Force

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!

I do also have both books and they are both great.

Nice. Revell Germany took a shortcut when they did the Can-Do wrecker and used their allready existing 359 kit and just added the wrecker parts and some others. The original Can-Do truck was...or should I say is because Stepp's Towing Services still have it as far as I know... a 379 short hood and it's not only the model of truck that's wrong, the real truck also had a Cat 3406 engine and not a Cummins NTC 475, back then the truck also had chromed 2 hole steelies at the rear, the truck has been restored and upgraded some since then with a heavier underlift boom and now has 10 hole Alcoas all around and a different bug shield on the hood.

Could be so. Tyrone Malone had Truck Mate as a sponsor and he had chromed lock ring five diamond shaped hole budd wheels on his trucks. But I don't think our friend Ben Wicker would answer, he unfortunately passed away a while ago.

Back in the day when most ran on bias ply inner tube tires the rim sizes was 20 or 22 inches for the wheels, and popular tire sizes were 10.00-20, 11.00-20 for the 20 inch rims and 10.00-22 or 11.00-22 for the 22 inch rims, these rims are two or three piece split ring/lock ring rims where you take off a separate lock ring and outside ring to mount the tire and the rim itself is flat from outside to inside. The more modern era wheels for tubeless tires are 22.5 and 24.5 inches and they are one piece rims with a "ditch" in the middle to mount the tires, today almost all highway trucks has 22.5 inch rims and earlier 24.5 inch rims were popular, but today almost all highway trucks have 22.5 inch rims. Examples of tire sizes are 11.00-22.5, 12.00-22.5, and the same for 24.5, but lately many truck tires comes in metric widths like 385 and so forth. Most of the US truck models available to us from AMT has split ring/lock ring wheels and the White-Freightliner and a few others like the Autocar, the Diamond REO and White Road Boss has 22 inch rims and the others like the Kenworth W925-K123, the Peterbilt 359-352, the GMC General and Chevy Bison, the GMC Astro and Chevy Titan 90 and the trailers has the smaller 20 inch rims, one exception was the Kenworth K100 Aerodyne wich have a kind of tubeless wheel but the rears has no ditch in the middle and it has the 11.00-22 inch tires. The Ertl truck and trailer kits had a slightly larger outside diameter tire than the AMT kits, their 11.00-20 had a larger outside diameter and was also slightly wider, these tires also found it's way into some AMT truck kits after the AMT/ERTL merge, among them the Kenworth T600A and a few others.

This is the only good photo I have of the car, it's a larger version of one of yours. But the lace pattern on the car is most likely painted on and the scripts hand letterd, there were no vinyl wraps back in the day.

The kit is too heavy spec'd for a C600, and the badge on the cab door says C800, at least on the kit's I have so I belive it whould be closer to a C800 or C900.

A website isn't better that what's put into it, if the information is wrong you get wrong answers. Many timelines on Scalemates has lots to be desired as many are wrong and kits "related" to one another, with that I mean based on the same tooling, aren't on there correctly. I have noticed this in many occations and it makes searches harder, and if the information is wrong it's wrong. Try to do a search on the "modern era" Monogram and Revell Funny Car kits wich first came in the mid 80's, all of them should be on the same timeline as they are based on the same basic tooling but with different bodys, on Scalemates the kits are grouped on a timeline after what body they have and not in the same timeline wich in my opinion they should be as it's mostly the body and related parts that's different, the engine and chassis are basically the same with a few updates. I also noticed on the Revell Germany Kenworth W900 full detail kits wich were on different timelines because a misspint on the boxes but they should be on the same one, some kits are labeled as 1:24th scale and some are labeled 1:25th scale...all of them are 1:25th scale regardless of what the box says and they are even slightly underscaled in some places, to be honest, they are in fact based on the 1:16 Monogram Kenworth W900 kit as they are downscaled from that one, I belive this is changed now after I pointed it out. But...in many cases it's good information on Scalemates, not reliable all the time but it's mostly right, so it could use some improvements.

No I have not done that, sorry.

I see you wonder about wheel/tire size and the kit supplied wheels are the smaller diameter 10.00-20 rims and tube style bias-ply tires but lots of trucks back in the day had larger fiameter 10.00-22 or 11.00-22 rims for tube tires and these rims have the split/lock rings, and they fill out the fenders well. I see you have rims for tubeless tires on the drive axles but plan to use the tubeless style lock ring wheels on the front axle, tubeless front wheels looks quite different from the tubeless style rims as they are less curved...that will mean the wheel center is flatter, and it's easy to spot tube style lock ring rims at the rear as the rim part itself where the tire sits from the outside to the inside is flat and the tubeless one piece rims has a "dich" in the middle. You don't have to adjust the ride hight if you use larger diameter wheels because they did not do that, if you want to of course you can, but it's not necessary for the "right" look. There are a few AMT kits who have 22 inch rims, the White Freightliner is one, the Autocar kits, White Western Star and the Diamond REO, most of the rest has 20 inch rims. If we go to more modern rims for tubeless tires are the one piece 22.5 and 24.5 inches and lots of older trucks had 24.5 inch rims but almost all trucks today has 22.5 inch rims. The tubeless tires for 22.5 inch rims and the old tube tires for 20 inch rims are close in outside diameter for standard profile and the same goes for the 22 inch and the 24.5 inch. I also think the kit included 10.00-20 wheels in this kit and many others looks too small, especially with the small diameter AMT 10.00-20 tires, the MPC/ERTL 11.00-20 tires looks better, but as 22 inch rims were very popular back in the day I want to use them on my builds. Here is a comparison for front wheels. First the tube style lock ring wheel. And the tubeless style one piece wheel.

It came out nice Ken.

Very nice.

Well I have researched the Smokey And The Bandit for quite some time as it's on my build list, and I can see directly wich of the two trucks they used in the movie for the scene. They are similar but very different if you go into details.

Nice. It looks like you did the 1974 truck based on how the air cleaners look, the 1973 truck also used in the movie had chrome top and bottom, there are more differences between them also but... And for the rubber, the movie trucks had 22 inch wheels, not 20 wich are in the kits, so more rubber looks better. But you need to paint the KW hood pull emblem, they were gold with black KW letters, rings and stripes on both movie trucks.

Looks good. You know they were using two different complete rigs for the movie, one 1973 and one 1974 with Hobbs trailers and they are slightly different, but both had gold hood pull emblems with black stripes, rings and KW letters.

Very nice.