Space truck! Finished!

[Rocketeer]

Lately I've been watching Netflix' "MST3K: The Gauntlet", and our hero, Jonah, drives a kind of cute little pudgy vehicle, apparently based on a cabover truck cab. It appealed to me, and I wondered whether I could do something of the sort.

In my scrap box I found a Revell 1/48 White truck cab and I set it on my workbench to contemplate for a while. And last night I took it to the bi-weekly Build 'n' Bull and made a pretty good start.

Here are the component parts as they stood this morning:



And mocked up into a vehicle:



It'll have two NEV-1 tanks on each side, probably with rocket engines affixed to their aft ends, and little scrawny chicken-leg landing gear. The "chassis" piece, which is just a styrene box, will get more rounding of its corners to make it match the feel of the White cab better.

The cargo hold was made by wrapping corrugated sheet around a couple bulkheads; I wanted to get a Citroen 2CV van feel to this part:

[Scooke123]

Nice start!

[Rocketeer]

Been building stuff. Here are four legs and feet, and a couple racks for the NEV-1 tanks:

[Rocketeer]

First mockup. Lot of detail work to do yet. Haven't decided where to put rocket nozzles; should it have some underneath for use when taking off and landing?

[Rocketeer]

A quick status report. I've been painting like crazy, and now the Space Truck is (heavily weathered) green. It's also mostly assembled, although I'm waiting for a Mercury 9 to arrive so I'll have four rocket nozzles. After that, a bit more weathering, perhaps. I also have a pretty good idea of what I want to do for a base, so that's next on the agenda.

[Rocketeer]

Just took some snaps of progress on the base. As usual, the base is 3/4 inch plywood, but this time, because I figured the model would be tippy, I drilled some big holes in the underside and filled them with BBs, secured by 5-minute epoxy, to add some weight. The upper surface is 0.040 styrene sheet, with some scribed panel lines. The stand for the model fits into a 1/8" brass square tube socket. I'll be adding some rivets and perhaps a bit more surface detail. The idea is that this will look like a section of some larger vehicle/structure, which the Truck will be tied up to.

Here's the base, drying above my furnace:



Here's the stand for the model, dressed up as an umbilical. It's 3/32" round brass rod, with 3/32" square sections on each end, to key into square sockets in the Truck and base:




And here's a hatch I built to dress up the base a bit. My wife suggested that a spaceman should be peeking out, so I have a Gemini astronaut on order from Shapeways:

[Rocketeer]

The Space Truck is finished! Modified and painted the spaceman yesterday, glued it on, and that was it. Here are some pics:







And here's the album, with a few more pictures:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/150559382 ... 819631244/

[Dr. Brad]

Wow. That’s pretty cool. Nice work!

[tay666]

That turned out great!
cool idea, and nice execution.

[Rocketeer]

Thanks, guys!

[RTBS]

Inspired! Love it.

[ILModels]

That is excellent! The wear and weathering are perfect

[Rocketeer]

... wear and weathering are perfect...

Thanks! I used the hairspray technique to get the chipped paint, and then did a bit of work with Tamiya Weathering Master (oil pastels, I think).

[Scooke123]