Chuck Most

Yeah... ship design just ain't what it used to be. Just take a look at Coast Guard cutters. Here's the first Mackinaw, built in the 1940's The new one looks like a salvage barge with some superstructure slapped on...

I'll give it credit for looking better than it should, but, yeah....

I'm a Yank, so I know next to nothing about the 1:1, and I've never even seen one in person, much less had the chance to examine one at length. I just like the kit.

Nah- she's a bit lanky for my tastes.

I've never built anything with such precise parts fit. Tamiya better be taking notes. The separate side trim pieces are the only things with no real positive means of location.

Three- tandem with the drop axle. About 20 from me.... I took that pic at Petticoat on 46. Some from earlier today...

First off... my apologies for the poor quality of these pics! I took them shortly after I finished the model in 2005- the only camera I had back then was a cheap little Vivitar point-and-shoot digital. I stumbled onto these images today while clearing some old memory cards. The model has been in my grandfather's possession ever since it was finished, and he's owned the 1:1 for over four decades. My skills weren't what they are now, so I just did what I could to convert the AMT kit to '59 specs, at least visually. I seem to remember robbing the quad headlight bezels from an AMT '53 F-100 custom grille, and I made the '58-'60 style side spear trim from scraps of plastic. The 1:1 has a square fuel tank on the driver's side, but I used the kit-supplied round one, and left off the passenger' side tank. The white cab/black chassis/red bed are faithful to the 1:1, it is missing the "Maple Wood Farms" lettering in red on the doors- I just couldn't pull that off at the time. His truck is a Custom Cab, so it has a white steering wheel, as all the early Custom Cab C-Series trucks did early on. I left the 534 engine and Allison trans intact, though the real truck has a 292 Y-block and a manual transmission. The 1:1 usually had solid sides on the stake bed- it was used to haul grain to the elevator, but after they stopped lifting trucks he got another truck with a hoist and this was promoted to "stock boy" duty... hauling seed and fertilizer to the field. It was sometimes used to transport old tractors- back when his health was better my grandfather almost always had an old Fordson in the shop being restored. Like my grandfather, the '58 is semi-retired now, it spends its days in a shed with some of the other trucks and tractors he's used/restored over the years.

Saw one of each at the truckstop today-

At the truck stop today...

^That one?^

EJ Potter, in addition to building Chevy V8 powered exhibition drag bikes, was also known to stuff Allison V-12s into a wide array of vehicles.

I remember about fifteen years ago there was one of these running around in my area, and it had an '87-'97 style bed. Might go that route...

I guess you could call this part of that "Throwback Thursday" nonsense, as I actually built this back in 2006 or 2007, shortly after the Model King reissue. While rearranging stuff on the shelves recently, I decided to take some decent photos of it. Much of it is the base kit, with a comically tall body lift made from Plastruct strip, and some So Real Weld wheels/Irok tires that I bought specifically for this project. I built this in my typical style, just diving into it with all the subtlety of a bull rampaging through a china shop. This was before I really knew what I was doing, and it shows in a few places! Just SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many things on this that I just would not let fly on anything I built today. One of these days I want to do a new and improved version.

Could be, but there are still fresh SSP Black Widows on the shelves at most of the shops I frequent.

The beltline trim looks correct for a '76 or earlier truck, but I've seen quite a few 1:1 '76 and earlier models with the thicker beltline trim... (this one was retrofitted with a '78/9 grille). It may have had something to do with trim level in the early years. The rocker trim changed for '77- a thin strip that ran above the fluted rockers and wheel openings- The AMT beltline trim is closer to this-

Discontinuation after a fairly short run.... still a selection in hobby shops....prices haven't jumped yet... ....I'm thinking maybe this kit isn't the hot seller they'd initially thought it would be?

Such things do happen-

Also... I wouldn't have to wait months on end for my Tesla to arrive, for lack of flat black hoods.