The engine and cab are now firmly attached to the chassis. It was a nerve racking moment making sure it all aligned correctly as there are no actual locating tabs! There are raised runners under the cab floor but nothing to channel the alignment. It basically just locates over the fenders using the arch profiles as a guide.
Because of the way I went about leaving sub-assemblies seperate for painting, I first had to carefully squeeze the cab over the engine. Even my assembly stage decision to split the steering wheel shaft to make this possible, still required a mini mission to jiggle it into place. Then I just had to orientate the cab square on the chassis before final fixing.
The cargo body does have some minor location points to affix it to the chassis legs, so with the rear-most crossbeam sat on the end of the chassis all of the other crossbeams do line up well enough to get a good square alignment.
The cab to chassis joint areas were then carefully weathered as was the
AWD selector rod which could only be added once the cab was in place. I
noticed whilst taking pics that I really should add cab door latches, and just under the cab doors I haven't
finished blending a couple of dark oil streaks, so these will have to be
taken care.
The wheels were weathered separately with oils and pigments and then added to the hubs. The masking fluid added before adding paint to the hub contact areas made this process a much easier task.
Wiper blades still to be added
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