Hi guys- thanks as always for your interest in this WIP. Mike- I've indeed been somewhat busy in the good weather, but not spent nearly as much recreational time in it as I'd like! Steve- haha funny guy 
Sad truth is, some days I feel like I wouldn't know what to do with the lubricants if I had 'em!
Anyway, much appreciation for following here guys. I do indeed have an update, in a build that has become a tale of 'life is what happens when you're not paying attention.'
When last we left our hearty little wrecker, the booms/crane assembly was together. Now on to the details, details, details. I thinned down the headlight guards (before on the right, after on the left):
Added two little pads of plastic sheet (white rectangles) on the underside of the cab to allow it to sit up level on it's frame crossmember:
Blanked off the front of the gas tank (driver's side) and battery box (passenger side) with sheet plastic. These were open and designed to be covered by the back of the fenders, but I didn't want to take any chances:
Added copper wire air lines to the left and right side air tanks. The lines just disappear into the frame and don't complete the journey to the air compressor:
Some test fitting:
And a group shot of most major components and some accessories. The items in the bed will be wood beams, made out of bbq grill-length matchsticks, and two pieces of round plastic stock, hollowed out at the ends, to be lengths of pipe. In front of that, next to the bumper, are a couple items robbed from a parts bin Italeri M32 recovery vehicle:
The horns are rather prominent items on the firewall, as seen here as part of a fantastic rebuild of the real thing http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?9939-the-restoration-begins-on-the-969A/page14 - posted for discussion and visual illustration purposes only:
so I set about scratchbuilding a pair out of a length of sprue, two green ejector pin nubs, two thin slices of plastic rod under those, and stretched sprue ribs around that:
On the firewall:
I needed some cable binders for the hook on the bumper winch and for the two at the end of the boom cables, so sprue was used again. First, the real thing courtesy of the same restoration blog and posted for discussion and visual illustration purposes only:
After careful filing and scraping of the sprue end:
I cut the tiny binder off at the appropriate length and hollowed out the ends. The kit also didn't provide enough hooks, so I made one from a bit of household 110 volt electrical wire:
And after filing:
Here's the whole bumper winch hook/chain/cable binder assembly. Cable was made from nylon upholstery thread; the chain came with the kit:
The hook and cable are actually bound to the chain by shackles, which I made from two different size wires. I took thin copper wire, the same size as I used for the air lines, cut a piece about 1/3 of an inch, flattened the ends with a pair of needle-nosed pliers (without ridges in the jaws), and poked a small hole in the flattened ends with a #11 blade. I then bent this piece around the end of a pair of fine-point tweezers and inserted the finer wire through the holes. CA the ends of the finer wire, and voila, a shackle:
I made electrical wires running up the fender bracket to the headlights from fine wire, wrapped in Bare Metal Foil to represent protective material found on the real thing. Using BMF wasn't the easiest thing to do but I got them to look the part:
Some additions to the bed: photoetched trays to hold pioneer tools on top of each of the equipment boxes (I added protective brackets for the axe heads), and the plastic stock on the right side in front of the equipment box was my idea: I scratchbuit the angle iron and the 'stop' to secure jerry cans:
The rear of the bed: handgrab 'steps' from copper wire on the mudguards, and the chain for the tailgate is HO scale model RR chain. The hooks at the end of each chain and the rings to secure the chains to the bed are scratchbuilt:
That's it for now; I hope this post wasn't too long! Thanks as always for looking in; comments and critique are always welcomed.
Dave