Chuck Most

That bed is just freakin' insane!

LOVING this one! Does this kit have the same cab as the Diamond Reo and Western Star kits? It seems awfully familiar.

Well, I do have an Allison-powered IH in the works, just not this one. It might even be a TWIN Allison-powered IH if I get really nuts with it. I'm not sure if that one will be more of a show truck or a race truck (think of a Bonneville Big Rig), but I am pretty sure I wanna get to it eventually.

I build vintage kits because that's what they were designed for! A few years back I bought a mint AMT '69 Lincoln Continental and immediately tore into it. The poor thing had waited 40 years to be built, and I wasn't going to let it stew in that box for another four decades. Plus, I could take advantage of all sorts of products (like Bare Metal foil) and building techniques that weren't even thought of when the kit was new, meaning that it could be built to look better than the majority of them built when new would have looked.

Body's pretty well dialed in at this point- not I've got to trash the inside.

Took out my agresssions and shot at it last night. Also managed to get the hood, bumpers, and grille painted.

That makes two of us.

Did some work on the front end...

And now for something the complete opposite of shiny and pretty. Well, that's what it'll be eventually...

Is that the on with the Toronado transaxle?

Those are about it. There was the RS200, but that was mid-engine. There was also the Festiva Shogun, but I don't know if that one was actually built by Ford or if it was done by an outside concern.

After a year and four months... here we go! I added a widened rear El Camino bulkhead to the body, and cut down the kit windshield unit to fit the long-since-installed widened Elco roof.

You're going to make me want to start work on another Transtar Eagle with this one!

Awesome.

That's how low it will sit. That's the plan anyway. I want to depict it as it would look with the airbags fully deflated, kind of like a modern custom pickup on display at a show.

Gorgeous! Cannot wait for this one to come back.

It's actually worse than that... the whole time I was working on the cab and hood of the LoneStar, I was thinking about the Transtar...

Well, I'm afraid the engine in this will be rather dull by comparison. It will run a CAT 3400- though I might install more than one turbo if I get ambitious. I thought about sticking in the engine from a Payhauler 350, but since Detroit diesels like to wear their oil on the outside rather than keep it in the crankcase, it would be a poor choice for a clean, polished show truck, no matter how audacious an engine choice it would be.

I'll second that!

Started this two years ago. Here's how it looked until about three days ago. Skip ahead to earlier this week, when I added some etched brass screen to make a new grille insert. And then came some serious body work... I had wanted to stretch the hood, and I ultimately decided to go with a so-not-subtle two feet. Trouble was, this made the hood look way out of proportion to the cab. So I decided to chop and graft a second Transtar cab onto the first cab, creating a 4-door crew cab. Front wheels are the Transtar units, I cut the center out of an AMT Rides Magazine kit to make them a bit larger in diameter and fit the RM tires. The truck will feature a fully adjustable air suspension- this will be 'show height'. This truck will represent a no-holes-barred, no-expense-spared show rig- something built simply to turn heads at a truck show. It'll obviously be a long-wheelbase rig, and I'm toying with adding a sleeper box but I'm not 100% sold on that yet.

Taking a short break from this one for a bit. I'd planned to finish this, then get to work on a custom Transtar show truck, but working on this made me want to get started on the Transtar. So that's what I'll be doing.

Not that I need to jump in on another CBP, but I think I can manage something for this.

Thanks! Should have enough info to at least get started on the truck.

Thanks for the info guys! One last question... what materials are the cab and hood made of on the model AMT's kit represents? Fiberglass hood with an aluminum cab? Fiberglass/steel? Steel/steel? Or some other combination?

I've never seen a real Aussie Ute in person, but I saw a fiberglass-bodied street rod years ago with a body modified like that. Lovely looking little roadster! The conversion work is great.