Modelling For Hippos Ishoo Twenty-Ate: Gaslands Pirate Heavy Truck.

Toy cars don't really follow a uniform scale. They're made to a chassis length or box size, which means a Mini is the same length as a Ford F-650. This can be a pain when you want a heavy truck for Gaslands - it's not hard to get a semi to make a war rig, but the rigid chassis trucks in between that and a pickup tend to be shrunk down to fit the standard chassis. There are some out there, but they're harder to find and there's less choice. So the obvious solution is to just build a heavy truck from whatever you have to hand. Here's road pirate captain Grot to show you how!

Note: the best way to do this is by using a drill press with a 3.5mm drill bit. I've been using a 3.15 which is generally fine but sometimes doesn't get all the rivet. You could use a hand held power drill and a vice to hold the car, but you need to be very careful and it will take a lot longer.

Note: It would be a good idea to remove No.2 engine BEFORE doing this. It was not until later than I settled on the design for the engines, and had to hack it off while in place, which was much harder.

Note: the engine and it's rivet are plastic, so a hand drill was more than enough.

Note: I use a scribing tool, but a nail or pin should work just as well.

And there you have it Hippo Fans! It's not that hard to modify Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars like this - cutting them up with a razor saw is the most time consuming part, and of course if you don't have a drill press then drilling the rivets can be a pain.

Now the sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed that this project has left me with a spare '56 Ford F-100 cab. Well, due to another project it just so happens I have a spare BMC Mini chassis...

I present to Ford Mighty Boy! You can see what I mean about the scale here - the mini is one of the shortest of the Hot Wheels cars, but it's certainly not in scale with a Ford F-100 if I can do this with it's chassis.

And here's the heavy truck along side my work in progress war rig. Which has been in progress for about a year because I decided I hated the trailer and it took me a while to find this new one which I think will actually work out.

Anyway, I have a few little car projects to finish up and then it's on to some Gaslands terrain! Involving a F-8E Crusader.