The kit contains parts to show the side door open.
The engine access doors are separate as well.
Actual.
You only need to add the prop rod on the center section.
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Gino covered it. I will add Chris (YouTube builder) has a building/painting style that many here would not be fans of. He does have lots of built kits on the shelf which works for him and his channel. I find most of his builds entertaining to watch.
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Thanks guys, I’ve been looking at the parts and from watching the video this kit is going to require some care to get everything lined up properly. I noticed in the video he built the body first and then just sleeved it over the chassis when he got done. the instructions have you build everything and then put it together at the end which makes no sense in regards to painting…
I think he added the engine bay doors and the front door so the body would be sturdy enough to sleeve over the lower section, but I don’t want those areas closed, so I’m going to have to find a different solution…
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You can still slide the body over the interior and frame/lower parts with the side door and engine doors open. It is pretty sturdy. Keeping them separate is probably the best way yo paint the body.
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No build log? 
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You could temporarily tape the doors on to fit the body, then untape them to attach in the open position…
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Thank for suggesting this, and I WAS able to sleeve the body over the top even while leaving the front door posable…after painting all the interior…so I’m an armor guy, mostly Allied WW2 stuff and I don’t normally do vehicles but this one was a commission for someone that drove one for a small line after these buses had been retired by greyhound. I guess a bunch of them were auctioned off to small cities an used for a variety of different things after their peak service with Greyhound…Anyways the gentleman that I built it for drove one in the late 1960s well after the Silversides heyday…I didn’t have decals and he didn’t have much information to give me in regards to decals other than the overall color scheme which was green and white…his small line that he worked for I was unable to find any information on that either…but he was super happy with the bus and just seeing him an 88 year old man acting like a little kid on Christmas opening a new toy was awesome and well worth the work I put into it…
As for Sleeving the body over the top, I think it’s the best way to build this if you don’t want ugly seems all over the place, BUT the gentleman in the video doesn’t tell you that you have to shave off the ledges that the seats mount up to on the inside wall of the bus, otherwise you won’t be able to dry fit take it off and put it back on etc…
So the seats only have the inside leg that runs down the middle isle of the bus for support if you remove the ledges where the sides are supposed to butt up to them…I fixed this problem by making support legs out of styrene tubing and placing them in the very opposite corner of the seat where they were completely invisible thru the windows or thru the front door once the model was completely glued together at the end…
The interior featured a lot more work than I originally anticipated doing and definitely more than the fella in the video did on his…grey floor with black matting down the Isle and front steps, light brown seats with silver highlights for handles and the beige headrest covers that those seats had, then the interior lighting and the drivers compartment with all of it’s gauges, silver highlights, beige paint and brown leather highlights, it was super fun to detail this thing, I realize I probably could’ve skipped a lot of it as some of it you can’t truly appreciate without removing the body and I glued the body on it…
Once built the model is impressive size wise, I’d say about a foot long chunky beautiful bus…areas to be careful on this is that the wheels have tiny contact points to the suspension parts and the bus ends up being a heavy model once it’s all done, it’s a lot of plastic and Roden didn’t make sturdy in the connection points to the wheels…so I’m worried that the gentleman that has the one I build I worry that the tires will eventually snap off once it’s been on the shelf for a while, there’s just not that much there to hold them in place, I reinforced those areas as best as I could but if I build another one of these for myself, which I plan to…I will be more pro-active reinforcing the suspension stuff before I build it all up…
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The tires are molded onto the wheels so that can be a pain to paint as no wheel masks are provided in the kit…Guys, the engine bay is a delight! it’s like a separate little kit all in of itself and it was so much fun to paint that gorgeous L-71 Detroit Diesel, the transmission is there, air filters, radiator, and all sorts of little gadgets like fuel filters and pumps etc…there is a lot of information available to detail this thing and color everything the way it should be painted…mounting it on the bus should be one of the last steps when putting everything together…I learned that the best way is to build it paint it then glue it to the support/engine mount parts, THEN at that point once the firewall and all that stuff is painted you can glue everything together then and then if you want to add even more cables and wires etc you can take it up another couple notches…I left he rear doors removable and even tho they open independently in real life, I decided to glue the three parts together and just snap them on and snap them off when you want to see the engine compartment…
I can’t recommend this model enough, it’s an impressive model once it’s complete, I do recommend that it is displayed with a simple yet elegant jig in the middle to keep it off of it’s wheels, think like those bases that guys build to display their airplanes in flight…that’s something that I plan to build for mine that I didn’t have time to do for the commission. either way I still plan to reinforce the heck out for he connection points to the wheels…I have my own on order now and will hopefully build that within the next year before I forget everything I learned from the first build…
I’ll probably post some images of that one once I get that project going…
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