I liked the sag, it reminded me of a 5 ton moving truck where I worked as a teen.
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Looking good and also everything looking nice and uniform… lovely building skills.
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@18bravo, well Rob, funny you’d ask. On to trying to make another, more modern civilian Ford pickup. As no such kit exists for this, and as every lumber yard I’ve seen, seems to have plenty of pickups around, well, this is the idea:
Yes - an old AMT 1/32 monster truck kit body from the junk box, converted into something like the truck on the right, less the extra cab .
So far this has required a lot of cutting and filing of the donor kit and donor parts:
Oh, that’s a beauty 
The kit comes with the cab and bed as one piece, so step 1 was to cut off the bed. Then adapt some 1/25 scale remnant window glass from who knows what kit, and on to body work
While still pretty ugly, it’s coming right along. The windows took a several gradual steps of cutting, filling and doing it again, until there was a decent fit. I’ve added backing strips inside the cab to keep them firmly (relatively) in place. Then on to filling in the giant fender openings. As I’ve built a few trucks this went relatively smoothly - clearly some sanding etc to go.
I also scraped down the headlight buckets - the idea here is to insert some thin acetate, with direction and headlights painted on the underside. We’ll see how this goes. I think the kit would have you use decals, but they are long since lost.
It’s raining pretty steadily today and the humidity is said via my phone to be 92%, so not ideal for painting the other builds, so that will wait a few day -
OK, on we go.
Cheers
Nick
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A few more options if you’re looking for more.
MPC did some 1/32 Chevy trucks.
AMT has a 1500
Revell had a Datsun 4x4
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Sadly, I have multiples of all of these.
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Ouch I’m getting scale-dissonance - a 1:32 kit in a 1:35 world? And you’re not shaving the cab down by the necessary 9.375%?? Shocked am I. Just kidding, I once threw a 1:32 plane into a 1:35 dio and it wasn’t detectable mainly because any discrepancy is easily compensated for during photography as I’m sure you already knew.
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@Tank_1812, @18bravo, @Dioramartin, well gents, you have now opened the proverbial can of worms -involving me, and 1/32 scale model pickups, specifically Chevrolets.
Man, I had it bad for a while, wrong scale or not, I purchased and modified a lot of them for a big diorama a long time ago. At the time, I modified them to be not be stock, and you’ll see several sets of 1/35 resin LAV tires/wheels as they were as close as I could find to racing tires. The plan was to build an off-road racing fab shop, and that’s just what I did:
This was my first big dio - and it was indeed big! and how many Chevy’s did I modify? all off them!
The red Chevy above is my favorite. It was the last one I built so by this time I had a pretty good idea of how to actually make them look good -
And the shop was pretty full on too:
It’s a bummer this photo is a bit out of focus, but it remains one of my favorites - this machine shop/engine build area took forever to build! 
It’s a sickness…“my name is Nick and I build scale models”
So, on we go - hopefully this project works out this well!
Cheers
Nick
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OMG. That off road shop is simply superb, in fact, pretty much beyond description.Every detail or area is just just full of so much real life detail … to much for my head to handle ( I love the wall with the spare drive belts hanging from it …) I have been looking at the images for ages and I still keep finding fantastic bits of attention to detail …
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I hadn’t seen this dio before, just jaw dropping in it’s scale and detail. You never cease to amaze Nick!
cheers
Michael
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Yep I can see why that shop photo is a fave, mine too…but then it’s a close race with all the photos following that one. I mean seriously, that last shot?! Did you ever show this dio on ye olde Armorama? I came along around 2017 and I think your desert convoy was the first time I saw your work, but maybe I’m wrong? I’m not sure I can cope with the answer but is this one still in existence?
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Sorry … Gotta repost this…
This just an absolutely amazingly detailed scene. I have seriously been looking at it for 15 minutes or so and I could go on for another 30… Attention to detail and realism is off the chart …
The tool shadow boards, the workbench with the head and block gaskets hanging up… Beautiful work…
Also, the way it’s photographed should also take a huge pat on the back… the open door scenes where the sunlight filters down highlighting some areas and leaving others in shadow… Wow… And the roof girder work…
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Awesome. 
Reminds me of your F-1 diorama.
I know your more of a “purist” but have you thought about 3D printed vehicles.
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That diorama needs to be in a magazine! Truly exceptional attention to details.
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Awesome detailed diorama! The amount of tiny parts and how they’re all integrated and glued must have been time consuming and tedious. I don’t see one glue mark or misplaced brush stroke. That is just freaking amazing how you can the patience to do all of that.
Yes, the model manufacturers don’t really support auto modelers with new releases of the latest pickups, SUVs, cars, and vans in any scale. 3D printing might help, but clear plastic “glass” isn’t included. It’s been like this for decades as most 1/24 auto vehicle models represent around the Year 2000 timeframe, not Model Year 2024… 
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Oh yeah, I loved that machine shop. Do you still have this diorama?
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Amazing detail!
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Hi model builders, thanks, this was quite a project. Again, it’s a sickness…
@Johnnych01, thanks John - as you can see, I was for whatever reason quite possessed with the idea of making this as fully detailed as I could. It was a fun, and time consuming project At the time, real work was very demanding, almost ridiculous. As a result, I grew to be exhausted by my job, screwed up relationships, and did a lot of building!
@cosimodo, thanks Michael, again…I was possessed…
@Dioramartin thanks Tim, as we have discussed, there is really something nice about taking outdoor photos of any project. You (and other on Armorama) probably haven’t seen any of this as it was the last project I did before joining Armorama, in 2012, so I never posted it here. I followed this with another, big shop, but it focused on…trucks too, but military prototypes…way back when the JLTV was something of a distant concept, so I focused on MRAPs, MATV’s and various HMMWVs…again…a good idea??? 
I still have this project but it has taken some damage.
@Tank_1812 good eye Ryan! yes, this is similar but about 3 times bigger!..again, and why???
Thanks for the link. I don’t mind 3d printed parts, so maybe I’ll check out that site. I think I enjoy the unnecessary misery of carving up plastic tho!
@Barney, well, thanks, I appreciate that. No, beyond now this, and previously, a model railroad forum, this hasn’t been widely seen, and now, it’s a very big dust collector!
@Trisaw, hi Peter, thanks! Yes, and yes! this took a long time. A lot of the small detail parts are just random bits from all sorts of left over kit sprues - at this size (of dio) and scale, it almost doesn’t matter what the parts actually are, as they are just helping the background. That said, finding, collecting, painting, weathering and gluing all that junk down is slow going. It’s funny, I remember grouping what I thought were lots of parts for painting, and then seeing how quickly they disappeared in the dio, an almost never ending task, leading to repeating the process several times!
It is a bummer more modern non-military vehicles aren’t made in 1/35, but I suppose I understand why, as I imagine the demand would be pretty low I was shocked to see the Meng F350 - wow! And yes, the window glass is a big hassle. I lucked out carving up the 1/24 glass to make it fit the Ford shown above.
@Seanmcandrews, hi and thanks! Yes, I still have this, but it’s taken some abuse - i managed to do some serious damage to part of the building, and the M1078 out front…serving as a parts truck for other projects!!
@Dave_Brown, thanks!
I don’t mean to seem gratuitous, as this will likely not be seen again, here are a few more images for fun:
A WIP picture above, you can see the scale and mix of materials used. I really liked making this. At the time, I had just sold off my model railroad, as I discovered that I liked making things a lot more than using them - so, out went a big model railroad, aind in came, lots of big dios!
Above you can see the basic approach - sketch up and idea and begin building. As you can see, I changed this by adding a freight elevator…perfect. This never again to be seen feature is in the tower to the right of the door opening…good idea… And, changed parts of the roof, and on an on
The cool thing about a project like this is that as there is no plan per-se, you can build whatever you want - and if it looks bad, you can always tear it apart and try another idea
Ahh…all the building materials!
Some back story on the shop it to get it to look more or less right, I went to visit a few shops located near where I live, and asked them if I could walk around and take some photos. Each shop was really nice - and were ok with me having a look.
This old Tamiya WC was converted into a tow truck - @Dioramartin, and Tim, I wish I’d seen your idea about handling windows when I built this - these have the bright, glowing perimeters!
I included the picture above to show how all this went together - I built up the full wall, then added whatever details I wanted, then installed the whole unit, which is a lot easier than going back and adding parts later -
OK, that’s all for the big race truck shop - thanks for checking it out!
Back to the dio at hand, which as you can guess, has a long way to go!
Cheers
Nick
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Did you ever go back to the shops that let you look around and show them what you created? Even if you only take back photos most places are very appreciative of the work and the input data they provided.
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Nick, you truly have an amazing artistic talent. You have a great eye using the natural light with your photography, perfect shadow casting. It really brings the diorama to life and reality. I hope to someday emulate you and a few others talents for diorama building.
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@Buckeye, Yes, I did - they seemed pretty surprised to see how their shops were able to help -
@Barney, first, thanks very much. And, you’d be surprised how useful natural light can be with photos - for better or worse - if you’ve done something pretty nice they look great. Natural light on the other hand pretty quickly illustrates the areas that didn’t get uniformly weathered, fingerprints and so on. That said, I now almost always take outdoor photos for final images and I think taking them is as much fun as the build -
OK, for today, some updates on the 1/32 scale pickup:
As the donor “kit” is only a body, the junkbox came to the rescue for building up a chassis. This assortment of parts is a bit of a mess on their own, but look ok when pulled together. I spent a lot of time fooling around with the front axle which was widened, then knuckles cut off and rebuilt as posable steering. The rear axle and leafs are from who knows what, so I had to make up hangers and brackets. This was tricky too as the rear diff needed to be clocked so it pointed toward the transfer case. To do this I wound up staggering the height of the brackets and I’m surprised and happy to report that it sits level on all four.
And for scale, you can see it seems it looks ok. I decided on making it a flatbed as the donor bed looks huge, so instead the dually with a (future) flatbed should look something like a Ford F450.
The view above gives a pretty good idea of how the chassis went together, relative to the body
Ouch! that’s a HUGE rear end! (and the diff is offset ) Oh well, take what you can get
The front tires…well, they started as WWII era, which looked way to thin, so, I cut them down the center and added two sheets of .040" and one of .020" sheet to thicken them up. This was a messy, ugly process, but when done, they look about right
I’m pleased with this so far. There’s still some chassis work need, then making up a cab interior, and bed.
Thanks for having a look,
Cheers
Nick
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