I hate you Zebrano!

(Bear with me...) I was just watching Will Wheaton play a game of Dungeons & Dragons with Acquisitions Inc. on YouTube, and the party's magician repeatedly threw terrible saving throws on every one of his turns...This, to me, seemed to be exactly what it was like building this Zebrano YaG-6 resin kit!

Du-oh! God damn you Zebrano!

I hoped with each new stage of the build that the process would go well, but the Gods of Resin peed mightily on me every time!

This stage - the test fitting of all three main truck components (cab, chassis and flatbed) - should have been a walk over. Were this an Italeri or Airfix plastic kit the likelihood that it would have been and all there parts would simply slot together in a very satisfying way. But not with a Zebrano resin kit, on no - dear me no!

Everything is warped.

The chassis is bent through either plain. The guiding track down the bottom of the flatbed that the chassis is supposed to slot into is mis-aligned. The cab has no positive seating points and sits askew on the chassis AND will not sit flat on the chassis anyway. So all I've done this weekend - in the bit of modelling time available to me - is sort out these problems.

What I have had to do is make the means of attaching the parts together more positive by building on better 'slots' using bis of plasticard strips...

This new 'track' helps straighten out the warped chassis and helps it seat the flatbed
better onto the chassis.

You do have to do a lot of dry-fitting and measuring of the relative positions of the three major components to ensure they fit together - roughly - how they should. The lack of 'pin and hole' guides leaves a lot of this work to your judgement so you have to constantly be comparing the kit's composition to reference photos.

In this case the main reference point was that the centre of the rear wheels was suppose to be in line with the mid-point between the second and third flatbed support spars. Everything else worked around this.

However, there was a lot of 'shoving and pushing' as each part jostled for 'best position', so the end result is a compromise. Everything is nearly in the correct position - but nothing actually is!

By using small bits of plastic as wedges I straightened up the alignment of the flatbed and cab along the chassis - which wanted to bend in both the vertical and horizontal - and all the parts sort of look straight now.

I had to drill holes through the chassis into the cab and glue plastic 'pins' into the cab. This helped the cab 'clip' into position on the chassis and keeps it sitting straight. (And by the way - I still have to make a new spare wheel to fit on the bottom of the flatbed!)

Ah well. I can't believe that one simple job turned into a post on it's own. But there you go...I give you Zebrano models. Sheesh!