Gaz 55 Ambulance - Part 3

Today I moved from the construction the driver's cab to assembling the ambulance enclosure. This looks a pretty simple construction of four walls, a roof and a floor but I want to modify it slightly in light of some reference material I've found...

Note that two of the three rear windows have either been boarded up or they have integral shutters which can be closed. I have checked various other sources and this configuration is quite widespread (one of the two windows on the rear doors is also similarly covered).

Find out more here: Engines of The Red Army in WW2 - Gaz 55 Ambulance

(I also noticed that the roof on these vehicles seems to be painted or covered with a gray material. But, I will look into this a little later.)

So, first job was to cover the closed panels...

Now, I had to think about how would make the 'white' semi-opaque windows. I decided to fill these empty panels with some very thin white plasticard and cover these with an even thinner rectangle of transparent plastic over the top of it to give it a glass-like look.

But, before I installed these panel windows I thought it easier to spray the base green colour first as trying to paint the window sills after the windows are fitted would be a pain. I would then mask out the windows before continuing the painting of the ambulance.

Preparatory base coat done on the rear bodywork, it's time to try and fit all the rest of the body components together. Now, this is where things started to go a little awry!

First of all, the ambulance body parts don't actually fit all that snugly, not horrendously bad - but not terribly well either. But, when you try and put the assembled ambulance body onto the chassis and join it to the driver's cab, you have to wonder if they are part of the same kit.

In actual fact, of course, they are not (exactly) part of the same kit, as the grey ambulance body sprue is a separate addition to the green Gaz truck sprues - designed and manufactured as an after-thought. So - long story short - you will end up having to do a lot of work to get all the vehicle's major parts - chassis, front upper body and rear upper body - to fit together like they should.

As you can see, the Gaz 55's cab merges seamlessly into the ambulance body.
Unlike my PST Gaz 55 model which is - funnily enough - a bit of a car crash.

And this is where I will leave things...

As you can see from the above picture, I will have to play with all the parts and move things around - and possibly file and trim bits here and there - to get the ambulance body to mate seamlessly with the cab section. Oh, joy!