First, Happy New Year to everyone !!!! We had a good holiday. The kids survived the airline issues & got here more or lesson time and got back home safely. Wife, son, daughter & son-in-law all got air tours along the Outer Banks and expressed amazement that Dad could learn anything new, much less how to fly !!!!
OK, remember all those times I said I was enjoying this build ?? Well that does not count the time I spent trying to build a couple frames to hold gas & water cans !!!! I've been, what, three weeks since last post & only just now got two of 'em that I can live with -- the 3 or 4 previous attempts are trash. The only good thing about all this is that I just had to set them aside for a while and that forced me to work on other things, so I have lots of overall progress to show.
Starting at the front, I did some more tweaking of the frame & cab to look more like the pix I have -- if you look at the earlier pix you'll see the flat platform under the grill has been shortened & bent down. I did some work to make a mount for the bumper which came from the Eduard PE, thickened with Evergreen stock. I kept the Tamiya brush guard -- the PE was too thin & the Tamiya part looked OK in retrospect. Peeking over the back of the cab you can see the spare tire mount has been added to -- I've seen several different styles & I picked something easy in between all of them -- I just can't get emotionally involved with a tire carrier right now.
Next back is the center deck -- lots going on here.
There are legs for the seat to sit on; note the angle brackets and things to replicate mounting to the wood platform. On the right hand leg is a lumpy box meant to replicate the winch cranking mechanism. In reality, the handle drove a large gear which turned the smaller gear on the winch axle and the two gears were vertical. Unfortunately, the way things worked, I had to kludge this to a horizontal arrangement. The crank is shown attached; it will later be mounted on the side of the ammo box.
I ended up redoing the winch drum because things weren't fitting right. The cable is hand-wound from 4 strands of .032" wire -- I still have to work on the fittings on the end of the cable where it attaches to the little trolley.
I have also added two trail clamps -- they sorta look like the real thing, but are not mounted exactly where the real ones were -- again, a problem of making disparate things match reality. In a later picture you'll see how the carriage legs fit in the clamps. I'll use some a/c seatbelts or stray PE to make some straps to hold the legs in the clamps.
I am not going to display the contents of the storage boxes, so I made and mounted the doors and used some stray PE to make hinges & hasps.
Now, on the frame.
The final racks for the fuel & water cans. These are my tale of woe, but I finally got them done. At one point I had what I thought was good enough & mounted them to the frame. That showed me they should have a cover over them or folks would be stepping on the cans, etc. This made it a lot easier to make the final build of these flimsy parts. The British gas & water tins came from some Verlinden parts and will be reworked a bit to correct the size & pretty up the handles. I have chosen to have 2 fuel cans on one side and a water can on the other.
The fenders have been made from bent Evergreen strip. I wrapped them around a suitable bottle & dumped them into boiling water for 4 minutes, then dumped into cold water for another 4 minutes, then left 'em wrapped to air dry for 24 hours. Maybe overkill, but it works. I attached them to the frame with a few pieces of Evergreen T-bar which were rounded on the frame end & inserted in 1/16" holes drilled in the frame. This made alignment easy & a solid mounting.
If you remember the last post, I mentioned the rear deck seemed too narrow, so I added a plank on each side & this takes the deck right out to the wheels/fenders, which seems about right now. Also I put all the little handles & levers & whatnot on the gun carriage, so it is complete now (which is good because I am so scared I'm gonna break something, like the leg hinges, on this thing if I keep fiddling with it).
Now here it is with everything put together ....
Time now to finish off the underframe details I have been talking about and get on the cab interior so I can get the frame & cab into the paint booth. The center deck & rear deck will remain detached & painted separately. I can also start on the rest of the gun. Once I get the frame/cab painted & the rear/center deck painted, then I can stick them together & get to work on the trolley rails & other things. This thing is starting to move now !!! I may only miss the deadline by 2-3 months at this rate ....