fractalign

Another important thing I have been doing is modifying the fenders so that they will sit evenly around the chassis. The tabs on either side keep the chassis centred.

Now onto today. The firewall has had me stumped on this one so I pulled the interior bucket out of the box and shoved it inside the cab. I then test fitted the hood only to realise it would not fit. So to solve that problem I trimmed about a millimetre off the front edge. I am starting to get an idea of how the firewall will look, based on the leading edge of the interior bucket.

I used body filler because it sets harder.

Hey Guys. I did not finish the post last night, I literally fell asleep mid upload. Anyway getting back to where I left off last night, here is what I did yesterday. I turned my attention to the other cab to try and get it the same as this one. To do this I built up the lower windscreen area.

With the contour of the front edge worked out, I was able to reproduce it in the 1:25 scale version with out too much trouble. With that out of the way I will finally be able to focus on attaching the roof and finally bringing the two body sides together hopefully permanently. The next task will be to complete the roof section and get it ready for attachment.

What I really wanted to get sorted out though was the roof namely the contour at the front. I was racking my brain trying to work out how to get this contour. Then it dawned me. I would get the angle of the A pillars in the 1:1 and angle the windscreen to the same position. Needless to say the contour gauge proved very useful in this task, I will let the photos do the rest of the talking.

Hey Guys. I was planning to re attach the hood today to bring the body back together but I realised I would need a slight gap between the hood and the fender sides. In order to do this I was going to add the side braces on the underside of the hood so I checked the 1:1 hood and realised that there was a 10 mm wide crease that ran around the perimeter of the hood. I knew that I would have to add this detail sooner rather than later so I did. There is still a little clean up on the lower edge and I will need to trace the perimeter around the front edge but that will be a later task. There was something else that I wanted to finish off first.

Hey Guys. I spent the afternoon tidying up the hood/cowl area, mainly the gaps in the upper part.

Here is how the roof sits at the moment, I will need to raise up the height of the b pillars slightly. They taper off too early which is why the plastic strip is holding up the roof. The next task will be to re - attach the hood and lock in the exact position for the roof.

I am not ready to attach the roof just yet because I need to position it. I got the measurements yesterday by running the tape measure in a straight line from the front tip of the hood to the top front of the windscreen housing, the leading edge of the roof. To do the same thing on the model I will need to re attach the hood. In order for the hood to sit evenly I have created the channels along the top of the fenders.

I also bevelled the roof sides because there is a slight drop where the roof meets the drip rails.

Hey Guys. I spent time preparing the body for the roof. The first thing I did was cut back the sides, this roof sections will basically cover the whole area a lost up to the drip rails. Because the roof was longer than the roof sides on the body, I thickened the b pillar to bring it into line with the roof.

It looks like they forgot to install the clear plastic packaging on the front of the box, this one will be getting dust !

Here is how it looks with undercoat. The next task will be to create the cowl vent and raise the height of the doors inline with the stock height roof.

Hey Guys. This has been an on again off again build. I have been after one of these kits for years and picked this one up on Ebay late last year. While I liked the kit over all, I decided to make a few changes. I always thought it was strange that a kit this size did not have separate doors like the Mini craft Model A kits. So I cut them out. I also cut the centre of the roof out and raised the roof back to stock height. I will be making a separate cowl vent and deckled as well. My idea with this build is to recreate an early seventies gasser style hot rod. In order for that to happen I will be ditching the eighties style interior, dash and firewall and scratch building my own. The independent front end will also have to go. I will be scratch building a tubular front end and radius rods in order for it to sit up high. The small block Chev will be going as well. In its place will sit an Ardun equipped side valve.

The last shot is a deliberately grainy one. I was trying to make it look similar to the original image of the truck. Not quite the same angle but its a good comparison never the less. I will need to continue to add detail around the lower part of the cab and finish the flange and those will be the next tasks.

Another thing I did to make sure the hood sits evenly over the cowl, was to create a flange. This is the beginning of the firewall but am not sure what it looks like, so I will have to try and find some google images to determine the shape.

Hey Guys. I managed to put the belt line onto the hood today along with the flange where the hood meets the grill. To make up the belt line I used 1mm half round tubing. I did the left side first to determent the shape for the right side. One Had both side done I undercoated the hood to get it to look more natural. To make up the flange around the grill, I used on old video card by cutting of the edges and gluing them to the perimeter of the housing. The hood was cross checked against the grill and excess areas were cut away and the the whole thing was filled with body filler and the hood was pressed against the grill to insure the two would sit flush. I wet thew hood first to stop the body filler bonding with the grill. One dry it was ready to sand.

After some undercoat and trimming, here is how it looks. I am still to determine where the roof will sit in relation to the rest of the body. That will be easy enough though because I took measurement from the leading edge of the hood to the leading edge of the roof to determine the exact position. Once I do that I will be able to adjust the rear of the body to suit. The b pillars in particular will need to be lengthened and once that is done I can begin the task of attaching the roof and finishing the front and rear edges in preparation for the fitting of the front and rear windscreens. That will be the next task.

Here is the unit being test fitted.

This was an old plastic ice-cream container I had laying around. While most of these types of containers had a flat base, these particular ones had a slight raise at the base. If you can imagine a very shallow dome in the centre of the base, that is what these had. It just so happened to be more or less the same contour as a car roof. After cutting it out I took some more measurements of the 1:1 roof, this time the width, I already had the length written down having measured that earlier in the day. Each end was shaped to follow the flow of the windscreen and rear window. When I measured the length earlier in the day, I only measured dead centre because this is the longest point in the roof. The length on either side of the roof will be determined by the measurement of the windscreen and rear window. The width of the roof was determined by measuring from drip rail to drip rail directly above the B pillars. One I had cut out the piece I looked for a second container so the I could add a second layer to reinforce it. Here are the two pieces before being glued together.

Hey Guys. Today I made up the roof, like the boot lid and hood, it was a surprisingly easy task. As I said last time I decided to drop the idea of using the 2mm thick styrene because it would take too long to shape. Here is what I did instead.

I am focussing on finishing the belt line that swoops down to meet the top of the grill. It will look like this one when done. That will be the next task.