Force

Nice progress and I'm eager to see more. Here is the largest excavator we have at my worksite right now, a 352F wednesday this week with the just then total renovated undercarriage trying to get down through the ground frost so I can lay 10 inch storm water pipes and drains beside the bypass road we are building, the newly built overpass in the background is going to lead to the Volvo Cab plant where they do most of the cabs for the Volvo trucks wich is located in my town. Boy the ground was hard and this job with the 352 took over two days because the ground was frozen solid about 5 feet deep and he had to break through it for about 50 yards so I could do my job.

Very nice.

You're welcome. One can use many things for detailing models that's meant for a completely different use, look after what's usable and what would look good and work , I do that a lot when I'm at stores, and your imagination and ingenuity is the limit. If you browse around here you will get many ideas for usable products.

It's a catch tank also called "puke tank" for oil, oil vapour and humidity from blowby in the engine when it runs and should be empty before a run, a catch tank for oil and oil vapour is mandatory on all nitro and alcohol cars and also in many other classes to prevent spillage on the track. After a lot of oildowns from engine failures NHRA mandated a larger more efficient catch tank with a capacity of at least 2 gallons in 2010, a diaper or belly pan under the engine wich could contain all the 16 quarts of oil in the engine of the nitro cars was also mandated, this to try to get less track cleaning time after an engine blows up going down the track. It's not perfect but has cut track cleaning time a lot since then. I have not seen anyone who does these hoses/tubes on the after market so If you can't find one you have to make your own. Try at the wanted section here on the forum and someone might have one for you, the Revell modern era Top Fuel kits were made from 1991 to 2002 so they are not hard to find, and the part you need is unaltered in these kits. Otherwise they are quite easy to make.

I have done a few over the years, they are not unbuildable, you just have to have patience and go slow and test fit a lot. So they are nothing you put together quickly with super glue as you might have to adjust along the way to square them up and get them right.

One problem here is that the engine is not right for the R730, the engine should have been the new generation 16.4 liter 730hp DC16 V8 but the engine in this model is the old DS14 from the old T and R 142 kits and modified with some new parts to more look like the 530hp DSC14 13 V8 for the R 144 when that kit came out, Italeri took a shortcut and it's a carry over from that kit and not accurate for the R730. The "round canister" beside the injector pump is the cyclone centrifugal oil cleaner wich Scania has allways had on their engines, it's better than any spin on or cartridge oil filters around but a bit messy as you have to take it appart and scrape and wash it clean when you change the oil in the engine. The "square canister" looks to be a crude representation of the air compressor, it's in the right position for it and the air compressor on the later DSC14 engines has a square top. The power steering pump is gear driven and is mounted on the front cover in the middle on the drivers side of the engine. I don't have this kit and have not seen the instructions for it, I have just seen pictures of the parts, so I don't know what tank you mean on the passenger side, so a picture might help.

It would help if you told us what model you are building and maybe we can help you. I would guess it's an Italeri kit but they have done a lot of them.

Very nice and appropriate for the time.

I couldn't agree more. Lets see what will happen, I'm not negative in this because something good could come out of it.

The only downside I see with the MPC/ERTL/AMT Mack DM 600 and 800 truck kits are the spacing between the drive axles in the tandem, the axles are further appart than they are in most highway tandems and the chassis is a heavy duty as the DM series are for construction purposes (DM=Dump/Mixer).

Cool.

Nice build.

Very nice, I really like the Thunderbolt's. This was before Jake King became the head mechanic for the Sox & Martin team and one of the reasons he painted the engines he built for them Ford engine blue.

Nice pair of Bicentennial anniversary trucks.

Alclad recommends using enamel paint as a base for their chrome for a reason, so why use anything else when it works. I have used Humbrol gloss black and dark blue enamel paint and have never had any trouble...I have even used it on my real 1964 Ford Fairlane 500 Sports Coupe where some plated interior plastic parts had faded and it worked and held up just fine the years I had the car

If you want a more current US style trailer I would go for the Moebius 53 feet trailers.

Lets hope they will remain in the US.

Yes the China government could easily do that. And of course it's greed and profit that made companies move production to Mexico, China, India, Poland and other low wage countries wich don't take environment issues in consiceration and have less rules to follow...of course it's cheaper then to produce the same things in countries that have to meet all the pollution, invironmental and workers rules. The Lindberg tooling is most likely in China now as Round 2 owns the Lindberg brand.

Round 2 doesn't have access to the ERTL die cast tooling, ERTL still belongs to Tomy.

It's not only North American modelers, how many would like to see even higher prices on the model kits wich most likley would be the result if the production would come back to the US, I for one think the prices are high enough as it is, that's what I think but I hope I'm wrong. I would for sure like to see more production leave China, they couldn't care less about pollution and their manufacturing methods are far from environmetally friendly and will destroy their own land and most of the World if this continues, the rest of the world can try to decrease air and water pollution as much as they want but the enormous pollution China do eats that up faster than we can lower ours, the labor is cheap and the quality of the products are often questionable, that's why they can be cheaper. They are also ruthlessly copying things not caring about copyrights with government backing as the state owns most of the production facilities, product development in coalition with a China manufacturer belongs to and stays in China according to their thinking even tho' the real owner who ordered and paid for the development of the product is from anywhere else in the World, kind of weird if you ask me. The government they have...a communist capitalist state ...a weird unheathy combination and that's not a free market, China are also buying up the assets of materials and other stuff in the World and have control of more and more themselves keeping others out. So I don't like that development when a strong economy like China (2:nd in the World after the US) with the careless reasoning they have will have most of the influence on the World market nothing good can come out of it, and the best is to stop buying China made stuff completely...but that will of course have a price.

The 59 El Camino kit has a blown Cadillac engine as the speedy option, the 348/409 in this kit has stock tri-power with air cleaner and tri-y exhaust headers, not much of hop up there, so that's why I didn't list it.

Yes the ERTL tires has a lager diameter and more profile than the old AMT tires...so they are beefier and fill up better, the AMT tires are 10.00-20 and the ERTL tires 11.00-20, the tires in some AMT kits like the White-Freightliner and some other kits are 11.00-22.

Thanks Ronald, I know about that one, it's too new so it´s not that one, the kit I built was of a larger heavier excavator in the 25-30-35 ton range...but as I said...it was a long time ago. Well keep up the good work and you have my attention.

Well I suspected that based on your engine choice.

This model came out very nice indeed.