Freightliner FLD WIP

I built the base chassis 25 years ago. Checking it I don't see any major alignment issues. Had to clean many moulding lines - past me was a bit sloppy. I decided to move the stacks behind the sleeper so I scratch-built new stack mounts using Plastruct strips, 1mm brass rod, brass stripes from the fret of a used PE set and various Meng bolts 

The front axle looks acceptable. I think that it is mounted at very slight angle to the chassis but I don't think (hope) this will cause major issues 

Like many Italeri trucks this model also suffers from the floating sleeper bunk syndrome. I cured it with some 0.5mm plastic card. 

The engine is Cummins NTC from the FLC kit that was modified a little to look more like a Cummins N14. Checking some on-line photos shows that these engines are usually painted in some dark grey color so I used Number5 Anthracite Grey (RAL7016). The belts were painted with a black POSCA marker. I got the filters painted too but ran out of bench time 

I want to use Zero Paints Silver for this model so I tried it first on the inside of the air-foil, hood and side-skirts. Had some trouble airbrushing it - It seems to be too thick, had to use very high pressure (over 30PSI, usually I use around 10-15 PSI) and it came out a bit gritty. Used Tamiya 3000 grit sponge to fix this but will probably thin the paint a little in the future 

The rear wheels from the Moebius set. Cleaning the mounting locations caused some damaged to the chrome which I painted with Molotow chrome. Not a perfect match but close enough. I let them dry for several week before airbrushing them with Valllejo Satin varnish. The front tire is from the kit and the rear is a rear super single tire from the Moebius set 

There is a major difference is diameter between the kit tires (about 42.7mm) and the Moebius tires (about 40.3mm). At first I hoped to use the kit tires for the steering wheels but I think I will have to use to wheels from the Moebius set otherwise the truck will sit in a angle. The lettering on Moebius tire reads "455/55 R22.5" and on the Italeri tire "12.00 R20" 

The hood didn't fit at all. Test fitting it left over a 1mm gap between it and the cab. To try and improve the fit I enlarged the mounting holes, filed the hood mounts (red arrow) and the radiator mounts on the chassis and extended the hood mounts with 1.3mm thick piece of plastic I implanted in them (blue arrow)