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Cab construction
Once the main chassis compenents have been fitted we move onto the cab construction. As is often the case with truck and car builds we are faced with the dilemma of how to approach painting the interior. Unfortunately, Zvezda have not helped us with this task! They have designed the cab roof to join just behind the screen where no joint on the real vehicle (so far as I could determine) was present. Filling the joint after painting the interior would not be my preferred plan of attack so I figured that issue would need to be addressed first.
I have already built the Zvezda L4500S kit with the wooden cab and found a fair amount of parts on this kit are identical. You got both the metal and wooden cab with that kit and as I had already built up this cab previously, I employed the same method of construction with this one.
To be able to get decent access to paint the cab interior and add the instrument decals the cab ideally needs to be built in two halves. I preferred to leave the screen and all the cab windows off rather than mask them, until after the cab is painted.
I started the cab construction by building up the rear section, cementing the floor and rear panel together. I left off both the seat and seat back until both parts had cured to avoid any potential interference. There are a couple of tabs on the inside of the rear panel to line up to the floor and it is important to make sure the lower points of the rear panel sit at the same height as the bottom of the floor moulding. I found out in my earlier build this positioning is crucial for getting the best overall alignment of the cab, and critical if building the cab with the doors closed.
I found the main fit issue with the whole cab assembly concerns the doors. They are a little oversized and do require some trimming to sit well if placing them in the closed position. The door parts are connected to the sprue gate right over the intersection of both outer skin and inner body making clean up far more of a challenge than it should be!
If you wish to model the kit with the cab doors closed I would recommended dry fitting them before both the front and rear assemblies of the cab are fixed permanently. I found a great deal of trimming and test fitting was required to the doors before all cab components fitted precisely.
In step 22 you are to attach the steering wheel, steering box and steering column at the same time as you add the completed cab assembly. The steering wheel can easily be fitted to the column as the cab roof part is still shown unattached. This also allows you to complete the steering link assembly in step 22
Keeping my cab in two parts meant I had to adopt a different solution. I ended up cutting the steering column just above the steering box. I then drilled both pieces and inserted a piece of copper wire in the upper half so they could be aligned when the time came.
It is worth noting the engine assembly will NOT locate in the engine bay after the cab assembly is fitted to the chassis. So, if you wish to paint the engine separately you will have to add the cab assembly after it.
Radiator, engine panels & fenders
In my last L4500S build I displayed the vehicle with the bonnet completely removed, but this time I plan on only removing the top half of the driver’s side panel. It is worth mentioning at this point that the front mud gaurds (fenders) locate to three different parts; the chassis, cab floor, and engine side panels. So they all need to be aligned well to fit as they should.
The instructions have you add the fenders to both the chassis and cab floor after the cab is fitted to the chassis. As I had left my cab assembly seperate the bonnet, engine side panels, and the radiator housing assembly could be fixed to the front portion of the cab.
Parts (in grey) added from the parts bin to simulate the bulkhead strenthening rib and fluid reservoir
Attaching the strengthening bar to the underside of the bonnet first, I then cemented it to the engine side of the bulkhead. Once dry, I added both engine side panels and finally the radiator housing, making sure that all parts lined up. I then test fitted the engine to the chassis and added this new sub-assembly to check for any clearance issues.
To ensure a nice square fit of the engine onto the chassis pay particular attention to both front and rear fixing points. There are location slots, but I garuntee they will require widening a little. This is a particularly important as if the engine sits too high it will interfere with the cab assembly.
With the engine snugly located in the engine bay the front cab assembly was test fitted to the chassis. As with the previous L4500S kit I built a sliver of plastic had to be removed to get a perfect fit To get the cab to fit on to it's two forward location brackets on my build a little plastic needed sanding off both the tab at the rear of the engine block and also the top of the gearbox.
Happy that all was well so far and that the steering column located into the steering box, I could now position the front fenders to the chassis. The cut out for the steering box outer arm on the driver’s side impeded a good fender alignment so required widening on my kit. Once addressed it made positioning them far easier.
Cab and cargo bed test fitted onto chassis
Engine detail added with copper pipe and rubber hosing
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