First, Happy New Year to all. We had a good holiday. Kids survived air travel and got here more or less on time, and got back home safely. I took all on an air tour of the Outer Banks and the kids expressed the usual surprise that Dad could learn anything, much less flying !!!!
OK, remember all those times I said I was enjoying this ?? Well that does not count the time I spent trying to build a couple frames to hold gas & water cans !!!! I've been, what, three weeks since last post & only just now got two of 'em that I can live with -- the 3 or 4 previous attempts are trash. The only good thing about all this is that I just had to set them aside for a while and that forced me to work on other things, so I have lots of overall progress to show.
Starting at the front, I did some more tweaking of the frame & cab to look more like the pix I have -- if you look at the earlier pix you'll see the flat platform under the grill has been shortened & bent down [probably only Roo appreciates this one]. I did some work to make a mount for the bumper which came from the Eduard PE, thickened with Evergreen stock. I kept the Tamiya brush guard -- the PE was too thin & the Tamiya part looked OK in retrospect. Peeking over the back of the cab you can see the spare tire mount has been added to -- I've seen several different styles & I picked something easy in between all of them -- I just can't get emotionally involved with a tire carrier right now.
Next back is the center deck -- lots going on here.
There are legs for the seat to sit on; note the angle brackets and things to replicate mounting to the wood platform. On the right hand leg is a lumpy box meant to replicate the winch cranking mechanism. In reality, the handle drove a large gear which turned the smaller gear on the winch axle and the two gears were vertical. Unfortunately, the way things worked, I had to kludge this to a horizontal arrangement. The crank is shown attached; it will later be mounted on the side of the ammo box.
I ended up redoing the winch drum because things weren't fitting right. The cable is hand-wound from 4 strands of .032" wire -- I still have to work on the fittings on the end of the cable where it attaches to the little trolley.
I have also added two trail clamps -- they sorta look like the real thing, but are not mounted exactly where the real ones were -- again, a problem of making disparate things match reality. In a later picture you'll see how the carriage legs fit in the clamps. I'll use some a/c seatbelts or stray PE to make some straps to hold the legs in the clamps.
I am not going to display the contents of the storage boxes, so I made and mounted the doors and used some stray PE to make hinges & hasps.
Now, on the frame.
The final racks for the fuel & water cans. These are my tale of woe, but I finally got them done. At one point I had what I thought was good enough & mounted them to the frame. That showed me they should have a cover over them or folks would be stepping on the cans, etc. This made it a lot easier to make the final build of these flimsy parts. The British gas & water tins came from some Verlinden parts and will be reworked a bit to correct the size & pretty up the handles. I have chosen to have 2 fuel cans on one side and a water can on the other.
The fenders have been made from bent Evergreen strip. I wrapped them around a suitable bottle & dumped them into boiling water for 4 minutes, then dumped into cold water for another 4 minutes, then left 'em wrapped to air dry for 24 hours. Maybe overkill, but it works. I attached them to the frame with a few pieces of Evergreen T-bar which were rounded on the frame end & inserted in 1/16" holes drilled in the frame. This made alignment easy & a solid mounting.
If you remember the last post, I mentioned the rear deck seemed too narrow, so I added a plank on each side & this takes the deck right out to the wheels/fenders, which seems about right now. Also I put all the little handles & levers & whatnot on the gun carriage, so it is complete now (which is good because I am so scared I'm gonna break something, like the leg hinges, on this thing if I keep fiddling with it).
Now here it is with everything put together ....
Time now to finish off the underframe details I have been talking about and get on the cab interior so I can get the frame & cab into the paint booth. The center deck & rear deck will remain detached & painted separately. I can also start on the rest of the gun. Once I get the frame/cab painted & the rear/center deck painted, then I can stick them together & get to work on the trolley rails & other things.
