Force

Turned out nice.

It helps to have some knowledge on how things on a car and truck works when you work on models to get things right. The pipe going over the engine top from the turbo to the intake manifold shouldn't be there if you have an air to air intercooler/aftercooler in front of the radiator. If you are replicating a truck from the mid 90's the engine you are using is too old, it's a Cat 3406A wich came 1973 and replaced the 1693, the A model was replaced with the 3406B in 1987 wich in turn was replaced with the 3406C in 1993, after that came the 3406E wich is the final version of the 3406 up to 2007 when the C15 came, the C and E model was produced at the same time for about 5 years as the C model ended production in 1998. The major difference between a A and B/C model is where the diesel injection pump is located, about mid engine block lengthwise for the A model and up against the front cover for the B and C models. The E model has 3 valve covers like the C15, and the A/B/C models had only 2, the E model was also electronic and has no injection pump on the side of the block. I don't think the 3406B and C model are available on the aftermarket, only the A but the C15 is wich is very similar to a 3406E, so for a mid 90's truck I would have used a 3406E/C15 engine for it. But it's your truck model and of course you do as you please with it.

Hmm, the turbo plumbing looks a bit weird. If you have a air to air intercooler in front of the radiator as you have plumbed you should loose the cross over pipe from the turbo to the intake manifold that goes over the front head, because you don't have both as that cross over pipe is the route from the compressor side of the turbo over to the intake manifold on a non air to air intercooled engine like this Cat 3406 engine originally is, it doesn't even have a water to air aftercooler that most of the higher horse power 3406 engines had.

I can agree with you in some of your reasoning Steve. The 3D printing is mostly better than the injection molded stuff when it comes to small details and lots of 3D prints are really very good, but I see the resin casters on the aftermarket will suffer of this a lot more than the model companies will and that's sad in my opinion because they do fill a void. So 3D printing will most likely kill the resin businesses long before they will ever touch the model companies. I find it hard to believe that 3D printing will be cheaper than injection molding when it comes to complete kits, one of the largest 3D priniting companies Shapeways who had state of the art machines went bankrupt recently...so I'm not so sure if I believe it ever will. The design stage in a CAD program takes the same time for 3D printed part as it does for a part in a tool for injection molding so that's a fact, and time is not free if you are going to earn any money, and therefore the designs will not be free either, so printing out a detailed part will allways cost money if you count everything in, just look at what the 3D printed stuff costs today where a 3D printed individual part costs 1-10 bucks and a complete engine almost costs like an injection molded kit, not far from it anyway. I don't think 3D printing will be much cheaper and faster in a forseeable future but it's for sure a good source for our hobby, and if you can do everything yourself, both the CAD design and the printing, it's a win as it only costs time and material...and of course the computer, the CAD program and 3D printer but that's a one time cost.

Very nice.

It's a thing I have noticed on pictures of real W900's, none that I have seen has the front wheel in the center of the wheel arch, they are allways slightly forward of the center line, so it's how they were made. But of course you are right, a custom truck is a custom truck and you can do what you want with it...like fix the off center position of the front wheels. 🙂

Yes you are right there, 3D printing has done much for the hobby so far and will probably do more in the future as nothing is impossible with this technique. But for real mass production it has a long way to go yet. But I wish I could use a CAD program and have a 3D printer myself...I have lots and lots of ideas on things I want to do.

Yes it's not the internal combustion engine that's wrong, it's the fuel it runs on. Sustainable fuel can come from many places, not just from agricultural sources, it will come but it just takes time to do it economically viable.

You blow us away Brian.

Like your build. You know the front wheels on a real W900 is off center do you? Most if not all w900's I have seen the front wheels are slightly towards the front in the wheel arch.

Some of the old pre-80's Revell Top Fuel dragster and Funny Car kits had the Crower 8 port injection

I use CA glue very sparingly on few parts, far away from paint, glass or chrome. Parts like metal to plastic , strengthening some joints and such. Mostly I use liquid glue like Tamiya Extra Thin Cement, Tenax 7R, or Revel Contacta Professional with the thin metal tube.

Got mine here in Sweden Wednesday last week.

Well I don't see that happening any time soon, by the time that 3D machine print out 30-40 kits the injection mold machine has produced hundreds. So I don't belive the 3D print will make injection molding obsolete in a forseeable future.

There has been much talk lately about returning to 3 litre V10 engines on sustainable fuel and skip the hybrid systems and even maybe as soon as 2026, pretty much like WRC has done for this year, I don't belive it's possible in such short time as much work has been done for the 2026 cars allready, but we'll see. It's the complex hybrid systems that are expensive to develop and get to work, not the combustion engines themselves as most manufacturers has that covered.

Ford is doing their engine in conjunction with Red Bull Power Train who today does the Honda engines Red Bull and Racing Bulls use, so Ford doesn't start with a blank sheet of paper as RBPT is building engines allready. And yes, Cadillac will be the 11th team, so they did not buy their way in like Audi did, but Audi will do their own power unit, they have been at it wor some time now...but the engine regulations have to be quite firm for some time before it's viable to put in the money. If the go away from the hybrid power units they use today the engine will be chaper to develop because all the hybrid technology and battery packs are very expensive, that's why they will skip the MGU-H because it's very complex and very expensive, and that was kind of a demand when Audi was to enter as an engine manufacturer.

Well Steve, I'm not so sure 3D printing will replace injection molding and make it obsolete any time soon. To develop and draw up a kit in a CAD program takes the same time if you will do an injection molded kit or a 3D printed kit so the difference is the tool cutting time for the injection mold, but I'm sure you will get out a larger production capacity from that than the 3D printing will ever do, not from one machine. When you are doing the volumes the injection molded kits are done in there isn't even a competition, the molding process in an injection molding machine takes a few seconds per shot and you mold every part for the kit in the same tool at the same time and get out thousands and thousands of copys a day. So for small scale production 3D printing is fine but not for larger productions where it needs capacity to do large volumes in a short time. If we go to model kit production, once the tool is cut and done they can do the whole years planned production for a kit in a day or two in one machine, change tools to do another kit, and then another and so on.

The whole package with the 1.6 litre turbo charged V6 combustion engine and hybrid system with MGU-H and MGU-K and battery pack together is called power unit and this started 2014. Cadillac...or should I say GM...will most likely do their own engine eventually, but develop a F1 engine and hybrid system wich are currently used is definately not cheap and takes time, Honda wich is the last to enter in todays F1 hybrid era in 2015 took several years until they had a reliable competitive power unit. Several teams of the 10 currently in F1 buys/leases their engines from others as there are only 4 engine/power unit manufacturers, Mercedes, Ferrari, Honda and Renault...and Renault is not going to continue after this year as it seems, when Cadillac enters it will be 11 teams and 22 cars as every team has 2 cars. So today the 10 teams gets their power units from these 4, Mercedes, McLaren, Williams, Aston Martin has Mercedes power units, Ferrari, Haas, and Sauber has Ferrari power units and Haas buys everything they can and are allowed to from Ferrari, Red Bull and Racing Bulls has RBPT Honda power units and Renault power unit only in Alpine. Red Bull and Racing Bulls will use RBPT Ford next year as Honda will go to Aston Martin and Renault will be gone so Alpine will be a customer team from next year with wich engine I don't know yet, Audi wich takes over Sauber completely for next year will most likely do their own power unit for the upcoming engine regulation where the MGU-H is dropped but are a customer team until then...and it's been talk lately about going back to naturally aspirated V10's on sustainable fuels and skip the V6 turbo and hybrid system maybe for 2028, it's cheaper to do a V10 without the hybrid system and maybe will get more engine manufacturers to enter F1...so who knows what's going to happen in the future and maybe Cadillac will wait until then instead of putting in huge ammounts of money in something that's going to disappear soon.

You can do almost anything with 3D priniting so of course it's possible. But a complete 3D printed kit will most likely not be cheap, just look at what the prices are on individual parts, so I don't know if it would be economical to do it, at least not in volume and not like the injection molded kits where you do thousands in the same time it takes to print one.

When it comes to AMT I'm intrigued that they used 20 inch wheels and tires on most of their truck kits when lots and lots of real trucks used the larger 22 inch wheels wich were very popular back in the day, it's just a few kits like the White Freightliner, the White Road Boss, the Diamond-REO and the Autocar kits that have the larger 22 inch wheels and I believe it's only the White Freightliner kits that have 10-hole drive wheels. The AMT Kenworth K100 Aerodyne kits use the same 22 inch tires as the kits I listed above but the rims are one piece tubeless style although the rears doesn't look right as they have no "ditch" in the middle of the rim.

Unfortunately the AMT Race Car Transporter trailers is just their old Trailmobile Moving Van trailer from 1972 with some new decals and some interior parts, that could be fairly right if you are building a transporter trailer from the late 70's-early 80's allthough its very short at 40 feet, has spring suspension, no upper deck, just ramps for the cars and so forth and they did 3 versions of it in 1990, the Bill Elliott No 9 Coors NASCAR transporter, the Kodak No 4 Ernie Irvan NASCAR transporter and the STP Kraco Galles Indy Car transporter, same kit different decals. The trailers used after that was specially built to be race car haulers and they are longer and taller, has air ride, spread axles or even three axles, double decks where the bottom is a workshop with lots of cabinets and benches and the top deck is where the cars are, a lift at the back for lifting the cars to the upper deck and things like that, and the modern ones are 53 or even 56 feet long made by Featherlite, Competition, Pegasus, Renegade, Ultra Comp and companies like that. No model companies has done that type of transporter trailers, I wish they did because I also want one, but nothing.

Really nice.

Maybe they know as much about what's different between a 359 and a 379 as they did with the Marmon wich is the same Peterbilt 359 kit with a Marmon hood and grille...not exactly right there either. Nice build by the way.

Well you can get as far as you want with caged brakes as the wheels roll on just fine, but don't uncouple the trailer in a hill because you don't have any parking brakes. The cage bolt just compress the parking brake spring but the regular service brakes will work just fine as they are independent. So David, to get rid of the cage bolts just snip off the small peg at the front of the chambers, it shouldn't be there.

Nice!