Russ- sorry for not replying sooner, but nice progress on your build. I wouldn't be surprised if you're further along than I by now.
Anyway, time for an update. Lots of fiddle, fiddle, fiddle on the wrecking equipment........first up were the twin booms, each comprised of a central tube and three spacer plates, to which four angle irons were welded to form a truss assembly. The kit central tubes and spacer plates are one piece, with the four angle irons provided in plastic separately. While the plastic angle irons are delicate and not a bad representation, I decided to try to do better and fabricated eight angle irons out of copper tape.
After peeling off some backing of the copper tape and cleaning off the goo, I used a combo square and my knife to cut off eight 2mm wide lengths, leaving them a little extra long to cut to exact later. I held the ruler part of two combo squares together to sandwich each copper strip, leaving 1mm exposed over the side, then used my knife handle to form a 90 degree bend.
And voila......I don't think they came out too shabbily.
I assembled the crane, the wrecker transmission (mounted on the lower I-beam, to drive the left and right service drums), the two brace legs (more nice engineering here I thought, with the inner sleeve simply sliding into the outer sleeve to position as deployed if desired).....
...and boom accessories (from top, L-R): boom heels that attach to the crane, snatch blocks, mast sheaves for the top of the crane (all have been thinned down except the outermost for comparison, and I replaced the little rectangular brace), and the boom sheaves for the end of the booms. These have also been thinned except the outermost as well:
Little do-dads were added to chassis equipment to finish this bit up: copper wire for air lines to each of the gladhands at the four corners of the frame:
Connection of the shock absorbers to the front axle, circled in red:
and the linkage for the parking brake, also in red:
One bit I was originally going to leave alone were the service drums, which look like this on the original (picture is from Squadron's Diamond T 4-ton Truck Walk Around, posted for discussion purposes only):
and the kit parts:
As you can see, the drum gear isn't quite big enough, and the gear attached to the transmission shaft to drive the drum only has a partial set of teeth. I puzzled and puzzled until my puzzler was sore, then I decided to do this, with .5mm sheet and the aid of a triangular needle file and my handy drafting stylus to mark the space between the teeth:
I'll be hacking up the other service drum presently. And with that, I'm off to the grindstone once again. Comments/critique welcomed, and thanks as always for looking.
Dave