Force

The engine you have there looks to be from an Italeri kit and it's a Cummins NTC 400 and should be beige...but Italeri sometimes wants us to belive it's a Cummins N14 as they in some kits changed it from a water to air aftercooler to an air to air intercooler. A Cummins N14 is black often with red valve covers, but the N14 has different heads and more squareish valve covers...and these are NT-NTA-NTC covers. When I looked closer at your picture the paint call outs (marked blue) are for the exhaust and water manifolds and the exhaust part of the turbo, nothing for the engine block assembly, the paint call out for the engine block can possibly be shown at an earlier stage. But all of the engine was painted beige from the Cummins factory and the paint would burn off on hot places like the exhaust manifold and turbo.

Sometimes an aftermarket resin engine costs nearly as much as a complete styrene model kit and then you only get the engine instead of a whole kit. It depends on what type of flathead you want, first of all there were both I4, I6, V8 and V12 flatheads by different makes but I suspect you want a Ford V8. There are four different Ford flathead V8's to choose from. The first was the 1932-38 85hp 221 cui 21 stud head engine. Second was the smaller 1937-40 136 cui 60hp 17stud engine. Third was the 1938-48 221-239 cui 85-100hp 24 stud head engine wich often go by the name 59AB. And the last in line was the 1949-53 239-255 cui 100-125hp 24 bolt head engine called 8BA (8CM for Mercury) and later EAB for Ford and EAC for mercury but the 8BA is the commonly used name for them. There are quite some differences between these different engines and you can read about them here http://www.vanpeltsales.com/FH_web/flathead_specifications.htm The 32-38 21 stud can be found in the AMT 1932, 1933, 1934 and 1936 Ford's, the Revell/Monogram 36 Ford and 37 Ford pickup kits, the one in the latest tooling AMT 34 is the best. The 37-40 17 stud 60hp can be found in the Revell Midget car kit. The 38-48 24 stud 59AB can be found the AMT 39 and 40 Ford, the Revell 32 Tudor Sedan, 40 Ford, 40 Ford pickup and 48 Ford kits, this engine is often used in Hot Rods. The 49-53 24 bolt 8BA can be found in the AMT 49 and 50 Ford, AMT 49 Mercury, AMT 53 Ford F100, Revell 50 Ford F1 (the heads in the Revell kits are the right style but only has 21 bolts) and Lindberg 53 Ford kits, also a very common use in Hot Rods as it was the most powerful of them all, and the bell housing was a separate part so it was easier to mate with different transmissions. I don't have a current catalog from Replicas & Miniatures Co of Maryland so I don't exactly know what he has now but he usually have some neat flathead stuff.

I thought so.

Here is a couple of pictures of the engine in my JoHan Sox & Martin 'Cuda built around 1995 or so, I think it would be "what the doctor ordered" for your build.. The only downside is the axle hole through the engine block, but that's an easy fix, and the engine has a regular New Process A 833 4 speed transmission so if the car you want to build has Lenco transmissions you have to source them from somewhere too, but they are available from the eftermarket if you don't have any.

No it's nothing like that, I don't meant to be rude or anything, I was just curious as I don't know myself when the yellow and red knobs came into common use, but it had to be sometime around 1972-3-4 as I have seen them in early 1100 series 359 cabs and 352 cabs from the same time period, but not so much in trucks before.

The US truck manufacturers did not paint any engines themselves before installation, they were already painted in the color the truck manufacturers wanted them to be when they left the engine factory. For example Kenworth, Peterbilt and Autocar had Cat, Cummins and DD to paint the engines they ordered from them white so they arrived already painted white to the truck assembly plants for a number of years...of course they had to pay extra for it. The same goes for the others that had different engine color than the engine manufacturers standard color. International had all engines except their own V-800 painted IH 2150 Red for several years and paid $25 extra per engine for that. But there are exceptions from the rule with the truck manufacturers special engine colors, even though some of the truck manufacturers was supposed to have a for them special color of the engines up to a certain date you could find engines in their trucks with the engine manufacturers standard color before that date and the special color after the same date. I have also found out that Caterpillar changed the color from the Old Caterpillar Yellow, also known as Hi-Way Yellow, to New Cat Yellow on their heavy machinery in June 1979 and that could also be the case with the engines. So if that's correct the engines would be Cat Hi-Way Yellow from January 1932 until June 1979, after June 1979 New Cat Yellow...except for the cases when the truck manufacturers ordered them with their own colors. The old Cat Hi-Way Yellow were a brighter shade yellow than the New Cat Yellow wich is more to the mustard shade. Caterpillar was also the last manufacturer to stop painting the engines white for Peterbilt.

The thing I don't get is the "Pro Built" statement that many ebay sellers use...I don't believe many build these kits as a profession and get their main income from it so in my opinion it's not "Pro" in any way...and if the model is poorly built it's even more so...especially if it's a snap kit as it was in this case. I prefer to buy my models unbuilt and I think they are more worth than a built model regardless of how good it's built, what's fun about buying a model and just put it on the shelf...not that satisfying at all as the fun part is to build the thing with your own two hands. But sometimes you might have to get a built model to restore as the unbuilt kits are too expensive and hard to find...but I never pay high prices for them.

Building a car like this without using several kits is not that easy as you almost never find all the things you need in only one kit Dual plug Pro Stock Hemi's don't grow on trees but you can find the exact engine you need in the old JoHan 1971 Sox &Martin Plymouth 'Cuda Pro Stock kit, it's a 426 Hemi with dual plug heads, dual distributors, tunnel ram and dual Holley 4500 Dominator's. This kit has been reissued several times in different boxes and are not that hard to find. This is the same kit in another box. Testors also did the same kit.. Ross Gibson also had a dual plug Pro Stock Hemi in resin (RGE 202) but as he passed away a while ago his engines are getting hard to find these days. The wheels looks to be Cragar Super Trick's wich are similar to Centerline's Auto Drag but were more often polished, the Cragar's has a convex center whilst the Centerline's have more of a flat or concave center. The best looking Cragar style front wheels I have seen so far in the ones in the Old Monogram 66 Chevelle Malibu SS, and the rear wheels are not that bad either, the problem might be finding tires that fit these rims. Some of the old MPC Funny Car kits has good looking Cragar Super Trick rear wheels, the front's are not that good but if you are not picky they will work too. You can find the wheels in these and a couple more MPC kits.

Cat had a diecast promo engine of the C15 ACERT made by Norscot And this one.

Well I had not seen these knobs on the Unilite "Small Window" cab dashes and as there is a parking brake lever in the kit the yellow parking brake knob is unnecessary. But one can of course do an upgrade and a change from the old parking brake lever valve to the brake system push pull valves with knobs Here is a couple of photos I found on the web of the Unilite cab dash from the era and there are no yellow and red knobs there and the big lever in the middle is the parking brake lever. The knobs to the right of the gauge panel beside the glove box has to do with the brake system tho', they are most likely emergency brake release and trailer charge or something like that. The photos are not mine and I may have found the pictures at Tim Ahlborn's site, so he or whoever originally took them should have the credit.

Yeah...and cheaper. The Camaro engines are 1:24th scale so it will help some size wise, they are a bit larger than 1:25th scale engines.

The old tool Revell 57 Ranchero is wrong as it's based on their old 4 door wagon, so the doors are too short. You are not alone, this issue has been in speculation ever since Revell released the 57 Ford Custom 300 kit and Revell has not said either yes or no yet.But it would of course be possible as the 2 door wagon was the base for the Ranchero and they only need to do a new body and some other small things.

The tank also has a depression for the spare wheel on the topside.

I believe you could get the Mercury sleeper with most of the truck manufacturers back in the day if you wanted one...or you could buy and mount one yourself, or have it mounted by someone else...so it is definately not wrong to use one on a Peterbilt from this era. I have one original issue T500-500 kit and it's molded in gray plastic but the sprue with the windows is clear in mine, not green, it's the right glass as it fits the small window cab, my T500 kit is molded in white and also have a clear window sprue.

The one closest to the rear axle is the tank. This picture is of a Coronet but the Coronet and Charger share almost everything except fot the roof and interior.

I don't know if they are 20 or 22 inches. I have some low profile tires and I have some similar 22 inch wheels and the rims are too big for the tire, and also for the regular AMT tires, they fit Italeri tires tho'

Nice work!

Nice model!!

OK I get it, it will be an upgrade, in that case you can use all the modern parts you like. I thought you were building a replica of the car.

Isn't the engine in the 79 Camaro a 350 Small Block, the Gigahorse have two blown turbocharged 502 Big Block engines so I think two small blocks would look kind of small. I'm so impressed with your work so far as you are getting it as close to the real thing as possible so I think it deserves the right engines too.

Yes the Preview button is missed.

Of course you can, it's not the same sleeper tho' but if you want the correct sleeper AITM sells one in resin called 36 inch Restrite Sleeper Box, it's the same sleeper as in the brown AMT T500 kit missing only the steps...I have both the T500 kit and the resin sleeper so that's how I know. The kit number for the original release of the Unilite Small Window Cab California Hauler from 1969 was T500-500 wich is the first kit in your post recently reissued by Round 2 with number AMT866/06, the number for the California Hauler kit with the sleeper was as i mentioned T500 released in 1971 and the number for the later 1100 series cab was T501 released in 1973-4, unfortunately Round 2 couldn't find the tooling for the sleeper and the other stuff so they couldn't reissue the T500 kit...these parts were originally sold as a parts pack upgrade for the T500-500 kit but was later combined into the T500 kit.But I don't know if you need to cut the cab, the old sleepers were "crawl through" so they crawled through the hole where the back window was into the sleeper and the rear wall of the cab is still intact, or they could climb in from the outside through the sleeper doors. So they were not like the modern "walk through" sleepers where you can walk from the cab into the sleeper.

I don't know why Don Prudhomme is so hard to deal with when it comes to licensing, I believe the model manufacturers offer him the same ammount for a license to do kits of his old rides as they do to others who grant them a license...maybe he's greedy and wan't more than they are prepaired to pay.

I use Google Chrome, I have tried to right click on the image on several web sites and copy the image url and paste it here but all I got then was the link, no picture showed...like this random picture I took from ebay just now to illustrate. http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/jlAAAOSwDuJWzdGe/s-l1600.jpg But if I hold the cursor on the image right click and copy and paste it here I get this , it's the same picture as the link above and the url is exactly the same, but I get a picture this time...strange. But it was easier to understand with the earlier forum layout, you right clicked on the image you wanted, copied the image url clicked on the "insert image" button on the control panel above the message box here at the forum and paste it on the line there, click ok and you were done...but we have no insert image button now. Well it seems to work when I right click and copy the image so I'll try that from now on when I want to show somethig I found on internet...but I will mostly use my own PB account anyway.

I gladly post pictures if it was easy, as you say a picture says more than 1000 words, It was a lot easier to post pictures with the forum layout we used before the one we use today. I have tried to post pictures found on the internet (from ebay and other places) to no avail so far as I haven't been able to get it to work so I'm pretty much done trying that, it was very easy with the forum layout before this one where it was an "Insert Image" button beside the "Link" button, click the Image button copy and paste img url from the picture you wanted to show and paste it in the img line and you were done...and it almost allways worked. I can post pictures from my PB account fine if I use the IMG codes, copy the IMG link and paste directly here into the message box, the picture doesn't appear until after you click the "Submit Reply" button tho'. I have also been able to post pictures with the "Attach File" feature and upload directly from my computer but I don't want to use that as it takes up space on this server, the "Insert Other Media" feature has never worked for me so far so I have given up on that. It's easier to post a picture found on internet directly if it's possible instead of having to download it to my computer first, go to my PB account and upload it there, copy the img codes and paste it here...well you can upload a picture from internet to you PB account directly but that pretty much takes the same time.