Fabrux

The fairly rare and hard to find Hardcastle & McCormick kit also has the bench seat.

The MPC kits have a separate seat piece from the tub, so swapping a bench for buckets is easy peasy. The Revell kits have the one-piece tub with seat.

The Monogram Ramcharger kit has Dana 60 front and rear; might work on this beastie.

Thanks, Bill!

The Revell 1:25 kits are best ignored... The frame is completely different (and wrong); the MPC parts wont work.

The section of frame that broke wasn't corroded, not sure what caused it. No serious offroading, just regular street driving.

It was actually yesterday, but this happened:

One could if one had both the parts and the ability to cast in resin. I have the former but not the latter.

With the exception of the GMC wrecker, the Revell kits are all '77-'78 model year. The stepside trucks are an aftermarket California Stepside bed, not factory fenders. The GMC wrecker kits are actually a '79-'80, not a '77 as labelled on the recent reissue.

A little late but to add to the asphalt conversation, speaking from a civil tech/inspector role I would definitely not approve of asphalt being laid down out of the truck like that. Unless it is strictly for patch work. Usually you dump the asphalt in a spreader that mixes and heats it up somewhat. For highway mixes a transfer buggy is used that has an internal hopper so that there are no cold joints in the road, just a steady stream.

I've pinned that truck on Pinterest but haven't seen any other views of it. Not sure what the bed is, probably a custom build as it certainly isn't a Dodge unit. The fenders, maybe.

The box art for the '84 GMC is exquisite! I'm going to have to buy a couple of those to go with the 13 variations of that kit I have already...

Here are the Blazer's wheels and center caps painted: Here's the Blazer's interior tub: You can see my attempt at flocking that failed horribly. Decided to give it and the Jimmy both a black vinyl floor, which seems better suited to a convertible truck anyway. The Blazer has a three-speed column shift, had to add the shifter and turn signal lever to the steering column. And here's a somewhat successful experiment for underhood insulation. Painted some masking tape and cut to fit. Should've cleared the tape and the underside of the hood as I had to touch up the paint.

Big Rig Build Off

Presently I have a bedroom set up as my hobby room.

The '78 annual is indeed the only 2WD version. The Chevy kits weren't done the same as the Dodge kits that had both suspension options. As for the long bed, I have seen a couple different resin versions and they done look that great. With the upcoming reissue if the 84 GMC it might be better to cut up a pair of short beds, which is what I plan on doing.

Okay, new website but still not much info on there...?

I've actually been using sprue mixed with lacquer thinner as a filler. Filled in from the backside and topside no idea why the lines wouldn't smooth out!

These hoods...were almost the death of these projects. For whatever reason I couldn't get the cut-out lines to get flush. I got them as close as I could and what I could live with (better than this) Engine painted up and on the chassis for the Blazer. Painted it GM Alpine Green. These two projects are my first time painting with my airbrush. The Blazer here is painted with Testors Aztek Blue and the roof is Vallejo Model Air white. Another reason for the delay in updates is a failed paint job on the Jimmy. I tried painting it IJN Chrome Jellow but it failed horribly and had to be stripped. Since I had such good luck with the Aztek line on the Blazer I picked the basic green for the Jimmy since my local Michael's didn't have the Aztek yellow in stock. The pair together. It was very tedious masking off everything to get just the radiator support and inner fenders sprayed black, but it looks a lot better than either brush painting or painting the whole engine compartment black. Now, for the Blazer, I had another idea for the wheels. Should I stick with the chrome steelies or painted white with centre caps?

Man oh man oilfield trucks are monsters! I can't even begin to comprehend what the workload of these things would be. All of my oil extraction experience has been with offshore stuff; I've never seen land-based extraction setups, other than driving by pump-jacks on the highway between Regina and Estevan.

I don't get the whole artificially distressing thing. Why not just wrap it like they did with the General Maintenance?

I seem to remember reading that Model King was planning to reissue the Dodge pickup in a combo kit similar to the '79 Bronco but the tooling was found to be unusable. The LRE version should still be valid, but the long bed version was converted to the monster truck.

The selection at Michael's here in Saint John is rather atrocious. I don't think they've had a restock since September. They also haven't gotten in a restock on the Testors Aztek airbrush paints, either. Its not a very good store to rely on for modeling supplies.

If you open up the coupon it says on it starting Saturday 9 January. They get sneaky with the coupons sometimes.

There is a 20% off coupon good until today. The 20% coupon you linked to is for tomorrow only; the 50% off coupon doesn't actually start until Saturday. Just so you don't drive 35 minutes for nothing.