Prepping progress on Hard Hat Hauler ... or ...

[gwangiboy]

... wow, that's a lot of putty!



This is what it took to get the frame to look nice and square and not all sunken in. Couple spots that need to be patched yet, but overall the putty work is pretty much done on this, as well as the rest of the parts. Then it'll be primer time. And yes, the other side of the frame looks exactly the same -- all filled with putty.

And soon good ol' Alclad painting time. Here's a blower hood I got recently in a parts box I won off eBay of MPC 1/20 parts. I'm using this in place of the scoop in the kit. I stripped the chrome off the scoop, fixed it up a little, slopped on the gloss black and now its drying and soon to be chromed.



And I've got these other parts waiting to be chromed, although the floor I'm going to use Polished Aluminum, as I loved the look of that when I used it on one of my funny car models. Some frame pieces to be chromed, along with the tie rod (that slightly warped long piece ... curse this soft cheap plastic!) and the rear axle / suspension assembly (I stripped the chrome off the rear axle spring since it needed a lot of work to file out the seams, along with filling a few holes).

[Paul B. Canney]

This is way more effort than I'd ever apply to this. I hope you're doing it up like the original, with DkalDans stars and bars.

[gwangiboy]

Yep, going for the original look,which makes me think of Archie Bunker for some reason ... go figure! I've got Dan's decals for this, a good chunk of inspiration for finally building this -- otherwise, it might have sat around on the shelf for a very long time. Dan's decals already came to the rescue for the Vending Machine and Popcorn Wagon, and this'll be the 3rd old MPC kit now they've "saved" from their recent, more generic looks (there was no way I was about to put decals that said "Drink Soda Pop" on the Vending Machine!! I was almost frantic trying to find repro decals for that one, and thats how I came upon this website in the first place!)