It's been a while since I posted any new progress, since I usually give the indoor hobbies the summer off. But I did get in the mood to bonk on some steel, and made a front bumper from 3/8x1" steel bar.
Welded it thusly:
Then ground a contour in the lower edge of it. Then recesses were milled into it for mounting purposes, plus a step for the driver to get in the cab.
Then it was mounted.
Now attention could be given to the deck and such. Sheet styrene was used to fill in the rest of the deck. Since it has a big steel bumper, I decided magnets could be used to hold the deck down, and make for easy removal. Theyre the dark gray items
The grills were made from some venting holes on an old DVD player that was discarded. This engine hood has since been moved back some (still working on that). Note that there is a lifted section in the middle of the deck behind the engine. That is the counterweight lifting mechanism, in it's raised position. It lifts the counterweights so that the upper unit can swing in under them. Then the platform lowers, setting them on the upper.
The headlights are just drawn on with a pen for now, they'll be replaced with scale model ones.
Other progress not visible on camera includes getting a 6 channel transmitter on eBay for a song, and getting it dialed in, replacing the need for the 2 radios I was using to run the upper unit. Also, the boom attaching pins were corroding and making it very hard to move them, so I made all new ones fron stainless steel. A few other adjustments were done in the lifting platform, now everything is working smoothly. I'm exited to be moving forward on this again, and I'll be focusing on the cosmetic scale aspect of it, cabs, deck, etc. I'll be posting as new progress is made. Thanks for looking. Dan