Andy T's Italeri 1/24 "Australian Truck"

[Mickc1440]

Hope you find the book useful Andy, he certainly covers plenty of different builds

[Lee Drennen]

I see what you mean about the front axle Lee. Definitely something I'll check before going much further. Thanks.

Your welcome Andy have you thought of a paint scheme yet or is it too early.

[Lee Drennen]

Hope you find the book useful Andy, he certainly covers plenty of different builds

Mick I’ve never seen that book before might have to check it out.

[Andy T]

Your welcome Andy have you thought of a paint scheme yet or is it too early.

I mentioned two options in the first post but I'm still undecided. The custom scheme is winning for now, and having spent all this time stripping the chrome (I'm still at it!) I may as well respray it in something fancy.

I'm still in two minds about the colour scheme. First is the iconic blue & yellow livery of Roads Trains of Australia (RTA). The other is more complex, basically as if an owner/operator had customised his truck with a fancy paint scheme and airbrush work. The second option definitely gives a higher chance of failure but I guess if it goes wrong I can always strip it and go with the simpler design.

I've been doing a few test with candy & pearl blues, but nothing's set in stone.

[Lee Drennen]

I mentioned two options in the first post but I'm still undecided. The custom scheme is winning for now, and having spent all this time stripping the chrome (I'm still at it!) I may as well respray it in something fancy.




I've been doing a few test with candy & pearl blues, but nothing's set in stone.

Ok if you decide to stripe it in decals there’s a good source I use called Model Truckin Decals his name is Jerry and has a wide variety of decal stripes for trucks on his website. You can use just about any in his stripe line if you want and mix and match colors. There water slide and good to work with.

[Andy T]

Cheers Lee, I'll have a look.

To be honest I'll probably paint any stripes but so far I've been unable to find decals for the "airbrush artwork" I'd like to include. I've looked into printing my own but that's a faff about :smiling5:

[Andy T]

A bodywork kind of day today. I hate injector marks with a passion and ignore them wherever possible, but sometimes they need to be dealt with. Also the manufacturer thought it would be a good idea to split the roof in two. Much of the joint is obscured by marker lights etc but I just couldn't leave it.

The sleeper has some large seams but given the line of rivets I figured if I could make a decent job of the joint I could leave it as a panel line.









Initially the way the bonnet overlapped the body had me flapping a bit but it seems that's just how they are.

I've started to jazz up the inside too. I've seen some of these with quilted panels and whilst I couldn't find a great way of replicating that I figured some diamond plate, painted in the right way, might look passable. I'm planning to carry that theme on through the interior where I can.

[Lee Drennen]

the bonnet overlapped

Andy once you get the fire wall and the interior in and put it on the cab mount the hood should rest even with the cab cowling just in front of the air vent. I hope lol.

[Guest]

Taking a seat please Andy.
Looks a beast, the paint work won't be a problem to you Andy .
Looking fwd to seeing what you come up with .

[Andy T]

Andy once you get the fire wall and the interior in and put it on the cab mount the hood should rest even with the cab cowling just in front of the air vent. I hope lol.

I'm not so sure. If you watch the video you posted above, about 1 hour in, it shows his fitting the same way.

Maybe the real thing is different but all of the model pictures of these I've seen have the same overlap, so I'm not concerned.

Taking a seat please Andy.
Looks a beast, the paint work won't be a problem to you Andy .
Looking fwd to seeing what you come up with .

Welcome John.
If I go for the ambitious paint job it's going to be a tester for me. Hopefully it looks somewhere near as good as it does in my head :smiling5:

[Lee Drennen]

Maybe the real thing is different

Yes the real one is obviously correct and sits correctly that what I was going by. Guess Italeri got it wrong

[Waspie]

Never having seen one of these beasts built. Your endeavours have whet my appetite so I'll hover about and watch it progressing if I may Andy.

[Andy T]

As Magnus Magnusson might have said - "I've started, so I'll finish"

Before going away on my jollies I got the axles on. Only the tiniest bit of tweaking was needed to get all 10 wheels touching the deck.



The engine and radiator were fitted. I've kept the weathering light as it's the drivers pride and joy but might tweak it further down the line




After the mammoth job of stripping the chrome I repainted certain parts with Alclad chrome. I find it to be not very durable so it's tucked away safely for now




Then after multiple rounds of filling, sanding & priming the bodywork was given a few coats of Zero's coarse silver as a base for further colours. They sat like this for a week while I was away.



Having thought about it over my holiday I decided to scale back the paint scheme a bit, going for an old school custom kind of look.

The sliver stripes were masked out first and a few coats of ProScale Candy Sapphire Blue were applied. This was then masked too and a dark pearl blue was put on the remaining areas.

I won't bore you with all the intermediate pictures but after all the masking was removed a gave it a few coats of GX-100 clear. This is only the first round as I need to sand back the minor steps caused by all that masking, then reclear, so it's far from it's final gloss finish.





The parts will sit like this for a few days to harden up before I proceed.

[Jim R]

Great progress on this beast. I do like the paint job.

[peterairfix]

That engine and chassis is looking nice and the paint looks even better