Steyr comments

Hi Paul

thanks for the comments, I'm also painting some more figures for the scene at present.

I would recommend the Steyr kit, though it has a couple of things to look out for.

The hardest part of this build is fitting the cab parts together. You need to have the doors ready to place in, to get the shape of the cab right, and the doors still need a light sand to fit in correctly. Also filling and sanding needed where the cab roof meets the front windscreen.

The bonnet and mudguards should be assembled as a separate unit, no issues with them, though take note of previous comments re adding a tiny strip of plastic between the rear of the bonnet and the cab firewall. Bear in mind that 0.3 of a millimetre equates to more than 21cm in the real world, so it will be barely noticeable anyway, and will require the most minimal adjustment for position of the front axle.

The kit also has no gear or brake handles in the cab, the real one has 4 floor mounted levers, I made some from wire, and small round knobs were attached (that came from the inside of a water filter).

Other minor changes are a replacement of the Notek light and its mount from the spares box and a piece of wire, replacment of door handles with filed and bent wire, & replacement of spare tyre holder with a strip of styrene.

I also carefully countersunk a hollow on the front of the bonnet, as this is not properly moulded on the kit, and made a 'T' shaped hood release to place in it, from stretched sprue.

The rear differential is cast very flat, I found it hard to find any good references on the web to check how it should look, its virtually unseen anyway.

The drive shafts were also too short, but these were replaced with stretched sprue.

Window wipers courtesy of Ilian Filipov who etches exquisite sets, so fine that the blades can be adjusted on the wiper arm, to make them properly 3 dimensional.

I also replaced the running boards on each side of the cab with evergreen card and bent wire, as the kit supplied parts looked a little thick.

I just now realise I also need to make wire width markers to affix to the front bumper, the kit ones were not particularly well cast, and one got damaged in the kit in the mail (the box arrived flattened, which always seems to happen with everything that comes by mail from Germany, yet stuff mailed from any other country always arrives in perfect condition).

I think that is everything I found & did. It may look like quite a list but its up to the individual how they build the kit & what I did replace or add was mostly quickly and easily done.

cheers
Neil