| Some
time ago I had the opportunity to buy a AMT 1923 Ford Model T kit on
eBay for only $ 6.00. A rare kit because of the unusual transfers. I
couldn't resist so I bought it. After fiddling around with it in my mind for a few days I noticed a picture of a Ford Model TT Dump Truck. And I suddenly realized that that could be a great addition for my Ford Model T project. I have to mention that I also had a body of an AMT Model T Coupe which was very bad (and cheap..). It had actually holes in the body (see picture), but I managed to restore it but had no idea what to do with it. After some consideration I decided to transform the Coupe body to a 2-door closed cab which was perfect for the dump truck. Next thing to do was to modify the T chassis to TT chassis. The normal T chassis has a 100 inch wheelbase and the TT has a 124 inch wheelbase so I had to lengthen the chassis with 1.9cm. From the fender assembly the rear fenders, part of the running board and bodywork were removed. The dump section was completely built from scratch and the design is as close as I could get to an old style dump truck with old style reinforcements on both sides. I think I got it pretty right. And now for the most difficult part: how the heck did an early dump truck work? I figured out that an expensive hydraulic system (or something like that) wouldn't make sense on a cheap Ford Truck so I decided to do some investigation an eventually found a few pictures of manually operated dump trucks. Right, sooo... how to make a fully functional 1/24 scale manually operated dump truck...? Well, after a week of thinking ( I was for a short period an engineer, car designer, mechanic, whatever...) and three days of construction I had the perfect working solution. It was great fun, but probably one of the most difficult conversions I've made until that time. Anyhow, here are the pictures of the finished 'official' 1925 Ford Model TT "Green Acres Construction Co." Dump Truck. |
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