M911 & M747 on Civvie street

[ogrejohn]

Cool decals! 

[Dukemaddog]

Excellent decals. I don't know if you saw my Latest Grabs, but now I can join you in doing a few 1/72 scale tank transporter trucks too.

Looking forward to seeing this move forward again.

[MARCO]

Nice decals!

[Beekster]

So, this project is also getting attention now that I am getting back to the bench with some regularity. This morning I got a very fiddly task out of the way, and from now on I must be very careful about how I handle the cab:






The main bracket for the rear-view mirrors is now installed, and it is as fragile and flexy as it looks. I won't mount the mirrors until the cab is painted and on the frame. Getting this together brought another example of poor documentation on the part of Hobby Boss. See those forward braces that support the main inverted-U shaped bracket? Yeah, the instruction sheet shows them but doesn't provide parts numbers. Fortunately, by the time you are this far into the project they are pretty easy to find on an otherwise nearly empty sprue. If you tackle one of these, do yourself a favor and modify the little etched brass brackets that go on the corners of the cab roof. You'll see flashes of white on those in the photos; that is .005" styrene sheet superglued to the brass on the surfaces that face the cab roof and the main bracket. Trimmed to size, the thin sheet allows you to use regular plastic glue to assemble the whole thing. And trust me, as fiddly as these parts are you definitely want to have joints that you can tweak and nudge with tweezers until you're satisfied with the alignment.

In other news on this project, the tires are off the rims and the rims have been given a good hot bath. In the next couple of days I'll get the airbrush out of storage and paint them. The frame will also get a bath so that it is clean and dust-free for some targeted work with rattlecan primer on all the brass bits. And I've made a decision on the trailer, too: Rather than scratchbuild ramps, I will use the ramps that came with the M911 kit. No one but me (and all of you) will ever know that the style of ramp is different. And once it dawned on me that life would be easier when using kit ramps, further perusal of the kit instructions revealed other bits worth swiping, like all the D-rings for the trailer sides and the panel for the air & electric lines. When the trailer looks like some progress has been made I'll post more images. Right now there's a bunch of sanding to do and some additional structural work to do as well.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

WOW! That looks terribly fragile.

[Steve Ski]

Looking good!

[Beekster]

Feb 2, 2021 12:40:56 GMT -6 dogfish7 (R.I.P.) said:

WOW! That looks terribly fragile.

It most certainly is that!  Fortunately, I suppose, I won't have to handle the cab too much going forward in ways that put the structure at risk.  I can mask window openings from the inside and tack the doors on for paint, and hold it by the exhaust pipe under the floor.  The doors will be off for decal work.  At least this is styrene; there's some give to all these bits if they take a gentle knock.  With resin, they would snap without much provocation.

[JCON]

Looking good sir!!!

[BUCKY]

You've done well, beeks! Looking forward to seeing more progress!

[Beekster]

It's poking along. We got some sunbreaks yesterday, so I got some white Tamiya primer on the brass bits on the frame. Once that's cured a few days I can paint it black. The tractor wheels are prepped for paint, and the trailer wheels for primer, but the weather isn't cooperating today for outdoor work or airbrush work in the garage. So I am continuing work on the trailer, but don't have anything in the way of progress worth showing yet; this morning was spent finessing some dimensional issues and seam filler. On the upside, I wiggled that mirror frame on the cab this morning after it had set all night to dry, and I was surprised to find it relatively sturdy. That's no excuse to get careless in handling, mind you, but I don't have to have quite as much trepidation as I feared. Once the weather looks more promising, I also have several subassemblies for the Madill ready for Dullcote lacquer to seal the paint and kill the gloss. The yarder is in the display cabinet right now, away from dust, and a couple more days for the orange touch-up to cure won't hurt anything.

[JCON]

Sounds good!!!

[Beekster]

Been working on the trailer. I've got the sides trimmed out, with only a little sanding on the wheel arches to do for that task. The wheels have a coat of Tamiya primer setting up. I've built the ramps from the M747 trailer, but the geometry isn't quite right for getting them to sit flat on the ground when the trailer is leveled up. I'm pondering what to do about that. I could go back to scratchbuildng ramps, or I could grind away at the base of the M747 ramps until they sit right, and make new bottoms for them out of sheet stock. That would also have the effect of altering their shape a bit so that they look less like the kit parts.



These images aren't the highest quality, but they do show the side trim work. They also illustrate the limitations of shooting a project this large in a lightbox this small. Once I have the ramp situation squared away, there's still a bunch of detail work to do like adding D-ring tiedowns on the sides, taillights and relectors, and fabricating gladhand ends and an electrical plug for the front of the trailer. Sure, the Hobby Boss kit has gladhand ends...but they are molded bent up, in the disconnected state. The kit trailer has a panel for the air & electrical lines, which I will use, but that too isn't quite the thing and for the same reason the gladhand ends aren't what I want: The door for the electrical outlet is molded on, as it would look with the little door closed when the lines are all disconnected. I've shaved the door off, but need to make a new hinge from rod stock and glue it in the open position. The tractor will need a bit of work too, but fortunately that will be hidden underneath the winch deck. While it has attachment points for the blue & red air lines, there is nothing for an electrical line.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Fantastic work there Beekster. You can always adjust the road wheel height by placing some celophane between them and your textured Diorama Base, to adjust any irregularities. .

[Beekster]

Well, I'll probably run a sanding stick across the bottom of the wheels to flatten them ever so slightly, but that will actually compound the ramp problem by dropping the ride height a smidgen. The cobbled-together suspension parts were sized to use these wheels and to get a level load deck when mated to the tractor...and I've confirmed that I've accomplished that. So the adjustment will have to be done with the ramps by way of getting them to sit flat on the ground plane when/if they are displayed in the lowered position.

Though figures aren't my strong suit by any means, it's a pity there aren't many civilian types around. Having the yarder on the trailer, with the spar already erected, and a dude on the trailer deck sounds kinda cool as a presentation. Given how far out the back the spar is in when it is lowered for travel, I suspect that the usual procedure is to get it up and supported by the fixed guylines before driving it off the trailer.

[JCON]

Very cool, I wonder if you could find some civilian figures made on a 3D printer...

[ARMORGUY]

Fantastic job so far on this impressive beast.

[ogrejohn]

Very nice work! 

[Beekster]

The ramps have been getting some attention this week, and this is where I am at conceptually:




The blocks you see here are temporary laminations using superglue, to make it easier to drill and shape things uniformly. I'm looking at a kind of double-hinge arrangement to get the ramps to lay down far enough forward that gravity alone would hold them in place. The smaller block was fabbed up just this morning, and while I like the idea I think I will make another one. A bit more separation to the drilled axle holes will help with spacing. The ramps themselves need another small hole drilled through, since the full-scale article seems to have a torsion spring fitted to help with raising and lowering the ramps. They aren't powered, and appear to be pretty lightweight and easy enough for a couple of guys to handle.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Nice fabbin Beekster!

[JCON]

I like it!!!