Building a Rapid Fire! Finnish Army HQ - Part 6

Supply truck conversion - cheap Ford-Werke V3000 (Pt.5)
Moving onto the chassis. This was perhaps the biggest bit of work because the Pegasus American Army Truck model is a long 6x6 (triple axel) truck - based on the GMC CCKW-352 - while the Ford V3000 is a medium length 2x4 (double axel) chassis.

As you can see from the following photo I had to cut the Pegasus chassis up quite a bit. Part of this was so it would fit into a space I made in the resin Valiant cab and part was because the GMC was a lot taller than the Ford V3000 so there was some trimming of the chassis thickness so it now sits lower.

Above: On the left is the original Pegasus American Army Truck chassis and

on the right is my cut-down version. In the middle you can see the work I have

done on the bottom of the cab and cargo bed.

Another modification was the removal of both the GMC's fuel tank and spare wheel so I could refit them on opposite sides of the chassis. I will also have to make a basic frame on which the chassis will sit, joining it to the cab/cargo bed.

Finally, I had to cut the chassis into two in order to shorten the length a little and to allow me to re-centre the new single rear axel on the cargo bed.

The last part of the chassis conversion is to rebuild my chopped up frame. This will provide the little space I need between the top of the rear wheels...

At this point I decided less was more. Having checked over a great many original photos of wartime V3000s I found that a great many of the commercial Ford based models were bereft of the chassis furniture that the military versions were equipped with. Things like extra 'Jerry can' fuel cages and tool boxes and even the rear mud guards were missing on a lot of the well used trucks. So I stopped here...

The last part of construction will be the cab - adding the windscreens and tidying up some of the joins, etc. I have been putting off the construction of the clear plastic windscreens as I haven't done this before, but I got a good tip for making these over at the Airfix Tribute Forum.

NEXT: THE LAST (CONSTRUCTION) LEG - FINISHING THE CAB.