M911 & M747 on Civvie street

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

You make me want to try harder Beek.

[Beekster]

And here are the finished brackets in place:


They are still not cured yet, so the battery box won't go on until tomorrow. The two cables for the battery box can be seen routed through the front bracket. Once the battery box is on and those joints have cured, I'll route the cables into two holes already drilled into the back of the box.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Wow!

[JED]

More top work 👍

[JCON]

Excellent job brother!!!

[Beekster]

Now this looks better!

The battery box is on and setting up, and the cab, hood, and left fender are mocked up. The fender is a tight fit and I may not even glue it down, but I wanted it there to ensure the battery box fit properly. I did slice off the forward bracket and re-position it a wee bit further aft to clear the back of the fender...much easier to do with styrene; just wet the area with some liquid glue and carefully use a chisel blade to work it free and move it. The cab sits securely on the four locating tabs, which is great. The hood, not so much...and especially not with the radiator in there (it isn't, in this image). There's some fettling to be done there since it doesn't sit down right on the cowl. It is located by the radiator and holes in the hood on either side that snap onto rounded tabs on the inside of the frame rails. That's fine, but I think I need to open out those holes for some wiggle room and revisit my use of shims to support the radiator since a test-fit caused the frame to flex; radiator didn't want to sit down far enough. Once the battery box is fully secure I can work that out. I'm also getting nervous about how much daylight is visible into the engine bay. Sure, the air cleaner bits aren't on the fender yet but I'm wondering if I won't have to fab up half an engine in there. Getting the fit of the hood figured out will also allow me to determine how much sight line there is from a view down by the battery box; might have to put some structure back in there to route cables to and paint it all black for shadow. We'll see.

And there's cleanup to do on the inside of the cab:


All this nonsense has got to go; this is supposed to be a nondescript headliner and the real ones surely don't have that fancy curved contour. Can't imagine even the most dedicated truck fanatic customizing one of these beasts for the truck show circuit, but feel free to prove me wrong if you have ever seen it done. Anyway, this is where a Dremel might come in handy, if I had one that worked. Probably time to go shopping.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Nothing gets by you Beekster.

[JCON]

Much better, nice headliner, ha, ha!!!

[RLFoster]

Outstanding scratch work! Looks fantastic!

[Beekster]

Running into more fit issues up front. Yesterday I sanded down the inside of the hood where it meets the cowl, so that it would sit flush with the cab there. That's looking OK so far. However, take a look at the gaps on the bottom of the hood where it meets the fenders as seen in these two images:




Those gaps are much too large, so I think adding some material to the bottom of the hood will be necessary. Right now, though it has to be left just as it is for several hours. I've made shims to support the bottom of the radiator, and glued it it place:



They are visible at the bottom of the image. Now, it's possible that the post atop the radiator isn't engaged in the hole in the underside of the top of the hood, but this seems stable so I think it is. Either way, I don't want to jiggle this until that glue on the bottom has had a few hours to set up. I also opened out the holes for those frame nubs before deciding yesterday that cutting them off was easier to deal with. The fit was too tight, and when piecing everything together the radiator wouldn't stay in place. Once the radiator has set up I'll evaluate whether or not I need to replace those nubs with bits of rod or punched discs, just to get the right level of friction fit at the frame rails. Bottom line, I'm not best pleased at the fit of the parts in this area or the kit engineering. Since the radiator standing tall is a structural element, why support it with two little posts top and bottom? Surely a longer locating tab on the bottom with suitable recess would have been better to support the radiator? Certainly no harder to design.

The doors fit pretty well, though the raised surround for the lower window on the passenger side did not survive intact when the inside support sprue attachments (not needed at all, IMO) were removed. I'm using some .015" rod stock to replace lost sections, and go with that if it looks good when done. If not, I'll shave the whole detail off and replace it all with rod stock so at least it looks perfectly uniform.

[JCON]

Shouldn't be too hard to add strip to the bottom of the hood if needed...

[Beekster]

Feb 19, 2019 10:48:55 GMT -6 JCON said:

Shouldn't be too hard to add strip to the bottom of the hood if needed...

No, certainly not.  And I did have a peek inside with a flexible-shaft LED flashlight, and the radiator is sitting correctly in the proper hole under the hood.  So the amount of daylight here is really disconcerting.  But worse than the daylight, I think, is the fact that there will always be visible sightlines into that cavernous engine bay from around the air cleaner box and hole for the intake pipe, as well as from down by the battery box and fuel tanks looking forward and up...I said I wouldn't, but I might have to go there...

When it's safe to pull the hood off again, I'll sand some more of the underside at the cowl to get it to sit down another few thousandths of an inch.  I'll look at sanding down the fitting where the radiator fits too, in hopes that the hood sits down a bit more up front.  That might make those gaps more manageable.  If I'm still not happy, I have one other thing to try:  I can cut the radiator back out along with the shims,  then make new shorter shims to make the radiator sit lower by twenty or thirty thousandths of an inch.  Glue that back together, fit the hood to hold the radiator secure while it cures again, and evaluate whether or not I need to shim the bottom of the hood.

Which leads me back to my concerns about sightlines into the engine bay.  I don't want to have to do it, but I might have to fab up a rudimentary engine to fill the space visually.  Fortunately, I have this:



This is the Detroit Diesel 8V-92 from the hideously expensive MiniMan Factory resin M911 kit.  I used this as a template to build the 8V-71T for my Madill 071 yarder project (the two engines share the same block, heads, and general dimensions).  I could use this again to make a partial engine to fill up the cavern on this truck if I need to,.

[JCON]

That would certainly work!!!

[JED]

Well it sounds like you have it all in hand with a plan A,B,C and most probably a D and E too 😃😃

[Beekster]

OK, now this is getting better. I've trimmed the underside of the hood a bit more at the cowl, and started adding shim material to close up the gaps:




I'll keep referring to photos and adding material to tighten up the gaps even more. So far I've added .040" everywhere, but I'll let images be my guide about where more needs to be added. I haven't decided what to do yet about that little door on the right side, visible in the second picture. It should be flush with the fender at the bottom, but obviously it isn't any more. I might just shave it off and replace it, but that could be delicate work since I would have to save the clamp that keeps it closed, and preferably the hinge too. I might just leave it alone.

I'm still mystified as to why the fit of the hood is so poor in relation to the fenders and frame rails, since the cab fits correctly. The part isn't short-shot; a couple of the sprue gates were attached to the bottom of the thing. I don't think I'll need much in the way of engine detail inside now, though. Black paint will do wonders for that area, though I may yet fabricate something for the left side just to give an impression of the engine if one peers beneath the air cleaner.

And I have a resolution on that second kit. The vendor failed to respond, so eBay refunded my purchase price of $59.96. I've bought another from a different vendor for $73.95; not quite the deal the original one was but still a seriously good buy. This vendor has been around longer and has a 100% satisfaction rating, so we shall see how the next purchase experience goes...

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

I can see what you meant by GAP, now.

[JCON]

Coming together my friend!!!

[Beekster]

OK. Now that I have the fit of the hood sorted, I can return to matters of detailing the chassis. There's a lot of plumbing and wiring to do yet, especially for the air brakes. And that brings me back to another problem I have to solve, created by the way Hobby Boss engineered this kit. For reference, this is the back end of an M911:


In this quick scan from David Doyle's new "In Action" title, the top right and bottom left show the air brake chambers on the rear axle, and the actuators which extend to the brake drums inside the wheels. All well and good; you big-rig modelers know that this is standard fare for most tractors. Now, this is what Hobby Boss has you make (mine is mocked up):



Pretty simple, but this method makes the brake cylinder part of the wheel/tire assembly. And this is what it looks like when fitted:



You see the problem, right? The air brake cylinder is hanging out in space, when it ought to be attached to the axle! Obviously, this cannot be allowed to stand. I will have to mock up all of the wheels with their brake cylinders, and work out brackets to attach them to the axles themselves. Once that is sorted, the wheels can be removed and dealt with separately. Another task to be accomplished in here will be to drill the cylinders for air lines and add those, routing the lines atop the axles and through the frame crossmembers. Though I have no specific reference to go on, I will find a place in the frame rails to make air manifolds for those lines to terminate at. A line to the air bottles will go in the other end of the manifold, though it will probably be "disappeared" somewhere in the frame rails under the winch platform. This model won't be displayed on a mirror, and I only want to do what might be visible through the open-treadplate work platforms atop the frame.

[JCON]

Good catch!!!

[Beekster]

I'm also adding something of an insurance policy with this:

There are low angles ahead of the fenders and back by the fuel tanks where a strong light aimed upwards will throw light into the engine bay. Just in case some IPMS judge ever does that, I'm putting in some rudimentary details. The radiator supports are on the real rig, and I'll mock up the engine. I won't go much beyond what you see here, just square this all up and fab some rudimentary exhaust manifolds, a couple of accessories atop the transmission, and some stiffening plates for the vertical section of the block. Once I get to where I have the air cleaner mounted on the fender, I will decide if I need to add a turbocharger and the rest of the intake tube but there might not be any direct sight into the engine bay that high up.