I will be posting photos of a build I am doing for a friend of the Misfits. He served on this truck in 1969. I will give the dimensions of the scratch built parts on this build. It is a simple build and if you would like to try your hand at building a gun truck this is a good one to start with. The Kit used is the AFV Club M 35 A1 Nancy gun truck kit. You can use the M-35A2 kit as well as the Misfits was the A2 version with the exhaust stack removed and relocated under the right front fender.

very nice Dave. You certainly have a production line set up to do these.

Animal please don't do it again. Every time when I see your new guntruck hear voices in my head: "Good looking truck. Build something like this. You promised yourself build another guntruck" :-)
Keep posting, I want see next stages.

Piotr

Another great looking start, animal. I've got a partially built 5-ton guntruck sitting on my bench that is there mostly due to seeing your work. Now I just have to get it done. Thanks for the inspiration.

Thanks for the kind words of encouragement guys. I will be posting an update later today with some more photos and the measurements for the gun box.

NOTE: I use the Micro Lux no. 14421 multi scale ruler. I measure my work with the 32" rule. I also use the C.T.T. Inc 1:35 scale Rule for the feet to inch conversions..

I have progressed to the painting of the graphics on the cargo bed armor. Here are the measurements for the armor box. It is 1 8/32 inch high, by 2 16/32 wide (rear panel), I use .020" thick (0.4mm) thick plastic stock by Evergreen Plastic. The front panel is made of two pieces that are cut to 25/32 inch wide that will leave an opening in the center to access the cab. Note you can use a thicker piece of plastic stock if you like. I like the .020" thickness because I fell it represents the correct thickness of the steel plating used in Nam. For the triangle center 50 cal mount I used 3 16/32" long tubes from the #223 (3/32" tube stock for the three legs of machine gun mount. I cut a square piece of .020" stock 9/32"x9/32". I then cut this square into a triangle. I used a machine gun mount from the parts bin. You can make one from scratch if you want. The graphics are hand painted.

Very cool. How many guntrucks does this make for you? I am absolutely amazed everytime I see a new guntruck from you, especially all the ammo cans in the bottom. You need your own mold to make the hundreds you must have.

Jeff

I have built 70 so far. I only have about 300 more to go. :-) I ma not really sure just how many there was in Nam. Every time we research it over at the Gun Truck site we find another trucker or they find our site and have photos of their trucks when that were there. A couple of years ago we new of about 275 different trucks. Today we are up to 435 different trucks. Of course some of these trucks were renamed and refitted when new crews took over, so the actual cont if left to speculation. But a safe estimate I guess would be around 300.

You are right about needing a mold for the ammo cans and I have some more mold material from Smooth On so that I can make the molds. It is getting harder to find the kits of them . I have been using the AFV Club ammo can kit but it will be more cost effective for me to cast my own. I already cast my own cabs and accessories already. I don't know why I did not make a mold for the cans before now. Getting to old I guess.

G'day Dave
A guntruck this time, that's a real change :-)

Good to see your keeping them rolling out, i just love seing you get through em all slowly but surely.
Great work so far mate.

Cheers

Them would be hard numbers to figure, to how many times a truck got it's name changed, cause of so many different circumstances, and nobody keeping track.

The general rule was when a new NCOIC took over a truck he had the option to change the name. For example the Saint and the The Red Barron are the same truck with different crews. The Maverick was the only truck that was an original, by this I mean it was the only gun truck which kept the same truck under the armor. The original truck survived four different crews and the only thing they changed was the color and amount of weapons it carried. Most trucks were replaced after a year or less. The armor was lifted off the old truck and a new truck replaced it. Another thing is that the same name was used on different trucks at different times. There was two types of gun trucks that was called the Eve of Destruction. The first one was a five ton M 54 with a quad 50 mount on the back. The second one a an M54 with a armored gun box with twin 50's on the rear and two single 50's in the front of the box. Also some trucks that started out as a first generation 2 1/2 ton truck ended up as M 54 five ton version. An example of this is the Misfits. I am building the 2 1/2 ton first and second generation now and in the early 70's the gun truck was destroyed and rebuilt on a five ton truck.