Now that we (the "Royal We") have some idea of what needs attention on this relic, it's time to start it up.
There are big notches in the frame for the cab. Oversized sections of styrene are cut and fit into place. Often it seems like on kits like this either there is no alignment, or way over the top alignment.
Soft, yet brittle. How do they do it? It is much easier to fill the void with an oversized part and then trim down to fit. As you can see the end of the frame broke, this will be fixed.
Test fitting. This is an overlooked process....one must test fit, test fit and...test fit. Especially models that have non-existent engineering. Even Tamiya.
I decided in my finite wisdom to replace the leaf springs rather than fix them. The have very large knock outs on them and look like they were carved from cheese. I only wanted to reuse the hardware for mounting to the frame. I would then make new leaf thingies and the monting hardware to the chassis. (Is that logical? Logic, get thee behind me!) Use a chisel blade and chop off a little at a time. Its just like working with wood...take off a little at a time.
We want to leave the bottom leaf and mounting hardware behind as a basis for the new part. Call it laziness. From a sheet of thick plastic (.125) I cut the inside profile of the reduced kit part and stuck it on with double stick tape. Now that my thin/fragile part had a handle, I can file down properly.
Another view of the reduced part. You can build it all from scratch, but that's not the point of this demo. It's to highlight what can be done to existing kits. In it's commie heart the Toko kit is really a good kit.
The leaf springs are a non-standard width, so I could not use standard stock. I have this very fancy strip cutting tool that I use to cut strips. This Zis has 6 leaf spring units, the two in the front are narrower than the rear four. I always cut many extra than I need. Legos are good for tools, they are square and easy to get.
Use the existing leaf spring to make notes on sizes of each part. I put notes on notecards, this size is easy to work with and use during construction. It's also nerdy and pigeonholes me as one of them anal retentive rivet counting nut cases. what ever.
On most models there are pairs of things. When dealing with pairs, cut/make identical objects at the same time so they match. In this case I am cutting leaf spring sections.
The leafs are gently glued in place with toob glue. I didn't glue the crap out of them, there is always a chance your going to wanna take em' apart. And I did at some point, so this worked out. Then I just glued them back together. At this juncture I am making the mounting hardware. There are a number of blocks and spacers that I carved out of styrene strip. They come in pairs, both should be made at the same time. There is a u-shaped bracket with nuts on the end that holds the axle to the springs. This is made from copper wire because it bends easily.
A lot of nice people on the web took a lot of swell photos of the real Zis truck. I use them to get all the details right. Well, not all the details, that would be crazy, these days I TRY and focus on the important details. Always check for references before you start. It is staggering what is online if you know the right search terms. For really obscure things use Google and Wikipedia to translate into the source language. For example searching "Zis" in cyrillic (ЗиС-5) will get you some cool stuff. Cut and paste into Google. Just watch Rusky sites with lots of flashing banners and women for sale. Those sites often have trojans that wanna hop onto your hard drive. Just be careful. Right, time to get my teeth cleaned. Until next time!
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