cifenet

Love the fine details and focusing for accuracy on the subject you are building, Brian! I see that windshield divider is a clean break which is a good thing. I have seen badly crushed/warped pillars, not an easy repair.

Hey Brian, thanks for checking in~ Unfortunately, I don't have the perseverance that you have with your build, I find myself losing motivation to complete lately. I am at the point where I need to get this built done one way or another, I hope it does end soon and with a decent quality... 😔 Thank you, Jeff! I see you are making a great progress now with Western Star! Keep it up, your truck is beautiful! Landon, I hope that grille can be corrected with the cover trim, but you know I am actually trying to hide a problem, not fixing it... 😃 Thanks again for checking it out. Appreciated your support! Tommy, I really appreciate your knowledge/info on various topics including the wheels/tires. I think this is where I was short sighted. Håkan was trying to point this out this before also, I just didn't think about the rim size, tubeless vs tube, locking ring type, and such. I don't have the Freightliner kit yet, but I plan to build it someday so I will definitely check it out and compare the size in future. Now I know what to look for if I want a larger set. I must confess though, I envy some of the quality truck builders here, they have extensive spare part bin where they can find pretty much anything they like to replace. All seem to have various sets of different wheels/tires, exhaust stacks, different engines (does that means some trucks were built without the engines so they can have spare?), etc. I am hoping I could build like that someday~

Found some time this weekend and made more progress. I paused for a week getting away from modeling (scale) activities and now I seem to lose interest and motivation. This happens often, but I really do not want this build to stall now... I haven't decide which color I want to paint the truck, but I envision this would be some kind of two tone paint job (white and something else). For the color, I started with white base coat first. This is an initial coat, I will probably add two more additional coats. I used a panel scriber to enhance the depth of door edge lines and I am happy how they came out. Then I started to experiment "the other color" that will make up the "two" tone paint scheme. Ever after spending a couple of hours mixing and painting, I still haven't decide which color I would want to use. This whole situation is both tough and disappointing for me. Lately, I found myself struggling to paint metallic finishes and I wanted to go back to basic and see what I am doing wrong (my grille was an example of bad paint work). At the end, I think I found out my problem and it wasn't what I was doing wrong; the main problem was how I was storing some of the metallic paints. I had several pre-mixed bottles from last year and I think they became "bad". As soon as I started to paint with fresh bottles, I was able to lay down decent paint layers. While I am on the topic of metallic finish, these are my two favorite metallic paints: Alcad Polished Aluminum and Finisher's Chrome Silver. These paints require some preconditions to be laid out nicely, but they do bring out good finishes! You can polish this paint by rubbing the surface lightly too. And I use Tamiya's X-22 to protect the surface (only loses slight shine) from rubbing off. My focus has shifted to assembling the exhaust pipes and I decided to build my own using various aluminum tubes. Having telescopic pipes, I can actually build the size (radius) I needed quite easily. For the heat shield, I will be relying on this photo-etched part. I just need to figure out how I am going to attach all of these to the truck... I am still bothered by the grille especially where I added photo-etched trim piece around the opening. Then I saw certain trucks use these attachments to block the grille opening to operate during the cold/windy winter months. Maybe I can make this one to hide the messy trim piece, so I began making my prototype. Here is how I am thinking the front grille is going to look. Convincing enough for me for now, but I may just scrap it later.... Lastly, it doesn't show (shouldn't), but I added two brass rods in the middle of the chassis to prevent the truck's frame being sagging. Luckily, the truck's frame doesn't sag anymore and it seems to help putting the real wheels down flat. I still haven't done anything for the front wheels yet though. My next task is going to be painting small parts and this is where the process becomes tedious/boring...

Beautiful weathering with realism! To be honest, I don’t think I have the necessary courage to weather like that.

This must be one massive truck, I don’t think I have seen this one being built here. Is Metal Glow means “glow in the dark”?

You got yourself a beautiful truck, Gary!!

Good to see the work getting done layer by layer, and it surely involves some extensive building activities!

Excellent work!!!

You have been busy making good progress! Coming out great so far and the detailing/paint work is superb! Keep up the good work, Jeff~

Haha, thanks for the support on the topic of having a messy desk. I know for sure I wasn’t alone on this, but I just didn’t know how to widely it is affecting others. 😄 Thanks for the compliment, I am flattered by your positive comment! Regarding the wheels/tires, they were actually 3D printed by me, but I got the original work in STL file from an online 3D community place a couple of years ago. I just modified to fit 1/25th scale and the ratio I wanted to have for the trucks I am building.

What an excellent 1/25th scale precision/reproduction truck you have constructed here! Nice work, and I know it isn’t easy making it look this good! 👍

Fantastic job, Jürgen! You are manufacturing these trucks like a well operated factory would! Fast and reliable at the same time. Looking very proper and I actually like the bright yellow paint job too.

Awesome job on this, you captured very well on your how this truck should look!

Thanks for the info on the nail art item. I can already see several applications that can improve our hobby! The dash is looking good and fits well too. Good looking truck with smooth paint job. I think you are almost ready to deliver this truck from its factory!

Thanks, Brian! Just had to upload again. Looks like either my ISP is blocking access or my home internet firewall is rejecting the access. 😕

I quickly made latches to enhance the boring battery box look (thin metal wire and black strip tape). My front grille is complete and I test-fit the whole setup. I can till the hood and open also. No interference with the bumper. I painted the mirror mount with stainless finish also. Regarding the front grille, I am not 100% satisfied withe how the grilled turned out. Perhaps I shouldn't add that photo-etched surrounding trim, but this is at point of no return. Never thought this is going to create a problem at this stage, but it is giving me some headache. My front wheels are giving in and the middle frame is bending causing the rear wheels to lift. I am going to reinforce the front axle with additional plastic strips and add metal plates on the bottom frame rails in the middle to prevent more warping... Silly as it can get here, essentially I am adding more weight to the truck to fix the weight issue. Lastly, I am having problems uploading articles lately resulting me to either upload in small chunks or repeat the upload attempts.

This is another random update before I move my work desk to another place (rooms are getting painted) and I will probably need take a short break. I try not to show my work desk for obvious reasons, but here is how messy and crazy it becomes... And this is why I am kept losing parts and tools, you can never find anything. Several times a day, I do try to clean up the work area (especially all the sand dust and plastic wastes), but it becomes messy again... Not an easy working condition for sure. If you have messier work desk, you have my respect! Spent time trying to figure out how I am going to mount the visor correctly. I can only mount the visor after body painting is done, hence I need to make sure I can "CA" glue it on the exact spot without making any mess. Thanks to the feedback/suggestions from this forum, this is how I improved the visor so I can mount via the inside brackets where no glue marking will show. There are so many different visors, but they seem to have a common feature where multiple brackets holding it in place. The brackets located inside will be glued and will line up the outside to the cab A pillars. I just want to avoid gluing anything on visor's edge... My next focus is the air canister and I got the length I wanted. I need to mount this (made of multiple metal pipes) securely and that is my current concern. This truck is getting heavier. I am going to weigh it on a scale to see how heavy it is. The A/C unit on the roof was painted with "faded white". Photo-etched screens were used and I painted the external screen white to show off mesh details.

Your encouragement is both motivating and stimulating. Thanks again, Jeff! Hi Tommy, that is a good reference photo of the interior. Could have used something like. I noticed the kit's steering sitting quite high so I took some height off from the steering column, but looks like it can go lower. The only problem is, if I go lower, the driver's leg wouldn't go under the steering wheel. 😄 To be honest, I think the steering is somewhat oversized in the kit, but that is my feeling for every US truck kit I built so far (both Revell and AMT). Or maybe they are actually really big in real life? Hey Gary, this is what I picked up years ago. I think there are other colors also (blue, white, purple) where one side has diamond-like cut and the other side has flat spot.. They can be used for blinkers, driving lights, service lights, etc. Once you drop a couple of clear resin on top, it really turns these into smooth round circles, but I think you could probably get the same with clear gloss acrylic paint.

The new floor looks so good. Good thinking to go with this route. And that flexible tube (from Wave?) which wraps around the stand is just the right detail here.

Superb finish on the car and love the engine details!

Fantastic decal work, I know they are tricky, but you got it going nicely. Thanks for sharing the progress!

Excellent progress and detail work! The carbon fiber application looks awesome as well. The body came out great too, keep it up!

Clean work and it is one cool looking truck! I really like the grille being white and it definitely has that old design look. Good job!

What a fantastic build and it surely looks amazing! You got a great deal out of it too. I think just building the regular 359 itself requires some patience, I can't imagine what it would be by adding the wrecker part to it. Awesome truck, good work indeed! On a side note, Revell needs to sell this kit again till no one buys anymore.

Great looking Petes! Even after 50+ years apart, they both are charming in its own way. The beautiful background works very well with the trucks also!