Peterbilt 359 1/16th with Lights!

[cavejohnson]

Well, I found the 1/16 Pete kit in my local hobby store and glomed onto it as soon as I could. I'm doing working lights on this one too, except rather than using the cantankerous 12V lamps, I found some nice, small 1.5V lamps that all run off of 1 C cell battery. I'm making videos as I go along for how to do the marker lights, the headlights, the brake lights, and the wiring system I use (since so many people are interested). After I've finished them I'll post them in the truck stop section of the Forums!

Lot of pictures on this one so far.

After paint

Engine (haven't finished with the valve covers yet

Cab lights!

[Mr mopar]

That's cool , I to just got my peterbilt today , do you know that tamiya Q tree from king hauler has two air cleaners that are to scale? To make a twin set.

[catd11rpusher]

Thats going to look real nice!! I want to see it when its done. I can get some nice ideas from you boys. Love the light idea!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Custom Hearse]

That's cool , I to just got my peterbilt today , do you know that tamiya Q tree from king hauler has two air cleaners that are to scale? To make a twin set.

The Tamiya is 1/14th. Would it look ok with 2 different scales?

[Mr mopar]

The Tamiya is 1/14th. Would it look ok with 2 different scales?

I think they look to scale for a 13" air cleaner all chrome .

[cavejohnson]

The almost done interior.. I'm putting a dome light in the cab so it'll light up and people can actually see the interior

[eizzle]

That's pretty awesome! Will there be a switch to turn off just the headlights and leave the parking lights on? That would be cool.

[catd11rpusher]

Love the lights. The inside is very nice!!!! keep them comin!!!!! GREAT WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mr mopar]

Where did you find the lights?

[cavejohnson]

I appologize for the huge delay in getting this updated. School started back up and I spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital (thanks to my wonderfully awful knees). But I finally got the truck done and took a lot of pictures of the finished product. I left the top of the sleeper loose so I could get at the battery holder and the wiring should something go wrong *knocks on wood

@ Mr. Mopar, I got the lights from Hobby Town in their railroad section. They're 1.5V Grain of rice lamps and they're sold in 10 packs. They're extremely fragile little things.

First off, the dome light I installed. This is a 3V lamp I bought from radio shack, I used it with 1.5V so it would be a little bit dim like a real dome light.

The silver paint on my stripes bubbled weird, but It's not visible normally. Here's the switch location, I just cut a square hole in the sleeper base and left about 1/4" of the switch sticking out so it's usuable but not really visible.

Here's where I installed the headlights, I drilled a 1/16" hole on the inside bottom corner of the headlight pod, then slipped the lamp in and held it in with clear loctite. To give the effect of only one light being on I inserted a piece of thin paperboard in between the two headlight lenses and painted the paperboard silver. To hide the wiring as much as possible, I twisted the wires together and routed them tightly into a small gap between the fender and the radiator grill, then I routed them to the inside of the frame rails and to the main wire that I ran out of the gap between the sleeper and the cab (I notched it at about 1/16")

I know that typically Peterbilts headlights have the high beams on the inside and they're not normally on, but it was proving too dificult to do that. So I left them on the insides.

Edited September 20, 2012 by cavejohnson

[cavejohnson]

Almost forgot the tail lights