Revell 1/25 Mercedes-Benz 1628s #1: Chassis Truck

[JeroenS]

That's enough for 1 night... something else tomorrow! 

 

It will still need plenty of bolts. 

 

[dnl42]

Excellent work on this!  

 

I especially appreciate cutting those gussets. Perhaps I'm due for a hardware upgrade...my Portrait can only score plastic...

[JeroenS]

1 hour ago, dnl42 said:

Excellent work on this!  

 

I especially appreciate cutting those gussets. Perhaps I'm due for a hardware upgrade...my Portrait can only score plastic...

Thanks. I have the Portrait 3, it was the most I was prepared to spend on a tool like this, but I haven't regretted it. I tried .5 mm sheet but that only gave score lines (which should work great on larger pieces), it cuts the .25 mm like butter. 

[JeroenS]

Hi all, I didn't get a whole lot done this weekend, mainly because of the nice weather and the fact that I had to do some work in the back garden. I had been procrastinating on that, but it catches up with you eventually. 

 

I salvaged the rear stabilizer struts from the old chassis and glued them, and the stabilizer bar, to the rear axle and the new chassis. I will add some tabs to strengthen the connection of the struts to the chassis, I just sanded them flat and glued them on for now. 

 

 

Same on the front axle, but those are all kit parts of course. 

 

 

I found that the rear shocks are mounted to a crossmember on the chassis. I had to cut that piece out of the kit's inner chassis part. 

 

 

It mounts like so. 

 

 

It's now just held in place with the shocks glued to the crossmember, which needs some shims to glue it to the chassis. 

 

That was it! Still, progress is progress. 

[JeroenS]

Finally, some decent progress tonight. I glued in the crossmember holding the shocks. 

 

 

Then turned to the front and attached steering box, radiator (with the fan moulded in) and air cleaner canister. 

 

 

Then some nice blue parts.  I had one mount point left on the chassis for the battery box and fuel tank which was convenient. I had to fiddle a little for the mount points on the new part of the chassis, but it wasn't difficult. 

 

 

The fuel tank did need a fair bit of sanding though, to get rid of the seam. I made 4 passes with different grits, wet sanding the last 2. That's good enough. 

 

 

That's filling the chassis up nicely. 

 

 

[TimJ]

Impressive work on the replacement chassis parts. 

[JeroenS]

All the major parts that should be on the chassis are there. 

 

 

I've added an extra air tank from the spares box. 

 

I figured out where the exhaust system should be and glued it on. The mounting points will need some strengthening. 

 

 

I'm now going to paint and basecoat the engine and chassis, then put the engine in. Then add wiring, after which I'll paint the whole thing, then add more wiring. This is not how I normally do it, but I'd like to wire everything with the engine mounted this time, so I can run some wires over the engine in a more natural way. 

 

[JeroenS]

I said I was going to paint but I was a little ahead of myself there... the chassis needed some finishing touches. There's a new drive shaft, hubs are on and I've added as many bolts as I could without losing my cool. These little things will drive you crazy at times. 

 

 

The white surface is broken up at least. 

 

 

 

Now, I can start painting. 

[JeroenS]

Hey guys, I've been away for a couple of weeks but I'm back now, I have a week of holidays left which I'll be spending at home, no plans. Except of course for some truck building, that is 🙂 

 

I should probably stop saying that I'm ready for paint.... I've been fiddling with plumbing and wiring the chassis. I always have sort of mixed feelings about it. It takes a lot of time, but it's nice to have something to look at. However, it's also almost never enough. If you see the amount of wiring and stuff which is going on on a truck, you could spend weeks trying to replicate that, which I'm not prepared to do. So the mixed feelings come from the difference between "it looks nice" and "there should be more and I'd like to do that but also not". If you know what I mean 🙂 

 

Anyway, luckily this is an older truck which means less wiring and plumbing anyway. 

 

I have a bunch of resin greeblies that I use for this sort of thing. They are modelled after actual parts for trucks, but I don't know enough about real trucks to be able to tell what they are and where they should go. But, they look good, so I use them. 

 

 

 

 

 

I use thin brass rod and rubber wires, or small electrical cables or something. Also, lead wire which I haven't used on this build yet, but I will. 

 

I will now make some preparations for the fuel lines and the electrical wiring, which I'll add after priming and basecoating. First, I need to make mounts for the rear lights before painting, I forgot about those earlier. 

[stevej60]

Good to see the work progressing Jeroen,great job so far too.

[desert falcon]

Very impressed about your work so far Jeroen 👍

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Well this is getting to be quite detailed, should look all good once its painted and weathered a bit. 

[Pete in Lincs]

It's looking very impressive. So far as I know it's known as a chassis cab over here.

You may want to angle the fuel filler pipe out a bit to miss any bodywork that will go above it.

We have a couple of trucks at work that are very difficult to fill up because no one thought ahead!

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

6 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

It's looking very impressive. So far as I know it's known as a chassis cab over here.

You may want to angle the fuel filler pipe out a bit to miss any bodywork that will go above it.

We have a couple of trucks at work that are very difficult to fill up because no one thought ahead!

Tell me about it, I had a truck once (Mitsubishi box) that I needed to tilt the cab up to fill the tanks. 

[Dansk]

Brilliant work Jeroen 👍 inspiring stuff

[JeroenS]

1 hour ago, Pete in Lincs said:

It's looking very impressive. So far as I know it's known as a chassis cab over here.

You may want to angle the fuel filler pipe out a bit to miss any bodywork that will go above it.

We have a couple of trucks at work that are very difficult to fill up because no one thought ahead!

Thanks Pete. The fuel filler pipe is a good tip, I can see how that could complicate things. It's too late for this one, but I will certainly keep it in mind for the other two Benzes as they will have bodywork. This one will be just the chassis so no problem there, but I'll tell the guys in the shop to have a look at that once they start work on it 🙂 

 

Anyway, finally there's some paint on!

 

But first, the mounts for the rear lights. I wanted to use the kit parts to glue the clear parts to. I had to cut away a lot of plastic to get what I needed. 

 

 

There's both of them. 

 

 

With some homemade mounts. 

 

 

Looks pretty decent. 

 

 

So then, black primer (Mr Surfacer 1500 as per usual). 

 

 

Ahh, that's better. 

 

I want the original colour of the chassis to be light grey because it fits nicely with the orange cab. I actually ran out of Tamiya Light Grey but instead I used some grey Mr Surfacer. 

 

 

I will brush paint all the parts that will be some other colour, like the mudguards, radiator, battery box cover etc. Then I will go to town on it with dirt/mud/rust. I don't think there will be a lot of grey left. I will add the electrical wiring before I start painting. 

 

The engine got some cockpit green over black primer which makes for a good combo with the grey. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dansk]

it's amazing what you can do with an old kit Jeroen.

Those mounts for the lights for example, and the bolts you have placed on them and on the chassis make a huge difference.

It all looks brilliant. It looks so sharp and clean. Great work 👍

[Pete in Lincs]

I'll second that. Very impressive work.

[JeroenS]

So, let's build us a cab interior. Not a whole lot of parts, nice and simple. I do like this kit, this is the second one I'm building. It builds really well. 

 

 

These seat backs need filling in because the rear cab wall has windows in it. 

 

 

So while this is drying we can build up the rest. 

 

 

Not much to it. 

 

 

This should slide right up in that cab. 

 

Speaking of which... I ran into a bit of a snag there. Previous owner did paint the cab, but not all the parts. 

 

 

This would have been fine for most of that blue part, but... 

 

 

not for that bottom ledge which should be body colour. Hmm... obviously I don't have that orange paint, but I actually did quite like it. But the way it is, I have no choice but to go for a respray. On the plus side, this will make weathering the cab way easier. I'll see if I can mix a nice shade of orange for it. 

 

In the meantime, seats are ready. This should be fine. 

 

 

 

 

[JeroenS]

I primed and basecoated the cab parts. 

 

 

This is Tamiya Red Brown (XF -64) over grey Mr Surfacer 1500 primer. The parts are ready for an intermediate gloss coat but I took a bit of a chance here. As I was sanding down the cab body a little bit, it occurred to me I don't have any idea what kind of paint was on it. After sanding, I cleaned it with ISO and the paint didn't budge at all which makes me think it is enamel paint. Mr Surfacer is lacquer based so it may still react with the enamel, I don't know. So far it's been OK but I'm leaving it until tomorrow at least, before applying a clear coat. The orange paint may have well been on there since the '80's, at least it wasn't a fresh coat by any means so it may turn out fine. Or not.

 

The interior was primed as well and has been given a coat of semi gloss black. Seats will get a different colour anyway, I'll see about the rest. It will be dirty and dusty inside so the gloss should be gone by then. 

 

 

But it's a nice base for the underside of the cab. 

 

 

The mudguard on the top is still grey primer because I held it there while painting 

 

[JeroenS]

The paint was fine this morning so I clearcoated the cab, set it in the sun to dry and gave it the salt treatment. When that had dried I mixed orange paint (it's a little less flamboyant this time) and applied it. Some more drying and then the salt could be washed off. 

 

 

 

 

This looks like a good base to start from. The rust spots will be treated individually so they're not all the same colour and texture. 

 

Changed my mind about the chassis colour. It happens. A lot 🙂 

 

It's black again, this time Tamiya XF-1 Flat Black.  

 

 

I had a trawl through my reference pics and the black chassis show some nicer weathering. I recently bought 2 sets of Lifecolour paints which I'll use for the weathering. One set is "rust", of which I've already used some paints (they're awesome). The other is "black", should be interesting. Shades include "dirty black" and "worn black". I'm curious. 

 

I think it's going to look pretty nice. 

 

 

 

[Bengalensis]

Things seems to be moving on very well here! Very clever work!

[JeroenS]

So, I had a first go with the Lifecolour "blacks". Pretty cool stuff. Here are two parts which I first gave a couple of quick coats of Vallejo black. Parts like this, I almost always brush paint. The Vallejo covers really, really well and you don't have to clean the airbrush 🙂 ... 

 

Anyway, the grille in the back is just the basic black, and the front bumper has been treated with some of Lifecolour's "Worn Black". 

 

 

First, as a wash, then a little dry brushing. Now, the truck will be much dirtier than this, but this is actually a very nice effect if you just want to have a tiny bit of wear on it. Just to break the black monotony. The Lifecolour paint is very pigmented so you only need the tiniest bit of paint. 

 

Here it is, a little closer up. 

 

 

I'll be using it more on this build, to try it out and it makes for a nice first layer. 

 

Then it was time to start the electrical wiring. There should at least be one wire loom. I have a little jig for that (not my own idea, but well stolen from someone else). 

 

 

I use these PE cable binders to ... bind the cables. They're strong and easy to work with. 

 

 

There's the loom. I should probably just spend a rainy day making as much of these as I can, and have a bit of stock. I don't like doing it very much. 

 

 

I started from the battery box, with one piece of the loom going to the front (only the beginning will be visible), and one piece going to the back. 

 

 

It goes up and over the air tank to the other side of the chassis, just to make it more interesting. 

 

 

From there, it runs to the back. I will make a small box there and run some more wires from it, to the lights and maybe to a coupling on the outisde of the rear crossmember. 

 

 

Some small dots of CA hold the loom in place. It fills up the otherwise very empty chassis a little bit. Anyway, almost time to start with the fun stuff, dirtying it up. I can see an end to this build now. I haven't decided what colour to paint the rims. Maybe I'll mix up a little more orange paint, or maybe I'll go with the default steel rims. Or, 3 orange ones and 1 steel one... I'll think about it. 

[JeroenS]

I did get quite a bit done today, but I'm calling quits now. I'm starting to rush things and that's never good. Besides, it's nice weather so having a beer in the back yard is a priority. 

 

First, I gave the hubs orange paint, then clearcoated the chassis. 

 

 

Then, some dust was sprayed over it (Tamiya flat earth, very thin). 

 

 

Engine glued in, exhaust system in place and weathered (for now). 

 

 

Mostly, I weathered the transmission, because that is what will be seen with the cab on. 

 

 

Started dirtying up the chassis. 

 

 

 

And made a start on the wheels. 

 

 

Because the hubs are orange, I decided to go with standard colour wheels. These tyres are from on old salvaged kit which I bought for €5, for the chassis. These tyres are actually old and worn themselves so they fit nicely on this truck.

 

I gave the interior some vague cheap looking '80's grey, it will need dirtying up a little and then it's done. 

 

 

I'll probably spray some desert yellow on it, which always makes for nice dust. 

 

Lots more to do but today went well. 

 

[stevej60]

Fantastic work on show here Jeroen,look forward to more.