This thing fought me all the way. I am so glad it's done. Well, as far as I'm going to go with it. For some reason I'd finish one part of it and when I finished the next part that hooked to that part...it didn't fit as planned so back to the drawing board. That's to be expected on any scratch built build once...maybe twice. But not every blessed time!!!

Anyway...

KW T600 with a WAG Industries (Wild Ass Guess Industries) 35 ton unit. Since this machine was meant to go out to who knows where and bring some company's broke down rig back, I put a big sleeper on it to reward the senior drivers that has been with the company for decades. Plus, doing some recovery work closer to home if need be.

A kit bash made from a Revell Peterbilt 359 cab (from the 'Marmon' Stars and Stripes kit)

and a Revell KW W900 dump truck.

I had taken the Marmon kit apart to make a 'real' Marmon out of it.

With the Pete cab and the KW chassis I decided to create a Paccar fusion never done in real life.

As a donor for the Pete hood and grille I used a cheap eBay purchased Revell Pete kit

which was smashed but the most important parts were promised to be not affected.

So it was and I mixed it all together to create this Pete 359 dump truck:

Decals are selfmade, headlights are leftovers from my Freightliner conventional (had them twice), tires are Amt round2, the hood was lengthened with 0.5mm styrene sheet because the KW W900 kit had a long nose to accomodate the big Cat 3408 engine.

The exhaust system was taken over from the KW, air intake is box parts, stacks from the eBay Pete.

The hydraulic system doesn't work too well but on the shelf...

... honestly, it will probably never again be touched!

Enjoy the pics and thanks to all who watched and commented the build!

Enjoy the pics !

The cab is from Brian’s 3d Marketplace. The chassis is a modified AMT Diamond Reo. The engine is from Moluminum. The truck tires are from Double Take Replicas. The winch is from Don Mills. The decals are from Charles Rowley. The trailer is completely scratch built. The trailer wheels are from old Erlt kits. The 16 trailer tires are modified Modelhaus tires. The train engine is a fully operational G scale 4-6-0 from Bachman. It is also very heavy which caused me to make two supports for under the trailer to keep it from sagging over time. The engine is also not chained because of the weight. It is better to lift the engine off when moving the display.

The pictures are not my best work. I left it on the base because of the weight.

Its a great hobby to 'while away the hours' and I've logged over 1,300 hours working on this model. The model's parts count is a tick over 3,150; 125 kit parts were used and/or modified, 950 aftermarket pieces, over 2,050 individual pieces of styrene, aluminum and brass tubing, brass rods, wire and hoses, and 70 odd 3d printed items. I owe thanks to @Bren for printing of many of those! An unintendedly lengthy WIP was created during this build, but the build's goal was achieved! This is the link to the WIP -

https://forum.modelcarmakers.com/topic/193780-western-star-4900-fa-plow-truck/

I took too many pics to post here, so, hopefully, I picked out the best ones, and to be clear, I'm not a photographer - the camera did all the work for the focus stacked images that are presented here. The WIP has tons of pics, so, the ones here mostly show the truck as a whole unit, with only a few detail pics, and will need two posts - maybe take some more outside in the sun, one day. I've really appreciated the interest shown along the way, during this build, and hope to get to the next one soon enough!

A little background: In the 50s and 60s, auto companies generally insisted that car haulers hauling their products use tractors from the same manufacturer. After all, it wouldn’t do for a Ford tractor to pull into a Chevy dealership with a load of Chevies- or vice-versa! Bad optics, in the parlance of today. Studebaker was no exception to this practice. They had a line of trucks ranging from ½ ton pickups to heavier duty 2-ton models, and I’ve seen several reference photos of 2 ton Studebaker tractors- after all, the 50s were the golden age of the medium duty gasoline-powered tractor.

So, that’s what I was trying to create with this build- a dedicated Studebaker car hauler tractor. And what’s a car hauler tractor without a car hauler trailer? And what’s a car hauler trailer without any cars? So, I downloaded Dito’s 1950 Studebaker pickup and printed it, scaled up 192% for 1/25 scale. I removed the pickup bed and tried to repair the scars as best I could, and I widened the wheel wells to accommodate the larger tractor tires and wheels. The chassis is scratch built, the wheels and rear axle come from a different designer, and the accessories are from the parts box. The trailer is AMT’s car hauler, which I always thought had a vintage looking design with a 50’s vibe. I downloaded Dito’s ’50 Studebaker Champion with that great bullet nose and wrap-around rear window (I remember riding in the back of one of those when I was a little kid- it was awesome!) I printed up three of them and two more pickups, and I made some glass for them and painted them up to load the trailer.

And so, here you have it! A load of brand new 1950 Studebakers, on their way out of South Bend to a local dealership somewhere in the mountains. Enjoy!

The pictures show both finished and some wip. Looking forward to applying what a learned to the next truck.

Hey, do any of you know where to find hoses that appear at the back of the truck cab? Any aftermarket parts out there.

Me and my dad built this one based of a either 80s or early 90s MAC car crusher with a 4-71 Detroit. Some came from the factory with a 4-71T, or turbocharged 4-71. I didn't have of those, so we did the rational thing and used a 8v71 out of the GMC General kit. Which is basically two 4-71s put together. If a 4-71 can feed the hydraulic pump enough to crush a car in 40 seconds, then a 8v71 could probably do it in about 20. Not overkill at all!

The base is the AMT furniture van, engine from a GMC general, Rims also from a furniture van. Oversize load and grille decal from the bulldozer and the rest is either kitbashed or scratchbuilt. 

It rained so I couldn't get pictures on the blacktop. 

Thanks for looking!

This is an AMT Chevy Titan from a few years back, not the latest issue. I wanted a steerable front axle and some fancier wheels, so I stole the whole suspension and drivetrain from a Transtar 4300. The rear suspension and axles are almost identical, you just have to sand off the IH logo. I wanted a dual axhaust setup and dual snorkels too, but didn,t like the kit's configuration, so I reversed the stacks on to make the mufflers face outwards and stole the filter and snokel from another Titan kit I have. I wanted the big grille front end and used the photo-etched parts from CTM inside and out. Pretty easy to use if you have the tools to bend the parts. The paint is Tamiya bright white and Scale finishes 1969 Chevrolet Glacier blue. I also replaced the 8V71 with an 8V92T to justify the exhaust setup. I lowered the cab about 3mm to make it sit properly and that made all kinds of interferences under the cab and turbo setup from the new engine so I had to redo the exhaust inlet pipe to the turbo and the intake pipe and the cab was glued onto its front hinges. The stripes are from the Smokey and the Bandit GMC General that I got from Modeltruckin. It was an up and down journey for this one but finished on a high note for me. 

Had my dot in this truck for about 5 yrs and saw pretty much all of Australia whilst driving it, thats from Nth to Sth and East to West, even got paid to do all this tripping around as well.

Quit the road and started to do ”around town clown work” as the family was growing up fast and the missus said I needed to be home for the kids. After a few decades of local garbage, I reckon I should have just kept driving out on the highway.

As the kids grew, they sure created some drama, could have done without a lot of that garbage, eh,

So the WHITE Road Boss was meant to be a light weight highway runner, somehow it ended up in a Heavy Haulage yard and be buggered if I could kill that machine. Tried plenty of times to do some damage to it, just so I could have a bit of extra time at home, BUT, the bloody thing just kept going.

It had a CAT 3306 motor with a lousy little 275 horse power in it, a 15 Speed Road Ranger with a set of 4.1 Eatons at the rear end fixed to a Hendrickson beam suspension, so overall a good little light weight highway horse.

Along with the Road Boss, the company attached a brand new Allison 3 row of 4 Low Loader to it, now with the L/L attached, instead of a gross weight of 39 tons for highway work, it meant I could now drag around just a tad under 50 ton gross with a weak little 275 HP motor, eh.

Anyway I decided to make a model of that little jigger, used the original Road Boss as a guide to making this model, had to change a lot of things because the yankee version, sure is different to the Aussie version.

Lots of kit bashing and modifying were done before the model of the Road Boss was completed, so the R/B is only a MODIFIED kit.

If some body does something like this today, then they just buy the bits required and then brag about all the scratchbuilt bits they have added, yeh right, pull the other one as it plays jingle bells, eh.

The trailer, or Low Loader, was totally Scratchbuilt from plans that I had to draw myself, using the original L/L for all the measurements.

OH, this was way before any of the aftermarket resin bits were even thought of, anything you needed you had to make, or swipe from some other kit, to try and get it to look correct.

So a pic of the original truck that I was given to try and reduce to scrap, then a few pics of the model and a list of what was done to the model and the drawing for the 3x4 Low Loader in 25th scale.

Anyway, have a look and see what you think of it, any questions please ask and I shall attempt to answer them correctly, but, remember that this model was actually made way back in late 1986/7, so it’s a mouldy oldy alright, eh.

That third axle on the drive is a Tag Axle, it just slips on the greasy plate and it could give me an extra 6 ton on the drive.

Only problem with it was, if you a hit bump or ditch across the road dead square on at speed, think a bridge with the square edged concrete sticking up, it would chuck me out of the saddle and I would be up on the roof without any feet anywhere near the pedals, what a bloody dangerous contraption that thing was.

This caused a commotion at Ballaratt, Victoria at a model show that I entered it in ------------------

The picture below is of a transformer and is what I used as a guide for the load on the model, took that heavy little sucker all the way from Brisbane to Adelaide, roughly 2,200 klm and took quite aa few days to get there, along with a lot of drama, as the scalies in Sout Australia were on the look out for me. Got there without a ticket for overloading, BUT had one heck of a scare when they popped over a hill and wanted me to stop right there. Yeh right, stop on an uphill slope whilst severly overloaded, nope, just kept sneaking forward until I topped the rise then stopped, it was too far away from the car with the scales for that overweight puffed out fat scalie to get them and lug them heavy things way up to me, so he told me off and checked my paper work and waved me away.

The transformer parked up at the delivery yard in Adelaide, Sth Aust.

After 5 yrs in it and then quit, it was sold to another company driver and he owned for another 4 yrs using it for Road Train work going from Brisbane to Darwin, so over all it was just about bullet proof.

Anyway, have a look and see what you think of it, all and every question shall be answered, to the best of my ability ----------

Overall, it’s a very nice kit and the build process is quite engaging. I didn’t build it straight out of the box, though, there were several areas I wanted to modify to better match the look I had in mind.

Changes I made:

• The wheelbase is rather short, which makes the truck look a bit stubby. I wanted it to appear heavier and more capable as a tow truck, so I extended the bed length to give the whole vehicle a longer, more purposeful stance.

• The wrecker bed is too wide in stock form. Narrowing it each side greatly improves the proportions. To do this, I had to measure the width of rear axle with wheels attached first before cutting to narrow the bed.

• The handrails sit too tall for the truck’s scale. Lowering them helps the overall profile look more realistic.

• Many small details added/updated throughout the truck, but none of them may stand out unless you compare the truck with a stock version side by side.

What I liked:

• I really enjoyed the build, mainly because I knew what to expect going in.

• It’s not your typical truck kit here, the towing mechanism and wrecker bed make it a unique and interesting project.

• Since the bed covers most of the frame, I didn’t spend much time detailing that area (brake lines, air hoses, etc.) saving some work and build time.

What I didn’t like:

• The wrecker bed dimensions are off. You can build it as is, but then the rear wheel width really should be increased to match. Thankfully, there are several ways to correct this.

• Being an older kit, it requires extra sanding and prep work. Test fitting is definitely recommended.

Overall, the build took a little over 45 days although I wanted to complete the build much quicker. My biggest problem is that I keep buying kits faster than I can build them!

Finished photos under lighting:

(Looks like there is 3.5mb upload limit per each update, I will continue with next update)

The one thing that did work out on this truck was I finally got to try to make my own tarp, and I'm quite happy with the way it came out. Basically, it's just a medical paper towel with Modge Podge and water put over a wooden crate and let dry and then painted with Vallejo paints and Tamiya panel line colors