Aaronw

The kit is set up for a sleeper. The rear panel in the kit has a large opening with a deep lip around it, so just easier to make a new rear panel with a standard size rear window.

This looks great. I'm not sure what the correct term for this style of trucks is, but I like the rugged looks. All function and durability, looking pretty never crossed the designers mind.

Yes, air actuated gravity dump on the back. It does have a portable tank, but it is a soft side "pumpkin" style tank in a large box under the tank, not a fold-a-tank hanging on the side. I've been away for 8 days, hoping to get back to this now. Got a little work done on the engine before I left, swapped the Cummins from the kit with the Caterpiller out of a Revell Kenworth.

Unfortunately no. I have one of the Danbury Mint diecasts Chuck mentioned, and it really is quite nice straight out of the package. You can usually find a few on ebay, and will probably spend $50-100 to get one (although there are usually a few trying to get much more than that).

How are you going to pick up a truck and trailer? If a truck and trailer doesn't have to be lifted to be judged then why would a car? There is usually little of interest on the underside of a car model. For those exceptions it should be up to the modeler to find a way to show that off.

Thanks, it is nice to actually finish something once in a while. Thanks for the tips on the dog.

Neat truck, the cab is available in resin from a couple of venders, and the wheels / chassis could come from the Italeri Opel Blitz with some minor modification. The mixer no idea, probably would have to be scratchbuilt. I assume the truck is owned by Granite Construction, a large local construction company rather than the city of Monterey.

Very nice, this was one of my favorite cars as a kid (and still up there as an old kid ). I didn't know there was a good kit of this car, the only GT40 kit I've seen was ancient.

When I made up the BLM decals for the jeep, I had a lot of space left over on the sheet, so whipped up this set for a USFS LEO and a couple of future National Park Service projects. I needed something to put the decals on so I picked up a Jada diecast 2010 Chevy Tahoe (grabbed a Motor Max Dodge Diplomat for future use too). I took it apart and did some minor detailing under the hood, in the cabin and added a rear cage (it was only provided with one between the front and back seats). Now I just need to find a dog for the back. Just insert doggy

Looks good in orange. The dirt is very convincing as well. It's a neat kit, I hope Revell comes back to this one and offers it with some more options, a hardtop would be nice.

How about a bullet nose between the headlight buckets? Nothing says Studebaker like a bullet nose. The 289 would not be an inappropriate engine for this truck. Until 1965 the base engine in the C-600 was a 223 cid I-6, with a 272 cid V-8 as an option.

Does it have a rumble seat for the perps? That is really... different. I have this image of Mad Max if it was done in the 1950s.

Thanks for the tip on putting something inside, I wouldn't have thought of that. I was planning on using boiling water, not direct flame to heat the pipe. The chemical issue is part of why I'm using a dedicated pot rather than my wife's big stew pot. I'm not sure I want to eat out of a pot used to boil plastic. I'd never use this pot for food anyway, it came from an old building that at one time had a morgue in the basement, no telling what might have been "cooked" in the pot.

This is really neat. I've watched 4 seasons of Emergency! on DVD but unfortunately have not been able to find this series anywhere. There are plenty of short clips available on Youtube though. Kind of a stilted style like Dragnet, but looks like it would be great for model ideas, all those old police and fire vehicles.

Wow, this is just... I'm literally unable to find a real word to describe it, so I'm going to with amazatastic!!

Not all plastics are the same either, so a safe paint on one kit may ruin another. It is always safest to use a primer. You are correct, but sometimes that is the point. I use grey primer under yellow and red when I want to mute the brightness, knock a bright sunshine yellow down to a utilitarian dump truck yellow.

Thanks, this was a fun kit to build. Eric, yeah, GSA rigs are a pain in many ways, not least just trying to figure out their little code on the plates G71, G62 etc. I used to have a cheat sheet that gave the classifications but seem to have misplaced it, so much easier to just go with the I plate and be done with it. I'll use a GSA plate for a Park Service Prius (very far down my list of things to build so don't hold your breath).

I've got a Lindberg Tanker, but I've been wanting to try the PVC / ABS pipe method for quite some time. I even got a big pot special for the job. Thanks, I've spent some time finding just the right shade of green, this sort of became a project all of it's own.

It's been awhile since I done a work in progress post. I'm hopeful I will be able to maintain my momentum on this one. I've had this one planned for a couple of years, and finally picked up the Italeri U.S. Wrecker kit last year so I could get started. My plans for the kit are to end up with something quite like this. The Italeri kit is a no brainer, it is the only LTL kit I know of. I'm planning on a piece of ABS pipe for the tank, heated and flattened into an elliptical shape (first time I've tried this so wish me luck) and various bits of styrene for the other tanker body components. I'll be stealing a Caterpillar 3406 from the Revell Peterbilt snap kit for power, then there is the daycab conversion which I have already done. Here is where I currently sit. The kit comes with a fancy chrome grill shell, while the real truck has a smoothly integrated body color grill surround. Was easy enough to blend the grill into the hood, then mask off the bits that will stay chrome. Hopefully will have more progress to report soon.

Check the kitchen aisle of your local grocery store, hardware store, kitchen and appliances store etc. Look for frying pan spatter screens, a round screen about 12" in diameter with a handle. They are used to put over a frying pan to reduce grease splatter. Many just use a very fine window screen, but there are some that use a very fine expanded metal mesh that is perfect for model trucks. Pretty cheap to, maybe $5 or 6 for almost a square foot of material. I used it on the cage for my Cat D-8 and in the grill of this Paystar

I've built some of their 1/72 aircraft kits. Nice kits although over engineered, 5 parts when 1 will do. I recently built one of their I-16 fighters, and where most manufacturers would have made the cowling one tube shape piece, they made it from the individual panels, and where many would just have the front row of cylinders, they include a rather complete looking engine. Makes for a fiddly model, but great if you want to build it in a diorama with a mechanic tearing into the engine. That feature should go over well with American car modelers though, loads of detail if they follow the standard of their aircraft kits. Definitely going to add these two to the stash, maybe even build them.

This is really neat. I love work trucks like this, like a bunch of small models stacked on top of each other. The texture on the body really looks like it is zolotone / rhinolining etc. Great job!

This is the Revell Jeep Rubicon kit. I saw one of these built up recently using the included "Park Ranger" decals. Looked like a neat kit so I decided to pick one up for myself. If you are familiar with me then you know I have a thing for green. I decided to do something a little different this time, and thought this was a great subject for a BLM law enforcement rig. The BLM manages tons of land popular with off roaders and a Jeep seems like just the thing to keep them from getting to rowdy. I whipped up a set of decals on the laser printer and got to work. This is a nice kit, and fits well for the most part. It is a bit odd odd though like the kit designer wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a snap kit or a glue kit. It would be a great kit for someone transitioning from snap kits to glue kits. I found it was best to snip the long locating rods down to short nubs so they would fit into the retaining holes better, I was gluing everything anyway so all they had to do was help line things up. Other than the lightbar and decals it is built from the box. I drilled out the winch roller lead, but see in the photos I forgot to add a hook (whoops, guess I'm not quite done after all). The lightbar came from the Lindberg Charger. The spindly supports it sits on would be 1 1/2" pipe in 1-1, so maybe spindly looking in scale but should be plenty strong if it was the real thing. I painted the wheels silver to tone down the chrome. The BLM does like to pimp out their rigs, but chrome just seemed like to much bling, aluminum rims seemed more appropriate. There are lots of little things that one could do to really spiff up this kit, but I think it is pretty nice OOB and I was looking for a nice simple and quick build. Start to finish took me about a week, which is light speed by my standards. Well enough yacking, on to the photos. I think this makes a nice addition to my growing fleet of "tree cops".

The engine swap will probably be easier than my other plans... When I'm done I'm hoping to resemble this

That is definitely an issue, would be nice if they took the kind of time as the more perfection oriented modelers to get to know the subject before they went out to measure the subject. At least read a book or two, but I suppose that would be cost prohibitive paying people to read books. I think many of us imagine the employees of model companies are modelers themselves, but in all probability for most it is just a job, making molds for a plastic model as routine as cranking out baby bottles. As far as the Mustang, I actually kind of like it, I never noticed how boxy the real car was until I saw Revell's sleek chopped top next to it. I'll get my hat.