Vietnam Gun Trucks and Low Loaders.

Christmas is a time I usually expect to get loads of extra painting done but find that with the extra social events I actually achieve less. Work has also been quite a lot busier as we have been hit with redundancies, but still keep landing big contracts bringing in extra work. Some evenings I just fall asleep on the couch after dinner and don't feel much like painting.

I'm posting the following photos as I've gotten to a point where I am undecided as to how to finish them off. All the painting has been done and I have put a clear coat on them. When I finished off my M113's I did all the weathering before I clear coated them, but had some of the Tamiya spray paint lift. Hopefully the clear coat should stop this happening this time around.

The Trucks were based on 5 ton Solido Kaiser trucks. They turned out to be 2 1/2 ton trucks made to look like 5 tonner's. I had a Desert and Olive Drab Truck which had different wheels and slight differences in the Cargo body. To make them look the same I converted the wheels from a six wheel configuration to ten wheels using some cheap toy trucks as a basis. I also converted them to Gun-trucks of the earlier patterns based on 2 1/2 tonner's. One is a Convoy lead vehicle and the other a rear vehicle. The weapons and crew came from various sources.

The Low loading trucks are Corgi Mack trucks. I've found some references to them only being used by one US unit in Vietnam which I have bookmarked somewhere. The trailers seem to be a 1950/60's trailer that Corgi made for some earlier truck sets. I intend to paint up a more suitable cargo body for one of the trucks as my Bull Dozer will go on the other. Like the other trucks I found some differences in the two sets I bought. One has hollow backed plastic wheels, while the other has hard plastic solid versions. The rear bogey units (dismountable) have some differences in the metal casting.

One of the truck units had a missing wheel hub which I copied out of plastic card and melted sprue. One also had a missing air stack and both had broken off exhaust pipes. All were replaced with brass rod and plastic card.

The Mutt is by Hobby Master to which I added an M60 and crew. I also repainted the seats.

I have painted more MP's and dismounted Truck crew which just need the bases finishing off.