Well guys,
It’s been a while since I last posted anything. I took off on a pretty out there diorama (that is still not finished!!), then as covid began to calm down, work came on strong. Nonetheless, I have built a few car and truck kits, but this one really stands out.
It’s a pretty highly modified 1941 Chevrolet Canopy Express. As those of you Chevy enthusiasts likely know, there is no such kit, so I got after making one.
So what is this? Well, some time ago, I took a picture of the truck on the lower right - I’d never seen anything like it, and after some research, I discovered these neat little rigs were built in the mid thirties and forties, for use by neighborhood green grocers and so on - while talking with my dad about the truck he said that as a boy living in San Francisco during world war II, scavengers driving these would come through his neighborhood calling out “bottles, cans, and rags!” - as this was wartime, all part of the recycling effort.
Ok, back to the project - I really liked the looks of this and decided to build on, and to make it a four wheel drive - naturally - lol. The white kit is indeed a 1941 chevy pickup (I think it was the Revell kit) and the yellow part is from a 1939 Ford panel delivery. So, I built up my confidence and went about cutting, gluing, filing and sanding.
At the time, I watched several videos of some pretty neat rock crawler Jeeps and trucks - and as I paid attention, realized they were not running on leaf springs, and instead, long travel four link setups front and rear - AWESOME! So, a guy decided it would be fun to make the four link setup, and while not operable per se, it is posable - which means the axles flex and front steering is also posbale. No, I wasn’t in the mood to figure out spring rates - I drew the line there - lol
Oh, and many of these guys run Chevrolet LS3 engines - New Process transfer case with “doublers” whish are like underdrives, and trussed Dana 60 axles - perfect, lots of scratch building there.
Ok - enough rambling - back to the build:
This project was a lot of fun - and a great challenge. In the last picture, you can see what I meant by posable suspension - funny enough, when this was done, I did not use those tires - Matt from the forums 3d printed up some real beauties for this -
And I just kept building…
I like the way the engine turned out, but, it’s hard to see - of course, lol
And the paint - trusty Vallejo acrylic and their metal colors. I scraped off all the “kit” chrome, and used Vallejo’s instead - sort of funny, I never get these results on an F1! 
As I was on a bit of roll, I decided this needed a nice base for photos:
While I was really focused on my dio project, I began fooling around with ways to get better pictures - in this case, built a little base and took lots of outdoor photos. Then went into something called “Photoscape” which lets you crop images and even make cutouts - then, found good background pictures and imposed the project over them - and here you have it!
I started doing the same on the Italeri 1/24 Toyota BF44, converting it to an FJ45 - the pickup, with the same suspension - but - ran out of energy!
Thanks for having a look -
Cheers
Nick
