By:  Steve McGuire

January 3, 2004

       Photo: Yonkers FF James Mingst

The first thing that has to be done for any good kitbash project is research. I gathered a good amount of photographs of this truck and its sister from Google searches, and from the YFD website, http://www.yfd.org. Smeal’s site, http://www.smeal.com, also yielded some useful information.

What got me started on this rig was that the old Road Champs “ladder truck” cabs, while crude by Code 3 standards, are actually modeled after HME 1871 cabs. The LTI ladder, fitted to the Code 3 ALF rear mounts, is also fairly close to the Smeal aerial. Both parts can be reworked into very presentable and accurate components of this particular rig. In the case of the Road Champs cab, only the front and part of the roof remains. The side panels are completely new. I did something similar with an Ertl Pierce cab. For this, I used a Dremel rotary tool with a Flex-shaft attachment and a new cutting wheel.

The Donor: A Road Champs DC Ladder (1994)

After surgery: The remnant of the HME-like cab.

Luckily for me, HME was courteous enough to place very nice scale drawings of their cab offerings right on their website. They were also nice enough to put them in a variety of formats, so almost anyone can view and print them. I located the correct cab for this project, and used AutoCAD to open it, modify it, then save it to my computer as new drawing:

Part of HME outline drawing for 1871 low profile chassis.
click on Photo to Enlarge

Now, you don’t need AutoCAD to do this. There are plenty of dimensions on these drawings (which I removed here), and you can lay it out to scale using a paper and pencil.  Once I had the outline drawing cleaned up, I made scale templates:

These are a little fuzzy, but you get the idea. Notice that the corners of the windows have drill patterns. This is important when you are ready to cut you pattern. I printed this out on plain paper first, then cut the shapes out neatly so I could test-fit them.
 

Test fit of the paper templates. The rear part of the HME roof has been cut away

Once I was satisfied the templates fit properly, I loaded a sheet of 8-1/2 x 11 self-adhesive label paper into my printer. This is just like a shipping label, but it’s a full sized sheet. I bought a pack of twenty in Office Depot, and they have come in very handy. After printing my pattern, I peel it off and affix it to a sheet of plastic, in this case .03 ABS sheet, from Plastruct, http://www.plastruct.com.

You will need a good straight edge (I use a 6” machinist’s ruler) and an X-Acto knife (No.11) with a NEW blade. I think lots of guys cheap out on this, and use the same blade that came with the knife, over and over again. WRONG!!!! These blades dull after just a few cuts so change them frequently or you will ruin your project. I mentioned drill patterns before. You can see them clearly in the picture above. This particular cab has radial corners on the windows, and it is nearly impossible to neatly “carve” these with a knife. Instead, I used a pin vise and Dremel drill bits, then carefully drilled out each of the holes. Once the holes are in, you make firm, but not too deep cuts with the X-acto knife along the window edges where they are marked. After that, you will make deeper cuts from corner to corner (“X”). The idea is to score the plastic, not cut it, and then punch out the shapes. For the door outline, a very lightly scored it with the knife. After I removed the paper, I followed those lines with a panel-scribing tool. You will wind up with some excess and ragged edges. Use an emery board (or nail file) to clean these edges up. I take one and cut it in half lengthwise. This will allow you to work it into tight spaces. The photos below show the “cleaned-up” panels temporarily fitted to the cab.
 

Left and right: The finished side panels fitted into the cab remnants. A new raised roof section has also been started.

There is still A LOT to do on this model. It will take months to complete, and every project involves a certain amount of trial and error. But that’s what makes it fun, right? It may be a little more accurate to call this one a scratch-build rather than a kitbash, but I hope that I can pass along a few tricks that even the rawest beginner can use. You need not spend a ton of money, but you do need to spend plenty of time. Thanks for reading, and until next time, stay safe.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |  Part 4