Hello!
I got this one for christmas some years ago:
I tried to find this one in Polish service, but when the War started I thought - it would be fitting now to do it in the Ukrainian colors, and I had this nice photo:
I intend to get as near as I can with this one.
And the ICM kit looks nice out of the box, but when you start to think about it some major simplifications become apparent - especially after you compare it to the Bronco kit - for example where are the brake chambers? Or why doesn't the steering wheel connect to the steering box in any way? To make this one really accurate you would have to take the chassis from the Bronco kit and only add the shelter/workshop - then again the Bronco offering is so detailed the build might just become tedious. So I said I'm staying with the ICM kit and I'll TRY to keep it MOSTLY OOB.
So I started building the chassis:
The winch and front axle are just dry fitted at this point. I painted the recesses black to aid in airbrush-painting the chassis later, and the Gunze paint doesn't need to be stripped for glueing with lacquer thinner, which is what I do.
Planning a few steps ahead I noticed a pitfall: The instructions tell you to use the following sequence: Chassis-Engine-Winch-Front axle-Fenders(this is important)-the remainder of the cab. The problem is the fenders aren't exactly straight:
Now I think if I put those fenders on the frame I wouldn't be able to straighten them properly. And if I glued the cab together with the fenders, I would not be able to fit that over the engine on chassis (the engine is too wide - it's an american style V-8!). That's why I decided to make the cab first, then to put it on the frame and just then to install the engine.
So I started with the dashboard:
By the way the kit decals are somewhat funny - they have this funny foil on top of everything that doesn't want to come off at first. The data plates in the middle are my fabrication.
Then I prepared the doors and started glueing everything together. I thought about painting the doors separately - but the other cab parts are warped enough to make me think I wouldn't be able to fit the doors properly later. So I'm glueing them in place and I'll paint them red later. Here's how it looks like now:
And here's the general state of the project for now:
The idea is to put the most of the cab together, paint everything up and then assemble it - I mean the parts from the picture above for now.
Thanks for looking and have a nice day
Paweł