Force

The things you are plumbing now looks like air brake chambers to me, there is one for each wheel pair. The shock absorber looking thingy further inside the knee of the suspension arms is the hydraulic ram for hight adjustments and leveling. Here are a couple of pictures to show what I mean, first the hydraulic ram. And here you can see the air brake chambers between the wheels, there are no spring brakes on these, only a single air chamber

I don't know when aircraft style braided hoses with aluminum A/N fittings came into use, probably sometime in the mid 70's

Round2 could lease the tooling for the Massey Ferguson, John Deere, International tractors and the plow and wagon too, they did just that before they bought everything else...so it's for sure possible if they wanted to. The Jonh Deere farm tractor and Backhoe has been out quite recently by RC2.

I would not be surprised, look what seems to be happening with the never reissued Challenge Mixer, it's supposed to come out later this year after what I have read, true or not I don't know as I haven't read a public confirmation on it from Round2.

Yes they are very wide...and heavy, not so much the aluminum intakes but the cast iron ones weighs a ton.

Auslowe usually are very dependable every time I have ordered from them, but with the Covid19 thing all international mail takes a lot longer, I sent out a couple of parts to a goy from this forum and it took nearly a month to reach the him in USA, I'm also waiting for parts from the States sent around a month ago and I have not recieved it yet. So that could also be the case with Auslowe.

Very nice model Graham, one to be proud of.

I see the assembly line is full, nice progress.

That looks very nice, I would like to get hold of one for myself, Smokey and the Bandit in one of my favourite movies and I have seen it a gazillion times since I first watched it at the movies back when it was first released. Buford is really a great father figure.

The tooling must have been remade quick because I have never seen one as far as I remember and I have been in this hobby 45 years, I have seen many W925 kits with torsion bars tho'. The T-520 KW K123 kit came 1971 like the W925 did and the interesting thing is that if AMT issued the K123 first with the torsion bars the designation was wrong as *25 is the dual drive torsion bar designation for the KW chassis, the W925 was right when it had torsion bars but got wrong when they changed to walking beam as the designation for a chassis with dual drive walking beam or air ride is *23. The other chassis designations *21 is single drive any suspension, *22 is single drive with tag or push axle and *24 was heavy duty dual drive six rod suspension or similar.

Yes that's correct, it looks like it's a 289-302 (5.0) or 351 Windsor, because it's definately ot a FE. But a correct FE intake should have the water inlet on the same side as this one has, but it's a totally different engine than this one is.

That's pretty much it, and Cat is one of the companies protecting their brand and logos the hardest, I don't know the fee they want for a license to a kit with their logos on it but they are very protective and it's most likely quite an amount. So I can understand why Round2 and Revell aren't that interested to pay up as the revenue from each kit isn't that high and on a race car for example there are many companies that want money for licenses to use their logos. Then you have another aspect, one company you want to get a license from can have demands on what and what not you can put on a product with their name on it, this has happened very recent with the reissues of the Tyrone Malone Hideout Truck and Kenworth Custom Drag Truck (Bandag Bandit), Kenworth appearently stated if you are using Bandag, Detroit Diesel and Allison on the kits you can't get the Kenworth license to do the kit itself, that's after what I understand why all these markings are left out on the reissues because Bandag now owned by Bridgestone, Detroit Diesel and Allison didn't mind.

As I said, I don't know who manufactured the wheel itself but Malone most likely got them from Truck Mate as they were one of his sponsors, if Truck Mate did the chroming themselves or if they had them chromed for them I have no idea...it doesn't matter much as these are the wheels he used. Here is the original wheel on the Super Boss...all of his trucks had these in the beginning before he changed to two-hole Budds with tubeless tires on the transporters. Here is the wheel on the model kit, pretty much spot on if you ask me. Here are the wheels Ben Wicker has mastered sold by Jamie at Mo'luminum, Ben refers these as "Truck Mate wheels" and there's where I got it from.. This front hubcap used on the Bandag Bandit at one time even has the Truck Mate logo in the center.

Sorry, I missunderstood.

All these has been reissued several times with different numbers, but as far as I know these are the first. The Wilson Lifestock Trailer had T-594 at the initial release 1972 The Fruehauf Van Semi-Trailer had T-507 1971 The Fruehauf Tanker had T-506 1971 The Fruehauf Exterior Post Van had T-524 1972

No not much, some of the 406 and all of the 427 engine has the three middle mains cross bolted and screwed in core plugs, and of course the Side Oiler has an oil gallery down low on the drivers side of the engine block...otherwise they are pretty much the same. These things are not that visible, at least not on a model.

I don't know who did the wheels but the five hand holes are distinctly diamond shaped and I have not seen many budd wheels with that. The wheels was probably something Truck Mate sold, Truck Mate is still around today but they mostly have bumpers, grilles and grille guards, they also have a wheel category on the website but there are no wheels there. Malone had decals or scripts with "Chrome Goodies By Truck Mate" on his trucks.

Great model.

Nice progress.

Nice, I like it a lot, the Finnish license plates is a nice touch.

The old Monogram is not that good either, it's 1/24th scale and looks to be somewhat out of proportion. But the Revell Black Widow is a 150 so it's a base model so instead of the Black Widow kit I would go for either the recent Revell 1957 Convertible or 2-Door Sedan for the body, both are Bel Airs and you will get the correct side trim, and use the 1956 roof.

NASCAR has a hard time filling up the 40 car racing field for every race as it is now, it's often only 38-39 cars showing up, and the field used to be 43 cars until 2016...who knows if they will ever fill the fields after the changes...it may get too expensive for the smaller teams. Well it's enough ranting and it's time to move on.

It should be, the Holley 4500 Dominator was first used on the Boss 429 in NASCAR competition and that engine came 1969. Not 100% sure but could be in a compartment in front of the left rear wheel as it is now.

I agree.

Interesting project. As this car is supposed to be a GT500 the engine should be a FE 428 big block, small block cars were GT350, but I know some of the movie cars had 351 Windsor engines, this doesn't matter as the engine is never shown in the movie.