Force

American Industrial Truck Models is no more since Dave Natale passed away, Doug Wagner at Keystone Aluminum Model Miniatures had AITM stuff a while but there was a glitch somewhere and he closed up shop and some of the AITM stuff got back to Dave's family.

No rivets, or huck bolts as they are refered to.

Years and years of modelbuilding and research on upcoming and planned models. I like to get my models as accurate as possible. Another thing, I've been around and been tinkering with cars and trucks all my life and I have an adjucation in cars and body and also have a class 1 license to operate both trucks and busses, and wheel loaders and excavators...so I have learned how these things work.

No problem. The engine in the AMT Peterbilt 359 1100 series cab truck is a NTC 350.

Don't mention it, if I can help I will. Most of the engines with turbos back in the day only had one, the twin turbo setup on inline six engines is a more recent thing, both Caterpillar and Cummins had twin turbos on some of them and Cat still do on some engines, but Cat stopped doing engines for on highway trucks back in 2010 so after that you couldn get a Cat engine in your truck. V8 and V12 is another thing, they could have one or two turbos...or none at all. That looks convincing enough so go for it. The engine in the AMT Kenworth W925 and K123 is a NTA wich is not that common, the most common Cummins is the NTC version wich came in different horsepower ratings, but you can of course use the NTA if you want to, both are 855 cui engines and the visual difference is mostly in the oil cooler area. I don't know what engine was in the Bruhn K100 and you can't see it so use whatever engine you like, engines available back then was Cummins and Cat 4 stroke, and Detroit Diesel 2 stroke, all in various configurations.

You are welcome.

Here is the oil system. The scavenge pump wich suck the oil from the pan is at the front, the forward outlet goes to the oil tank and the rear is where the oil from the tank gets back to the engine through the standard oil pump, the filter housing is not used and replaced with an adaptor for remote filter and oil cooler. Here is the adaptor for the remote oil filter and oil cooler and back into the oil gallery in the engine, one out one in, the brass piece is the oil pressure sensor for the oil lamp and the outlet for the oil pressure gauge.

Here is a couple of öpictures of the cooling system.

U bolts, yes that's a good idea. You forgot part number 3 right in the middle of the breakdown picture wich the springs are attached to, it's called leaf spring equalizer and it's kind of a hinge in the middle hanger and are crucial for this suspension to work properly and smoothly. Leaf springs can't be solidly mounted, the arch of the spring gets flatter when loaded so they grow in length and has to be able to slide in the mounting points, and this equalizer wich is a pivot point between the front and rear spring are on every 4 spring suspension I have seen. Here is another picture so you can see how it looks, the equalizer has number 4 in this picture, this is a trailer suspension and it's similar to the truck suspension, but the U bolts holding the axles are the other way around. Otherwise it looks convincing enough.

Nice build. If they do as bad job as they did with the 1:12 GT40 Mk II they don't need to bother, the 1:24th kit is better but also on the crudeish side and I don't really like the parts breakdown. The best bodies by far are the Fujimi ones and if they had gone the whole nine yards when they did the Mk I and Mk II they would be close to perfect.

The Revell Top Fuel Dragster kits from the late 80's early 90's has small front wheels that might do the trick, they are a bit narrower and maybe a bit small but they are the only ones I know of. First was the Don Garlits Swamp Rat XXX from 1987, then came the Castrol dragster, the Valvoline dragster, the Jolly Rancher dragster, the Mobil 1 dragster and the McDonalds dragster, all these has small aeroplane style front wheels but the later ones don't. Here is one I built back in the early 90's.

Revell and Monogram has been the same company and under the same roof since 1986, they sold their respective kits under their own brand names for a while but they have branded Revell kits as Monogram and Monogram kits as Revell now and then, more of that lately. But Revell did never do any kits in 1:24th scale so they are originally Monogram kits.

Motor Wheel Spyder at the rear and Fly up front.

I had high hopes for the Meng kit but it's not so much better than the Trumpeter kit, maybe a little. But there are several inaccuracies on the Meng kit, much of the ignition wiring and plumbing in the engine bay and the rest of the car has lots to be desired as most of it is totally wrong. The Meng kit has a distributor but the people at Meng obviously don't know the firing order of a FE engine, 15426378...how hard can it be, they have grouped the ignition wires left and right side and divided the wires on the distributor cap right in the middle...no no no, 2 wires for each side should cross over for it to be right as the cylinders are 1234 on the left side of the engine seen from the front (that will say drivers side on a GT40 as they were right hand drive) and 5678 och the right side of the engine seen from the front. Many of the oil lines are routed strangely and comes from and goes to strange places on the engine and gearbox...some from the engine, engine oil cooler, gearbox are shown to be connected to the water cooling expansion tank on the firewall behind the drivers head...naah, that's not right, the oil cooler on the left side of the car is for the engine and the oil cooler on the right side is for the gearbox, the kit also don't have any oil filter housing or the part for a remote filter either..crucial for a FE as the main oil gallery goes out and in to the oil filter housing and back in the engine. And the oil tank for the dry sump oil system is marked to be the fuel tank in the instructions!?!?!!???...the fuel tankS are in the side pods on a GT40 for crying out loud, not under the front hood, and the fuel system from the tanks to the electric fuel pumps doesn't have any connection with the carburetor either. Much of the parts are crude, flat, angeled and has a lack of surface detail, so the "feel" is not there when you look at the parts. So the designers at Meng and Trumpeter has obviously not seen a GT40 Mk II or a FE engine in real life and obviously have designed the kits from photos and wild guesses instead of doing the research thoroughly and do a correct kit...wich isn't that hard to do with todays technology.

Here is mine built years ago sometime in the 90's, long before I had internet and I did not have any references at all other than the Jo-Han boxart, everything except for the lettering is painted. I will build a more accurate version sometime in the future as I have several more of this kit.

The Volvo delivery wasn't called 544 because the 544 was the regular sedan, the station wagon/delivery was a PV 445 (split windshield) later P 210 (one piece windshield) Duett and the pickup is most likely also based on the PV 445 as it has split windshield. They look similar but there is one big difference between the PV 444/544 sedan car and the PV 445/P 210, the PV 444/544 sedan is a unibody and the PV 445/P 210 is a body on a separate frame. Volvo model kits are rare as hens teeth, particulary the older ones, and all I have seen is resin kits.

Yes it looks to be a 4 spring and that's what I thought it could have had, that or the Walking Beam...but in this case it looks like a 4 spring Glide Ride. You can either use the rear suspension from the AMT White Freightliner or if you want to 3D print here is a parts breakdown of the Glide Ride 4 spring suspension.

It will be interseting to see what you can do with this "turd" of a kit. If you are doing a Mk IIB you have your work cut out for you, there are a lot of differences visually between the Mk II and the Mk IIB.

This kit is not that rare in white, it has been reissued several times in different versions both as the Sox & Martin version and a Pro Street version from Jo-Han and Seville, and Testors issued this kit as a 71 'Cuda with metal wheels in the HSO series (All original parts are in that kit too) and most of the later issues are molded in white and the majority of the ones I have in my stash are white plastic...but I have seen this kit in both orange and green plastic. Unfortunately after the Testors issue the tooling seems to have disappeared together with the other kits they issued in the HSO series, I don't know if Testors bought left over stock from Jo-Han/Seville/Okey Spaulding or if they had it molded somewhere, because Testors did not mold kits themselves. However, it's a nice well proportioned kit and for it's time quite good (first issued in 1971), and as I said earlier, it's one of my favourite kits and I have several of them. So keep up the good work.

I thought your post was confusing as you mentioned that the closest you can find is the 390/427 and the 352 for that matter wich are FE engines and not close to a 385 family 429-460 at all, so I wanted to clarify it some for people who doesn't know. The 429 Boss is based on the 385 family but very different from the wedge head 429-460, they share the bottom end but that's it. I have also worked a lot on both FE engines and 385 engines, I have a 1963 1/2 Galaxie with a 390 wich I built a 445 "stroker" for recently, and I help my friend as a mechanic on his 460 powered super comp dragster, so I know my way around these engines.

The only 1964 1/2 Mustang kit I know of is the Revell Convertible kit wich started as Monogram and is a 1:24th scale kit. I don't own one so I don't know how true it is.

The older Kenworth 4 bag suspension looks like this and there was a slightly different version a bit later, this is not available anywhere either in a kit or on the aftermarket as far as I know. This was replaced with the Air Glide 100 8 bag suspension in 1978. Here is the Kenworth torsion bar suspension, The AMT Kenworth W925/K123 had this when the kits first came out but it was later changed. This suspension can be found on the aftermarket. Here is a 4 spring suspension, this is a Reyco but Kenworth had one called Glide Ride and it looks very similar, the AMT White Freightliner Dual Drive kit has this type. These were medium weight suspensions. For more heavy weight duty they had these. Hendrickson Walking Beam and there were a couple of variants of them, the AMT Kenworth W925/K123 has a version and this suspension are in a few more AMT kits. And Kenworth 6 Rod, Rockwell has a similar and I don't know if it's the same, the AMT Autocar Dump Truck kit has the Rockwell style suspension and it's also avilable on the aftermarket.

Great progress.

Yes the Revell 1:25 kits all the way, they are the best. You also have a few variations of this kit, the Z/28, the ZL1 427, the Yenko 427, the Baldwin Motion 427/L72, the SS 396 and a Convertible. These are based on the same tooling and the only engine difference is the small block 302 in the Z/28, the others have a big block, there are a RS grille in some of them and some includes both grilles.

Well it's not easy to keep track of what was current for the trucks all the time, Kenworth had an air ride before the AG100 8 bag suspension wich as I said came 1978, and it was a 4 bag suspension from the late 60's-early 70's, they also had torsion bars, heavy duty 6 rod and a few more suspension options. You could also get Neway and some other non KW factory suspensions.