Custom 1/18 Chevy dually ramp back hauler

[ibj40]

Here are the victims:

Anson 1/18 scale Chevy club cab dually



ACME 1/18 scale Ford ramp back hauler



Started taking pictures mid-stream, so I apologize for starting this right in the middle.

Here's the bottom of the Anson, the chassis is plastic, the body is diecast.



Six screws hold on the bed, and it's pretty easy to remove.

20190829_191529 by Jim Forte, on Flickr

And here's the chassis of the ACME with the cab removed. It is such an advantage for the ACME to have a diecast ladder frame, will make marrying the two models a lot easier. Screws are easy to access on this model. The cab is diecast, the ramp bed is plastic.



Essentially, I am going to cut the back off the Anson chassis, and blend the ACME ladder frame into the remaining front of the Anson.





Started out by cutting a portion of the ACME ladder frame off, so that the existing crossmember will, more or less, match up with the similar feature on the Anson plastic chassis.



Then I removed the rear of the Anson chassis.



Initial dry fit looks promising.





Next is to determine how much of the plastic detail to remove from the bottom of the Anson chassis in order for the ACME chassis to match up cleanly.
 

Edited August 31, 2019 by ibj40

[Shambles]

Nice work. So far, so good! Keep us posted.

[ibj40]

Wrapped it up this weekend, and apologize for not having a detailed picture, but to ensure the integrity of the connection I had to work quickly.

Essentially what I did was Dremel out the plastic the interfered with allowing the ACME diecast chassis from to blend into the Anson plastic chassis.  What I did then was placed the diecast chassis into the plastic chassis, and filled the void with JB Weld.  I let it cure until it was really close, and then assembled the model so that I could get it to set in a level condition.

In this first picture, you can see some of the JB Weld that leaked through, but it worked, once the JB Weld cured completely, it is solid.



And here it sits, and then I just had to pose a color appropriate model with it.





I've got another white ACME heading my way, and a white Anson dually on the donor shelf.  This one went so well, might have to start a fleet.

Edited September 3, 2019 by ibj40

[Gramps46]

Perfect color match with Smokey' s Camaro.   Looks really good.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Gramps46

[randyc]

Nice idea.   How long is that monster?   Display space?  

[ibj40]

1 hour ago, randyc said:

Nice idea.   How long is that monster?   Display space?  

It is right at 18 inches, which I guess scales to about 27 feet or so.

And it lives in the truck lot, along with all the others.

Edited September 3, 2019 by ibj40

[Gramps46]

Nice collection Jim!   I clicked on the photo and checked out your Flickr pages, wow.  When I saw your posted picture above I almost responded that it was a good thing you did not have cats, but then I saw the Junkins Suspension Test photo, you do have cats.

[ibj40]

3 hours ago, Gramps46 said:

Nice collection Jim!   I clicked on the photo and checked out your Flickr pages, wow.  When I saw your posted picture above I almost responded that it was a good thing you did not have cats, but then I saw the Junkins Suspension Test photo, you do have cats.

The good news is that the cats (Pumpkin - "Junkins" and Bistro, and our rescue Chiweenie, Lady Finger) don't usually go in there unless they follow me in, so under pretty good control.  Running out of room, clearly.

Collection is now close to 25 years old, started out with 1/18 scale only, and stayed that way.  Lots of Ertl, Racing Champions, Revell, and Action Nascar, then branched out to road racers and winged sprinters, and of course, anything else I liked.

Thanks!