1/32 Freightliner cabover

[Rockford]

Turned some brake chambers from sprue. Piped them up.

Made a cab tilt pump out of sprue, square rod and a piece of aluminium wire (arrowed). Added securing straps to the lid of the battery box. 

Realised that I'd made a mess of the radius arms on the Reyco suspension. The front brackets have a dog leg in them to bring the front arm bushing out and down. I knew that and still made the original brackets wrong, modelling them on the centre bracket. Looks righterererer.

[Rockford]

Turned my attention to the interior. Because I added the steps in full depth I can't get the interior back in as one piece, so I cut the bed off which allows me to get the seats and the doghouse in.

Then I built a pair of curtains and a roof crossmember, also a rudimentary cab floor.

Hopefully I can fit the interior tub, secure it with the curtain assembly, then add the bed before fitting the floor pieces. 

Usually these kit interiors are simple but dimensionally ok but this is utter garbage! Doghouse is half the size it needs to be, half of the dashboard is missing. I fitted a new doghouse (for a bigger dog), scored a quick diamond pattern on it. Added a glovebox on the dashboard. Made a shift lever from a big paperclip. Used insulation from copper wire for a gearknob. Cut out the sight window in the passenger door.

[Biggu]

Excellent problem solving engineering, Steve. This is shaping up to be almost a full on scratch build. I really like where this is going. Keep up the great work and keep the up dates coming as well. Really interesting

Jeff

[The Brush]

Tremendous effort as always, I now know how fiddley this scale is to work with. Well done.

[Pete68]

Nice updates Steve 

[Rockford]

Right, I've got this to the point of paint, so I'll have to firstly, work out what colour I'm going to paint it and then wait for suitable conditions. At the moment it's very damp and cold here in Blighty. This kit is quite poor in rendering the Freightliner cab, but with the mods I've done it is much better, still not right but definitely looking more like a Freightliner. 

I reversed the cab lock handles because every truck I've seen has them pointing down when locked and I'm beginning to think that the only one that has them pointing up is the AMT kit and that's where I must have seen it. The linkages are very fragile so I'll attach them immediately before I paint. Also made a visor out of ali sheet. 

Roughed up the tyres removed the mould separation line in the tread. 

Started painting the interior with a Humbrol Matt colour and it is awful stuff. Stirred it for ages and it's still watery and refusing to dry. I'll just have to be patient and recoat a few times. 

If the weather stays garbage I'll have to think of something else to start. ?

[BK9300]

Good to see an update, Dan - awesome work on the cab and frame improvements!

[Rockford]

I think it looks the business with the AMT Trailmobile reefer behind it.

[Biggu]

9 minutes ago, Rockford said:

I think it looks the business with the AMT Trailmobile reefer behind it.

I do too …

[Jürgen M.]

Can't believe it's a 1/32! 

Nice to see you back at the bench Steve!

[Biggu]

A lot of scratch building fine details is really making a basic kit come alive. Its all in the details and this is becoming a very well detailed build. I love what you’re doing with this one , Steve and I see some things that would work well in 1/25 scale, I’m quietly watching from the front row and getting ideas. Keep the updates coming

Jeff

[Rockford]

On a separate note, use Tamiya masking tape! 

I've just gone to put new socks on and look what was stuck on the bottom of one of them, a piece of Tamiya masking tape! It survived the washing machine so it will easily cope with keeping paint at bay. 

[The Brush]

Good work on the freightliner. some nice details in there. Your right not the weather for painting.

[Biggu]

Something I notice here is the mix of rims. Chrome Budds on the steering axle and Daytons on the drivers, back in the day (locally) that showed a real work truck and a LOT of highway tractors had that exact set up. Weight reducing and looked cool. The Daytons were a good strong rim although one had to be careful on installing the rims to the hub. Make sure they were clean and straight when the rim was slid onto the hub so that when the wedges were installed the rim ran true. There was a trick to have that happen. Used to put a small piece of wood parallel to the tire and spin the wheel as one tightened each wedge gently in an ‘X’ pattern so that you cud see if the tire and rim was tracking true and straight.  Sorry for the deviation , Steve. I love this project and am eagerly waiting for the next update. You are doing a great job transforming this into a great looking truck .

Jeff

[Jürgen M.]

I can only agree with Jeff! It's a beautiful build and I love this truck! 

I also noticed the rim mix! Very realistic! Can't wait to see more!

Edited October 16, 2024 by Jürgen M.

[Rockford]

18 hours ago, The Brush said:

Good work on the freightliner. some nice details in there. Your right not the weather for painting.

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. 

[Rockford]

16 hours ago, Biggu said:

Something I notice here is the mix of rims. Chrome Budds on the steering axle and Daytons on the drivers, back in the day (locally) that showed a real work truck and a LOT of highway tractors had that exact set up. Weight reducing and looked cool. The Daytons were a good strong rim although one had to be careful on installing the rims to the hub. Make sure they were clean and straight when the rim was slid onto the hub so that when the wedges were installed the rim ran true. There was a trick to have that happen. Used to put a small piece of wood parallel to the tire and spin the wheel as one tightened each wedge gently in an ‘X’ pattern so that you cud see if the tire and rim was tracking true and straight.  Sorry for the deviation , Steve. I love this project and am eagerly waiting for the next update. You are doing a great job transforming this into a great looking truck .

Jeff

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.  

Edited October 17, 2024 by Rockford
Text editing

[Rockford]

15 hours ago, Jürgen M. said:

I can only agree with Jeff! It's a beautiful build and I love this truck! 

I also noticed the rim mix! Very realistic! Can't wait to see more!

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

[Jürgen M.]

You have all reasons to be satisfied! 

A great idea what you're doing with this Freightliner! Fun to watch!

Edited October 17, 2024 by Jürgen M.

[Rockford]

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. 

Edited October 17, 2024 by Rockford
Text corrected

[Rockford]

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

[Jürgen M.]

Nice decals! Really professional! ?

[Biggu]

7 hours ago, Rockford said:

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.  

Oh yeah , the ‘breaker bar’ with a four foot pipe,  I recall helping the guys in the shop break those lose like that and yes bone jarring when they came loose. I also remember bouncing on the end of the pipe hoping it wouldn’t break loose and the pipe came off the breaker bar depositing Jeff flat on his buttocks on the shop floor! 

Oh yes , the ‘stud pilot’ set up. That system was a royal pain in the posterior. Lots of broken inner rims with that system. If they weren’t checked regularly. And 20 nuts per side rather than 10 as we have now. The hub pilot system, could break a lot of rims if the truck was continually overloaded. They would break the studs and mess up the hub. Saw that happen once …… ooooo the shop foreman was wild !! Glad it wasn’t me who did that ?

[Chariots of Fire]

Nice building on a 1/32 scale kit!  I see you changed the differentials a bit.  Any reason for that?  Perhaps I missed it.

[Rockford]

3 hours ago, Chariots of Fire said:

Nice building on a 1/32 scale kit!  I see you changed the differentials a bit.  Any reason for that?  Perhaps I missed it.

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