Rockford

I thought it carried over to the CL because they were huge too. They were a beautiful piece of machinery either way.

I think Ford excelled with the LTL9000 and the CL9000 (two storey Falcon). They might not have been KWs or Pete's but they were well designed trucks. I especially like the original LTL9000 because the hood carries on the shape of the cab itself.

I was thinking of painting the Freightliner today, at least getting primer on it, but I didn't get free to play until mid afternoon and I was worried about the temperature dropping and the humidity. I'd rather start earlier in the day. So I trawled through my WIPs and found that next in line was the Ford LTL9000, so I gave that some attention. First, I stripped the engine and tidied the joints up so that it looks more whole. Added radiator hoses and used an old air cleaner assembly and chubby sprue to build an inlet system to the turbo. Had to make the rubber gasket on the top of the filter that mates to an air box on the hood. Looks ok.

Another bonzer job!

This build is in a class of its own. Just unbelievable. I don't know how you do it. Marvellous stuff.

I've never encountered that but I do feel some of the new tins seem like jelly even brand new. Obviously these environmentally friendly formulations.

SQUIRREL!!!!!! Look what popped up on Extortionbay for £20! Not the usual £80-99 idiots are asking for. The stacks fell off in transit and there's only one mirror, but it looks ok with the original 1980's decals. You realise what great little kits these were in their day. I don't intend to lose the colour scheme, just give the truck some dignity by correcting a few things. Anyway, back to the cabover.....

Just snatched a few minutes and finished the interior. It's nothing like any Freightliner I've seen before but I just made it look presentable, you can hardly see it once it's in place.

Very nice, everything looks so square!

I think I'm just incapable of doing the same thing in the same way twice!

One more, adapted from one of the ones I did for the Bison.

Nearly there mate, keep up the good work! I wonder what's next?

As the weather was just so awful yesterday I found myself confined to barracks, so I busied myself drawing a few stripe layouts in the hope of gaining some inspiration for colours. Though I've used blue in all cases I can change that with one click. They're all drawn on the original Microsoft Paint. The simple straight runs are for the rear wall of the cab so that left meets right (hopefully). The angles and corners look a little ropey at this scale but when reduced to 1/32 sizes your eye can't see the pixelation of the curves and angles.

Thanks Jurgen I'm happy with it so far. Still stuck on clours.

Thanks Jeff. Thanks for the memories of the Daytons. I don't think we had actual Daytons but there were some spoked wheel setups over here in UK but only for really heavy work, they were more common on the continent though. I can well imagine them being tricky to work with. When I started in the workshop we still had an awful lot of cast iron split-ring rims around and LH and RH taper seat wheel nuts. Air guns were rare and we would often find ourselves with an 'L' bar supported by an axle stand with a 6ft tube slid over it. We'd then have to climb onto the tube and walk up it to the end where our weight would be most effective and start gently bouncing on it until the nut cracked off. I still feel the shockwaves going through my frame as it broke free, ankles right up to skull. One thing I'll never understand is the Budd system for tandem wheels where you have one wheelstud sleeved inside another, absolutely nonsensical.

It rained all day yesterday, we've got flooding around the area and in Liverpool that's really unusual because everything just runs into the Mersey, it will take anything, so, bad times. We're fine, we're on the 2nd floor so if we get wet a lot of people are in trouble. Thanks for the kind words. Can't wait to see your Macks finished.

Absolutely fantastic stuff.

Great engineering solution. Going to look excellent.

Sorry for sending you down a blind alley. Charles is more attuned to this stuff than myself. He'll do you proud.

Jürgen will be prolific with a printer like that, we won't be able to keep up!

The company history is very interesting, thank you for compiling that so well. Sadly Hayes fell victim to the ruthlessness of Paccar. I do love their trucks but I have no illusions about their sharp business practices.

The piano hinges do work but I can imagine it would be a tremendous task with all the doors you have there.

Been there, or put it in a box and shelve it because just to look at the thing gives you a nosebleed! You didn't give up though and look at the results. Great looking combination.

By the way, I look at my models and am disappointed, we all see the flaws, not the good bits.

I'm pretty much a blank sheet on 3D printing so I have nothing to offer other than I suppose you need to start with the best surface finish you can get. I know there's different media you can use, each with their pros and cons. I really admire your work Jurgen [almost to the point of envy!], your Peterbilt looks like a Peterbilt! You created it yourself and you can go pretty much anywhere you want within the hobby, all I can do is butcher someone else's work to make a variation on their theme so you're miles ahead of me. Keep going, you add more to each build you do.