On the workbench tonight is a custom rollback tow truck, with the two donors that make up it. Now that I know this works, they are going to be hacked up to make a second one.
As I mentioned when I posted about these Matchbox tow trucks a couple weeks ago, they are really obviously undersized for 1:64 scale, and while I am not scale obsessive, they just look wrong next to the correctly scaled stuff.
It occurred to me the other day that making them look like they were supposed to be a smaller truck would solve this problem pretty well. I lucked into a couple of the Matchbox F350 Construction trucks tonight, so I got to cutting.
The whole thing fits together surprisingly well. On the Ford side I simply cut the chassis off flush with the back of the cab, and removed everything that stuck down below the running boards. On the rollback side, once I cut off the cab I just had to widen the axle slot in the chassis to allow the axle to sit 1-2mm further forward, and notch the battery box another 1-2mm to clear the back cab corner. The bed now doesn’t slide completely forward by that amount, but it isn’t noticeable.
I’ve tossed the cabs in the “to be paint stripped pile” and once they are stripped and painted I’ll do final assembly. I need to figure out the best way to attach the stacked plastic bases together, as that glue joint will take much of the weight of the diecast and any load(I used hot glue for the test-assembly).