks Mark! Hope to see more progress on your beautiful KW Aerodyne!

INTRODUCTION: I began building this kit back in early February and roughly took 10 weeks to complete. If I think back on the overall effort on "man hour" term, I may have been putting 60 to 80 hours from start to finish. I am mentioning this because when I initially started to work on this kit, I really wanted to build this out of box style and get it done quickly. Finishing this kit within two weeks seemed very doable at first. I honestly thought I could really pull it off. After all, I really cannot afford to spend multiple years building a kit, I am still buying more kits than I can ever finish building! (this is a big problem of mine lately) It is funny how things just change and I found myself building this kit for more than a couple of months... There are many parts where I decided to make my own and there are many areas where I changed how the stock parts get built. My main focus was certainly not to make the vehicle to be "period correct" or to be "an actual existing vehicle", but rather I was going for the aesthetically pleasing look (my way) and also to be convincing enough to say "yeah, it is the old Peterbilt 359 with UniLite cab". All I envisioned was something red, has metallic shine throughout, clean, and has to look good to my eyes. WIP: My WIP is documented in another section (the link below) and it has details on how I built this kit: PETERBILT 359: SUMMARY: It was an absolutely incredible experience and it builds into something that you can be proud of. I still cannot believe this kit was designed more than 50 years ago and that I just got to build it for the first time... Just mind blowing. No matter how it turns out, the kit is a challenging one and when you finish, you will feel the satisfaction of accomplishing something that is both demanding and fun at the same time. Another words, it is very additive! Lastly, I do want to thank all the members who supported me with helpful advice and positive encouragement throughout the building process! You guys rock!

What a great story and it is amazing that you are able to reproduce this truck as real as possible. Incredible work and it is definitely a special vehicle! The trailer is looking very nice as well.

The details on the dash and bedding are excellent. Nice touch on the posters, you will definitely find more people staring into the windows. 😁 And that is why you are spending enough time to make the interior looking good!

Going all "Mack" here! Should be a good looking setup when all staged!

Looking very technical! I really like it! Very interesting to see how the driveshaft position is offset, marvelous stuff!

Looking very good, Brian! As usual, this is another fun update and great showing us several outstanding implementations. And lastly, the use of the punch and an old hair dryer, they are definitely the correct application! 😄

The tracks look wonderful! Nicely detailed machine too, good work!

First-class workmanship! Wooden planks are looking sweet!

It is getting there and looks quite complex too. I would hate to make a mistake loading/unloading cars though, you can easily destroy multiple vehicles very fast. 😁

The interior is looking good, the dash detail is fabulous!

Oh man, you will need to grease all the joints so they can move without squeaking noise! And you must make sure you torque those bolts correctly to ensure proper operation! 😀 Very nice work!