DAF 2800 NTT

Very interesting! Those truck accessories always have so many cool parts. I've never built a semi truck but I have 2 in my stash for the right time.

I built a couple about 20 years ago, but that was when I brush painted everything and did no detail whatsoever

Good choice Les.

Ooooooo, I like where this COULD go. I do want to build a semi one day, one day. She'll be right mate. egyptian

Well it's been a while since I've been online but I've not wasted but not wasted the time (got wasted a few times but not wasted time, lol). I've not really been very good at taking pics for this build but the chassis for the truck is moving on and shouls be painted soon, and the crane is damnn near done, just needing some more dirtying up. I should note that this kit has more warps than star trek and getting paint to look this bad is only easy when you dont want it, lol

Yes that thing is cool nice job so far

This build was going quite well until I got to the body, when one missing part (the passenger door)led to a complete change of direction. So it will no longer be a big rig. and instead a sorta building site/drilling/scrappy yard dog. I scratch built a 2 part bed for it from some extra parts (after dechroming) that were in the crane kit. I also had some problems with both tins of red primer turning to thinners half way through no matter how much I shook them up. All that is left to do now is lights, glass and exhaust but I'm probably going to leave the glass clean as I have nothing to dirty them with. I added some steps and grab handles to the beds I made, making sure there was an easy way for getting from the cab to the bed. To get the subtle rust showing through the paint I did the top coats before the red primer was fully dried, and used a very light orange coat before the yellow which again wasn't allowed to fully dry. I wont be gluing the cab down as I have a help request on a uk model truck forum so hopefully a door will turn up.

WOW!! This is just coming along great Les.

With the arrival today of a complete spare cab I spent a bit of time dismantling it. I only needed the door but the grille on the spare had the decals and lights (for some reason my kits didn't have light molded in the grille) so I carefully removed them from both and swapped them around. I also used the dash out of the spare as it had the decals on it too, and looked much better than my efforts at adding bezels. I'm not going to repaint the new door as I think it ties in well with the worn look of the rest, though some rust might be added for effect. The chances are high that the remains of the spare cab will be used as a load too, so nothing will go to waste.

That looks real nice Les, more great work mate.

The tyres were simple to weather since they're rubber. I just put them in the pile of filler and other dust on my bench, roll them about in my hand (any direction, eg. side to side, since there is a lot of give in the rubber tyres) and voila, job done. It doesn't work on vinyl tyres this way and I havent tried it on the soft resin tyres. For different colours of dirt I would add ground down hard pastels to the dust

I've used the pastels before when weathering and you're right...............they work well. Thanks for the info on the filler. That's a great idea.