1950 Kenworth Needlenose

[Espeefan]

Here's a new project I'm going to start building. It's a 1950 Kenworth needlenose. I figured I'd mix it up a little, and work on this one, in between working on my Wedico Peterbilt, which has been slow going. This build should go a little quicker, for a handful of reasons, but it will not be without it's own set of challenges.



To start with, it's a 1/16 scale model, which means it's quite a bit smaller then my Wedico Peterbilt, and a lot smaller then a Tamiya. I took a chance when I bought the cab. I wasn't sure just how much smaller it would be. The plan was to fit it to a Wedico chassis, but I knew it wasn't going to be a simple bolt on affair.









I borrowed the chassis of my Peterbilt, just for some mock up. Yup, it's not going to fit that easily! Both the front driven and non-driven axles are to wide for the cab. The chassis is also to wide. The cab doesn't even sit down properly, but if it did, the rear axles would fit the width of the cab pretty decent, even if they are a little wide also. Hmm, what to do.



A driven front axle is out of the question, and I don't want this build to get to complicated, so I thought I'd try the lift axle I built for my Peterbilt, under the cab. I narrowed this axle up quite some time ago, and low and behold, it fits the cab very nicely. Don't mind the super singles. They won't be staying for this build.





A little more playing around to figure out if the ride height will be acceptable, and if the tires are close to the right size. I thought at this point there was a good chance it would work all right, so I went ahead and built a mock up narrow width chassis to really get an idea for what this project might take.





I had some spare parts laying around, and figured I might as well use them. An Osswald front suspension I had on the bench, designed for the Wedico, ended up fitting well. I machined my own front cross member to tie a set of blank frame rails togther too. I have to say it looks promising at this point, but there is still much more to figure out. We'll see how the rest of it comes together.