cifenet

Nice weathering, I think you did a wonderful job!

Awesome job finishing this very well! Pete looks massive and all muscle, I really like what you did here. Great start already for the year 2024!

Simply amazing... Bravo!

The kit and decals look very unique! Interested to see how this will turn out.

Daniel, Super fantastic details! And yet you are kept adding things to this and we are on page 28 going strong! I wonder if it could have been quicker and easier to build the actual thing.

I believe the design of Hyundai Pony was done by the same Italian firm where they designed many of popular sports cars from Lamborghini and Lancia! Very Interesting idea and execution! I also like the fact that the model tells a story!

Beautiful finish and realism at its highest! Good job!

Getting curious what you will do with it! I can see interesting things on your table also including two truck engine hoods!

The fabrication work is excellent, I like what you did with the handle mechanism at the bottom. Looking at the hinges, they have natural metal shine (because they are real), I wonder if it is worth keeping that finish or simply paint over at the end... At any rate, the trailer looks massive, no one would know if you tell say it is in 1/16th scale. BTW, I don't know how US NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) thinks that under guard crash bar is going to save anybody. They really need to raise the standard for it. Any sedan hitting the back of the trailer above 40mph probably won't have survivors.

I am going through multiple painting sessions and things are not moving fast. I may not have much update today, but thought I should still share some contents. I really do want to build a black truck someday, but not with this one. I want this to be a cold silver truck. I did start out with a black truck and in my opinion, Actros in black looks quite good with this beige interior. Once I finished with prepping the surface, I began mixing my own silver paint. I used Finisher's CLK Silver (this is indeed German color) and Super Duralumin to enhance metallic feel to the finish. I mixed in the ratio of 3:1 using above two paints. This how I store\use the paint during my painting session. This is pre-mixed and pre-thinned, it really is ready to paint. No mistake, no fuss, and gives you minimum color discrepancy between painting sessions. There are many advantages of making own paint dispenser bottle and I really recommend to do this (unless you guys are painting from spray cans). I mentioned how to do this in my previous WIP: The link is also here if you are interested in details: https://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/181872-125-revell-peterbilt-359/page/1 My first coat is done. The color is quite bright, my camera is having hard time capturing the color correctly. If I am not careful when taking a photo of it, the color will come out as dark gray! A close up pic on the silver finish here. Based on how the light hits, the silver shade can come out much darker as you can see here. At any rate, I am quite happy with my initial painting session. I also pre-drilled a hole on each headlight. I will drill them out completely and insert my own headlights to enhance the look later. Italeri provided license plates from entire Europe for this truck here. I started to wonder what would have been their motivation for doing this... Instead of this kind of effort, please provide one piece cab. French plates caught my eyes and I decided to make this a French truck till I screw up. I applied a couple of clear coats on plates thinking shiny plates would look much better (like those GB license plates), but it caused all kinds of trouble here. The license plate backing pieces were ever-so-slightly smaller then decals, the license plate decal edges curled back up essentially ruining them. "No problem", I said. I still have 38 other countries to choose from! It is quite ironic though, Italeri went all out and gave us all these license plate decals to apply. And yet the supplied license plate holders are small to use correctly. I can't believe I went from black to silver in one day. Next, I will start applying clear coat to the truck.

Hey Gary, The ones I bought online (those I mentioned in the previous post) are decent, the best part is that they are padded (so the padded stick contours better) and long in shape. You can make one (or two) swiping motion to sand things away. I am hoping to try different things though, I have seen very fine metal files, I am thinking about giving that a try.

Great update, beautiful job on this! The truck has that tough look with those tires. I must say that the towing cables looks real and the black and white stripes on the back look so good as well.

You got this build going so clean and neat. Rolling tailgate is a nice touch, I don't think I have seen this type of tailgate in a kit, so you know your build is special. BTW, when you say "operational landing gear", you mean like pushing a button making the jacks to go up!?

Great looking fire engine! I don't think I have seen a blue kind before, but this is definitely unique. I can see extensive effort has been done on this to complete. Nice job and good work!

My body painting session is currently on-going and I used the following paint as my base: For the gloss black finish, I skipped applying the surface primer here because I wanted smoother paint finish with minimum thickness and also this is supposed to be a "quicker" build. The paint job came out with some minor paint defects, but I am going to polish using various polishing pads and polishing compounds on the entire body surface. I have my dedicated polishing box which has all kinds of polish pads and polishing rags. Whenever I open this box, I know I am in for a long boring session... Black is not my final color, it is going to be a base for silver. My surface must be smooth though, hence my polishing work is needed. I blamed myself for not being too careful, I rubbed away the top coat at too many places. I will need to address these later. As I was working to prep the painted body panels, I also added small details around the frame. It took some time to figure out what it really was, but it is a wheel choke! My other guesses were "mini parachute" and some kind of "liquid dispenser". I am thinking it must be an European regulation similar to the carrying a safety vest or warning triangles? Nonetheless, the mount position is interesting here, it almost blocks a view of a rear license plate too. Italeri kit has a great amount of details out of box. I only added a few P/E parts from Hobby Design detail kit and yet the truck is full of details. If I add a big turret and some body armor around, I can almost pass this Actros as M577 APC from the Aliens movie! Don't you agree!? Also added P/E frame floor parts and they really enhanced the "metal" finish to the truck. I intentionally painted those two fuel tanks (one on each side) with different aluminum shade to make things more interesting. I also re-attached the real wheels as wide as possible without hitting the wheel guards on the top. The wider they are, the better looking I feel~ Getting closer, but still many items left to take care of...

Instead of using typical sand paper, I have been using sanding sticks. I think they are better and easier to handle. My routine is usually starts away from 400# and go up to 600# to 800# for normal sanding work. I usually end up around 2000# grits, but not always. For cleaning out a detached part, I usually stop at 800#. I bought these generic brand sanding sticks from online (not expensive) and while they perform as expected, I think the sticks wear out quick and still require some work to sand things smooth. I search of something better, I tried something more expensive and made in USA. These are from a company called DuraSand and they have different colors for different grits: Again, I think these work slightly better and easily last longer, but I still feel like I am still spending efforts to sand simple parts. At the end, it could be my method that needs to improve, but I would like to know if you guys have your "golden" sanding method or tool, I would like to know!

Right, I ended up adding small round magnets, it took 4 total to level the truck. Worked like charm! I will be definitely watch out for this next time. It could be just me, but it made the truck stand better also.

Yes! That is an excellent idea!! Thanks, Steve! Let me see if I can insert and glue small stainless balls (which I have). I just need some counter weight and this will definitely do the trick.

Hi Dan, Thanks for the positive words and your feedback on this! As I was building the cab assembly, I was kept asking myself multiple times in disbelief- "is this right? Am I doing something wrong here??" Right, your second method makes sense to me. I suppose I could have done this way also, but my small concern would have been “masking” things. The required technique is to mask things perfectly and I will definitely consider this option in the future though. I do respect Italeri for producing their truck kits this way when obviously it is so painful to build the cab for us builders. I guess it is true what they say, no pain, no gain!

Made more progress. I need to finish this truck quick with quality. The interior work is started and for simplicity, I decided to use two tone interior with no other additional details. I am going to paint the exterior cab as one piece. As I mentioned from previous post, Italeri doesn't want you to do that. But I will make some small modification to the kit to allow it! Italeri steps: build/paint interior cabin paint each exterior panel attach exterior panels around the interior cabin My steps: build/paint interior cabin modify the interior cabin so it can be detached from the exterior attach unpainted exterior panels around the interior cabin (except the back panel) fill/putty joint seams take out the interior cabin paint the cab as one piece reassemble the interior by inserting back to the cab I didn't mean to complicate things, but looks like I just did! My intention was not to add interior cabin details here, but I did work on "minor" ones. For the interior cabin assembly, P/E sets are used. In this case, sun visors, floor mats, and speaker covers. I don't know how much it will improve the overall look though. It is going to be quite dark to see inside once the truck is completed. The kit has great details already! Again, I made no attempt to further detail these other than paint in black. Painting time! Roughly took 30 minutes and I am assembling things right away. Lacquer paints do dry quick and hence I can work quicker here. I used Sandy Brown from Mr. Hobby for beige tone and used semi gloss black for contrast. Basic seat belt material is included in the Hobby Design detail kit, so I added two seat belts. Some aluminum trims were added using metal foil strips. I believe the interior cabin work is done here and the interior work took about an hour from start to finish. I also started to add details for fuel tanks. First I simulated the rubber gaskets for the tank straps using flat black and then added the P/E tank straps on top. The tank straps were painted with black primer which should provide paint-chip resistant finish. This is how I was able to insert/remove the interior cabin. I cut away the cabin floor from each side(about 0.25 inches). Then carefully glued all of the exterior panels except the back panel. This setup allows me to insert the cabin interior from the back and push up. To remove the interior cabin, I can pull it down and back. I can simply glue the back when everything is done. The joint seam is actually hidden for the back panel so I am hoping everything will work out. Lastly, the bottom will be covered with a thin styrene sheet so no one will know what I did... Filling the gap and seam everywhere. This was the step that I wanted to do prior to painting. So far so good. A new problem: tilting the cab forward lifts the back end. I will need to add some weight somewhere... If I were to build this kit next time (I do want to build one properly!), I may add clay or play-doh inside of those fuel tanks to balance the weight. My next step- painting the body!

Lovely collections! Each build has unique body color! Great job, indeed!

Wow, what a beautiful build! Love the color and overall finish is excellent! I thought it the was the photos of actual car till I saw people figures. And I want that RC cola vending machine!

Looking good and things are in the right spot! All your engine pipes are connecting well also! I remember building this kit as my first truck and it was difficult for me. When it comes to attaching things onto the frame, the instructions weren't explicit and I had to do many "trial and error" approach to connect all the dots. Interestingly, even with all the problems I faced, I had so much fun building one; I ended up buying another kit so I can build another one in near future!

Hi Steve, At first, I didn't understand what you meant by post, but I figured it out. That is some work you are putting into. If you didn't tell, I would have thought that is how the kit came out as. It definitely adds details and transfers into something unique!

Great job! You replicated the actual truck very well. Love the front grille, matches perfectly! It could be just me, but the truck looks very sporty too!