FXI Trucking Hot Rod Peterbuilt.

[Scott Colmer]

Progress is slow. I'm back teaching and the garage is HOT.

I finally got both sides of the under chassis exhaust done. I used Plastic tube because it is more flexible. I put solid core solder inside to hold the bends. The bends were made over an exact handle so the radius would be consistent. I pinned the bend pieces and straights so they could slip fit together and be adjustable as I worked out the pattern. There are no mufflers because that's the way Louie wants it. I am now building what has not been done on the real truck.

Next is mounting the bed so I can finalize the placement of the exhaust system.

 

[AmericanMuscleFan]

Glad to see you back at work on the Peterbilt Scott!  This is a super cool project and I can't wait to see your next updates.  Keep doing your great work!!!

[Scott Colmer]

Francis, thanks for the encouragement. I'm still plugging away.

It was time to finalize the exhaust with hangers.

First, I had to pin the bed, which I should have done a long time ago. The location points match where Louie put them. Look at the far front and back. The rear is is a slip fit and the front is a pinned bracket.

With the bed secured, I could place the twin rear tips. But first I had to make the exhaust hangers. I had some experience with this from working in my Pop's muffler shop as a summer job. The frame mounts a pretty sturdy because I felt that the under chassis system would be pretty heavy. The frame mounts are pinned so they can be removed and painted separately. The thick disc between the frame mount and pipe bracket will be the rubber biscuit that will flex and absorb vibration. You can also see the flex/expansion pipe sections that Louie put in the design. I made those be wrapping wire around exhaust size styrene and then cutting and gluing each ring free and flattened it so it would be straight and not look like a coil. 

Finally, it was time to add the dual pipe tips out the back. I had a great idea to line the up with the 59 caddy taillights Louie had installed.

Then while I was falling asleep one night and building the truck in my head, it occurred to me that the heat from the unmuffled exhaust would possibly melt the caddy taillights. CARP! I decided to let it go.

Then when I was checking my work, I realized that the bed had slipped and the tips were hitting bottom of the bed. I had good reason to cut the tips free and move them towards the center of the tailgate. Yes, the exhaust runs under the rear axle as per Louie's directions.

 

And there I am. All I have left are the flanges between the headers and the electronic cut outs.

I'm on to the area bar grill. While the bars are drying, I'll be sand the under exhaust smooth.

Scott

 

 

 

Edited October 25, 2020 by Scott Colmer

[AmericanMuscleFan]

Hey Scott, I'm so happy to see you back on this project, I really love this build!  The exhaust hangers look great and I also like the flex/expansion pipes, clever and very convincing! ?

[bobthehobbyguy]

Missed this project the first time around. Lots of nice fabrication work. Definitely will be following.

[Scott Colmer]

Thanks for the comments Bob and Francis. This project has been a bit of s slog for me. Your encouragement helps a lot. 

Time for the grill. Louie wants 14 wing-shapped bars. That put me on a quest to find wing-shapped rod. It's just not out there, easy to find. I found out a company in England used to make it, but that was 10 years ago. When, and if, it shows up on eBay, there is usually a bidding war. So I checked with the MCM forum community and Gerry (Exotic Builder) had some he was willing to part with. Many thanks to Gerry. Great guy.

I made the grill shell a while ago based on on the was laying the the cab of the truck last time I saw it. 

I found some styrene strip the was the same thickness at the wing-shaped rod. That will help wit the spacing requirements Louie called out. The it was a matter of cutting a bunch of little spacers to glue in-between each grill bar. A perfect job for my Micro Mark chop cutter.

Then it was a matter of starting at the top of the inside shell and working my way down. The bars are not held in place by glue; they are trapped by the short square pegs of styrene.

All the bars are in place.

The bars were held together with a strip of right angle styrene glued down each side. Now it can be removed and chromed with Alcad. It presses very snugly back into the shell.

And there it is on the truck.

Radiator is next. I have some PE radiator mesh to add the right look.

 

Scott

 

[gotnitro?]

Fantastic fabrication !!! Love the grill

[AmericanMuscleFan]

Great job on the grill Scott, it seem to be a very good match with the one of your friend Louie!   Slow progress but you're heading in the right direction, you can't go faster than 1: 1 build anyway, right?   Maybe yes in fact...!

[Scott Colmer]

Thanks for the comments, Jeff and Francis! I've following your Pro-street P/U, Francis. Amazing.

Louie gave the grill the mark of approval, but said it looked a bit thick. I'll flat-sand the face of it and the inside edges later.  I made some bits and pieces progress.

Here is the radiator. It's a heavily modified kit peice based on custom truck radiators found on line. The PE radiator pattern looks best over a solid color. So the background will get some flat black later.

This is the in-progress battery tray that Louie made. Louie told me it would mount in the rear. If he does not come up with a place, I'm going to hang it from the rear crossmember along with a small tank for the airbags. It would have been A LOT easier if he did not drill all those holes in it. The plastic is thin sheet. Harder to work with, but now that I know Louie is watching that, I'll do my best to stay in scale.

Finally, the Exide Red Top battery in progress. I chose this one because the internet said they can be used for Diesel engines. I'm using an internet pic as a construction guide.

 

Next is to repair the fuel cell try that my doggy chewed off then make a fuel cell. After that, the bed work is done and its on to the interior.

The last phase will be finalizing the engine. I have very little idea how the pieces should go together.

Thanks for looking.

Scott

 

 

 

[Scott Colmer]

Quick update. 

The optima red top battery is done. The Battery tray is done. I only had one pick of it and no measurements, so I eyeballed it. 

The air tank is done. The mounting bracket is in the works. Both the battery and the air tank are going to hang off the back of the rear frame crossmember. 

 

 

[Scott Colmer]

Guess I'm on a roll. 

Here is the battery and air tank taped in place. 

And here is the scratch-builtfuel cell in place. It's pretty large because Louie talked about running the truck up Pikes Peak. Fixing the dog chew was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

That pretty much completes the bed. The firewall is next. 

I will send these pics off to Louie to see if has any changes. 

 

[AmericanMuscleFan]

Great job Scott, all the last parts you did are very well made, I especially like the Optima battery.

Hope Louie enjoys (but I'm sure he does) having a good personal builder like you to create a true rendition of his real truck! ?

[kilrathy10]

This is a very interesting and unique build... I'm intrigued...

[Scott Colmer]

Hey JT and Francis, thanks for the interest and encouragement!

Just a few littles this post.

First is creating the snout on the end of the third member. I could not find a pic other than the one I had. I couple of modelers tried to help, but nothing there. I did appreciate the help!

So I just made it symmetrical and went with it.

Next is the trans crossmember. I never saw the one for the 1:1 truck, so I made a simple one trying to fabricate in a style consistent with Louie's. It's held in place with pins.

Now a fix. When I made the main part of the firewall, I found that the the driver's side of the body leans in just a bit at the top. That was a by product of cutting the body apart and widening it to make it to scale of the 1:1. If you look, you can see the front door frame leaning lower than the back.

The fix required slicing the body along the towel and carefully bending the body back into alignment. I filled the gap with chunks of plastic which I later ground down smooth. I was bummed to see it was wrong, in the first place, but I was glad I caught it before I got to paint and the doors would not close evenly. 

 

[kilrathy10]

Looking good... Very interesting project...

[89AKurt]

Very impressed with your perseverance.  Now I need to get another tool.  ?

[gotnitro?]

So enjoyable watching your craftsmanship making every detail scaled down like Louis build ! Like  trying to look into the mind of an artist and then reverse engineer it 

Kepe up the great work

[AmericanMuscleFan]

Nice fabrication Scott, the snout of the differential looks great.  I also love to use brass or aluminum pins when joining scratch built parts, it helps strengthen the structure and the end result is cleaner using less glue.  Keep doing your good work!

[DRIPTROIT 71]

Nice fabrication going on here!

[Scott Colmer]

JT, Kurt, Jeff, and Brian, thanks for the encouragement! 

Francis, I agree, Pinning scratch built pieces is cleaner and it also helps keep things in alignment for item interplay and less surprises during final assembly. My second choice is liquid tape, but it is messy. 

Here is where I am today:

I've got the firewall made and pinned. The front and rear doghouses are made, but the front still need to be trimmed up. I have a question into Louie on rounding the corners on the front doghouse. Waiting for a response. The challenge was figuring out how it went since I never saw the pieces in place. I finally figured out that there is an inside dog house and and outside dog house on either side of the firewall. Louie conferment this. Here are the pics I used and then the near finished pieces.

Next up is the interior hardware. Louie made a custom chain drive transfer case to move the steering column to the right about a foot. I remember it and had one picture of it. You can also see s foot bar and a brake pedal.

Here is the transfer case. I'll add bolt detail after it is painted. I wanted to capture the chain drive even though it will be barely visible. The solution was to find the best chain drive in my kits (mini bike from the Vandal) and cast it using silly putty for a mold and my two-part resin. 

I was getting ready to make the brake pedal when I noticed the the roll bar was not true in a couple parts. The passenger upper hoop was out of alignment as were the two rear frame extension. So this morning I have been prying the connections apart and correcting the alignment. I can't figure how I let that stuff go in the first place. I also had to relocate the steering box back into the firewall so it will line up with the transfer case. 

Thanks for looking and commenting!

 

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by Scott Colmer

[AmericanMuscleFan]

Very good idea for the chain, the detail will be very cool!   While it will be mostly hidden, I agree with your desire to add that extra detail anyway.  Superb fabrication Scott, I love your project!

[Scott Colmer]

Hi Francis, Glad you liked the chain. That's a high compliment coming from you! Your truck is a school in fabrication.

Onward,

No new parts made. Instead lots of time spent cleaning up old stuff. Not pictured, I cut the front off of the truck and shortened the cowl to match the 1:1. I am thinking Louie used a later model cab than the kit version I had. After that was all back in place, I knew I would have to remake the front of the roll cage for a tighter fit to the body. Louie also let me know that the dash rests on the lower front bar of the roll cage. So it became time to make sure the body was true in order for the cage to fit right and leave room for all the interior components.

Step one was to true up the doors. This graph paper is handy stuff. You can see the bottom and front edges of this door are not square. My solution is to add strips of styrene to build up an area then sand and file it true. 

Once the doors were square and matching, the body came next. In the pic below there are a couple things to look for: The piano hinge and the chrome trim the goes around the door edge which is attach the the body.

First come the trim. The key is to make the opening match the door with just enough room to the trim. For the trim, I used thin, styrene strip, leaving a bit extra so it can be sanded down to the correct height. It will get BMF after paint. That gap in the corner is because I was truing up the rounded edge with out checking to the door and over cut it. 

So in goes a patch of styrene. It got filed down correctly and the trim patch went in well. I'm a bit of a hack.

The finished doors fit tight. They will get edge sanded to leave room for paint.

Next up is finishing the mounting for the piano hinges. These are PE items that the truckers here told me about. I figured out the door mount side would be a slide-in system. I was originally going to just epoxy the body side during final assembly, but one thing I learned from all this scratchbuilding is to pin as many components as you can.

Here is the body side bracket pinned in place with styrene dowels that run right through the body so the can be glued in place. No worries, final body work will clean up any shadow effects.

The hinge was CA glued to the body side bracket with the door in place. Tiny drops were used so not to make the hinge inoperable. Then bracket and hinge was taken off the door and given a more generous application. Here is the bracket and hinge setting partially in the sleeve of the door. The door is thinned on the hinge edge to make sure the hinge protrudes sufficiently to be visible on the outside of the body.

Now to match the other side. I'll get a pic of the doors in place and operating.

Thanks for looking.

Scott

 

 

 

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by Scott Colmer

[AmericanMuscleFan]

Good job on the fine tunning of the door Scott!   Piano hinges will be a very nice addition to this already complex build, functional doors are a very nice feature that takes a lot of hard work but is definitely worth it.  Thank you for this gift after Christmas my friend! ?

[Scott Colmer]

Wow, it's been almost a month since my last progress report. This is one of the 3 steps back scenarios. I was really struggling with the interaction of the roll cage and the dash and the steering components.

Here is the steering column. I never got to see it final placement in the car, but there were clues. It was not mounted as shown here. More on that in the next pic.

Here is the steering transfer case in place and you can see that the shaft is cut into the lower roll cage brace and almost lined up with the brake pedal. Ah ha! So that tells me where the steering column goes. But there is ANOTHER issue as seen in the next pic.

After sending some pics and question about the intended location of the dash, Louie finally found this test fit pic of the dash in place. Eureka! The roll bar is behind the dash! It is also high enough that there is plenty of clearance for the foot controls.

But that led to other problems. The roll cage had to be remade from the main hoop forward, as did the dash. Ugh. The cage was a major pain because it had to interact with the doors and still be straight in certain areas to cradle the dash. It took several nights to get that done and a few more to tweak it for good fit. I also had to make sure everything we pinned and locked down. The dash was a lot easier. 

I did manage to take one step forward in making the steering column.

Here is the transfer case linked up the the column. I added a short carrier tube to the roll cage brace to hold the rod on place that connects the column and the transfer case. There is still some tweaking to do. The transfer case need to be a tad wider and it's support needs to be a tad longer. I might also shrink the steering column a bit. Does it look over size in reference to the photos?

The dash and roll cage need some final fitting as well.

Here is what you would obviously see. The transfer case would be barely visible, and the chain on the back almost impossible to see. But I know they are there.

Up next is the shifter and seat mounts,

Thanks for looking

Scott

[AmericanMuscleFan]

It's always fun to watch your progress Scott!  Usually, I look for photos of my subject on the net with different angles to have as much detail as possible to recreate the parts but in your case, you are working from the photos of your subject which is under construction.  It can only produce amazing results and your attention to detail is flawless!  I really like your steering column, nice reproduction sir! ?