Thanks again guys!!!
The custom decals from Mark Wikner arrived. The quality is very good. They are the peel and stick variety. I had LOTS and LOTS of trouble with the RoGator hood decals. Luckily I had lots of extras made up, I needed them! It was almost impossible to get a perfect line. They still are not perfect, but good. I have an extra set if I decide to re-do the hood.... Overall, I'm thrilled! The RoGator can now live up to it's namesake!!! A big first in this 4 month long model building mission.
This rig just SCREAMS AgChem RoGator!!!
The AgChem logo and the new headlight assemblies really set off the front end and grille nicely.
Was even able to replicate the "custom" hood arrow stripe I taped onto the real hood. Gives the rig a little more sportiness!
An oversize decal which I used for the door. Its basically a dealership sticker, like you see on autos.
The liquid measurement gauges turned out fantastic!
Extra AgChem logos were used to spruce up the plastic fenders. These were where the real ones were stuck on. I want to replace the real fenders on mine so they look this nice!
The bulk of the day was spent plumbing the various tanks on the sprayer. First I painted the valves, then ran lines to the appropriate locations. Though all this looks like a big mess of spaghetti, The routing from the pump, pump tree to various output points closely duplicate the same routing on the real rig as can be practically done on a 1/16th model. This satisfies the early project goal of keeping the sprayer plumbing accurate and authentic. Not to brag, but this model could be a teaching aid to illustrate the sprayer plumbing.... :
Anyways, I'm happy. Spent lots of hours, until 1:00AM finishing that project.
Here are a couple of views of the underneath side. I'm thrilled that this mess of lines looks like this, organized chaos and clutter, just like the real machine!
The inductor (used to bottom load chemical into the product tank) is finished, just needs polished.
Spent several hours on the foam marker tank to get it finished up. First thing was to super polish the old tarnished finish. Afterwards, I waxed it to slow the re-oxidation process. Used 5 min epoxy to fill the big hole in the top end, then re-sized it to accomodate the valve. Also constructed the little left/right selenoid valves (11 valves used on yesterday's plumbing project.). Mounted it in the cradle and added the water level indicators to finish up.
All this effort pushes the project closer to the boom fabrication phase. I really didn't think it would have taken two months to detail, paint, and finish detail the chassis! ??? And its still not done, but lots closer. Next up is building a replacement exhaust system since I lost the original, and re-engineering a new cab-to-frame mounting system. With the exception of a few minor tasks, the chassis is almost completely finished up!