ok, back from the wife and I's mini vacation over the weekend. And of course good ole VA weather is not productive for painting outdoors. It took quite a while to get the interior and dash set right, but it is and it's glued in. Took a hair too much out so I had to work on a small filler panel that would go right at the lip of the front edge of the dash.. sit's just a hair off but the filler panel takes care of it. Finished all of the bracing as well to tie the front piece in a little better to the main section, fabbed up some quick triangles from styrene and set them in as well as all the filler work before I left. Just finished sanding and clean up to wait for the weather to be a little more paint productive.. I have not rushed yet no need to start rushing now. Will just be a simple flat black color for now. Later on with a different color body down the road it may change
so here is where I am with all the filler visible out front as well as two of the braces. Just waiting for paint weather.. way too humid this afternoon.
While I was playing around with the interior before I left I realized that I had a c.b antenna on the back but not one to be found on the truck. Glued several pieces of styrene together and waited for it to dry.. then took my dremel and a small set of needlenose pliers and roughed the shape for the mic and the box itself, alot of sanding and filling and adding some detail for knobs and the screen on the cb and it's ready for paint and final detail as well as adding wire to mic and imitation power wires on dash of truck
This is where I am for now, hopefully the weather will break soon and I can lay down some paint. Still need to get seats in but I am working on coming up with some belts from ideas in my head. Hopefully from these pics here on the quality of pics will be much better from my phone.. out of town that decided to crap out on me and I had to end up getting a new phone, but I am impressed already with the improvements on the camera vs. the old phone
Looked over the truck and saw quite a few posts on the sliders getting hung up, especially on the two exposed nuts on the inside at the bottom
you can see them on the slider on the left side
Plenty of BIC click pens laying around at work.. the click mechanism and the other end along with the ink tube come right out, makes a perfect fit over the nuts
Little bit of trimming to get the length correct.
Trimmed out and sanded and sanded and then even more sanding, along with the smaller piece that will become the steering column later on
Strung up on a rack for painting and drying
Painting all done
All done and installed on the sliders. Hopefully they will work as intended
Ok now back to more interesting things. I know you all saw the beginning of the cb radio build a few posts up
Just a little refresher on where I was a few posts up
Got a little painting and drilling done to fit the comm wire and handle wire on the front as well as power wires
Handle is done, originally was painted silver where the speaker/mic grille was. Thought it would have shown better but Hangover suggested it should be black and I couldn't agree more once done
A little better view of the radio itself, I found out how "fun" painting was with a toothpick and how versatile of a tool it can be for painting
Now that I have the interior of the truck working in progress it was time to turn my attention on securing driver and passenger in the wraith seats that will be used in this build... started digging around my pile of parts, accessories and anything I could lay my hands on. Mocked up many different ideas before I finally settled on what will be shown.. looked the best with what I had
medium sized black zip tie along with heat shrink tubing that would clear the zip tie
heat shrink heated and shrunk down onto the zip tie
Passenger for mock up. Used another zip tie for the lap section and pulled the smaller end of the wrapped zip tie through the slots in the wraith seats and over the shoulders. Adjusted the lengths and trimmed as needed
Driver and passenger done and belted in. Some more detail with the toothpick painting again to paint the buckle
Moving on to one of my favorite parts of this build, was never intended to get as far along as it did and never intended on going into the truck but after mocking up it just looked right and I went with it.
Threw a few spare parts from my SCX10 days together and came up with something that resembled a tachometer to sit on the dash. Started with a plastic driveshaft cup and some random light bucket holder for the base. Trimmed out a little piece of styrene for the face and glued it on. Then I made a comment to Hangover about a fake tach light.. was promptly responded with that it is in fact doable, but make it actually work. So it will be programmed by a great guy when I can get some free time to get some lights done to light up when the truck is at full throttle. Found a small spacer capable to hold a 3mm led for the shift light.
3mm light fits into spacer perfect and looks close to what it is supposed to.. in my mind at least
Started painting the tach and added a o-ring to the back side of the face to have something raised to paint silver to look like the ring on a real tach. Also added some blue wire to the tach for the signal wire from the distributor.
Dug around quite a while on the internet to find a suitable tach face picture and a little trial and error to scale it correctly. Laminated it and glued to face of tach
Finally getting everything nailed down and put together for the final time and final fitment
Started with adding the decals to the dash
Seats with driver and passenger installed with a view from back seat area
view from front to show wiring for accessories. Tach was just sat there for pics but will be stuck down soon
started working in the expanse of space in the rear of the interior adding some accessories and detail
Interior finally done and installed on the chassis
Time to put the body back on and head outside to get some pics in the daylight
Finally my little journey for now is at another rest period
The only things left to do..
#1 Take it to have a good friends and get the lighting sorted out and added in
#2 Take it out on the trail for maiden journey all together to shake down new tires and interior. Also to get some good action shots of the truck and the lighting as it progresses
#3 Probably the most important thing as it's still missing something.. needs dirt. As Brad Paisley said It's time to get a little mud on the tires!
Thank you all for the likes and comments. I hope you have found something interesting to view or at least found something that I have done so far to your liking. I will add some more pics as things get done. This is far from a finished thread and I my intentions are to keep it updated regularly with the lighting and anymore additions/upgrades
