20mm taliban force (vehicles, minis and scenery) : last update

[sundayhero]

Hi,


THis week end I found 2 cheap (2euros each) diecast Toyota Hilux 4 door pickups in a supermarket. They are marked as 1/57scale, but I found they went pretty well with my 20mm modern miniatures I recently bought.

These pickup are already pretty big in real life (maybe as tall as a medium sized man, I'd say), so I guess it's OK to convert them to add 2 technicals to my insurgent fleet, even if these vehicles are a bit big for this scale, as you can see on the pics, properly based 20mm minis size work visually quite well.

So I decided to strip the paint, and start thinking how I will make them. I'm waiting for some resin truescale technicals from Sandsmodels, so I didn't dediced for now what kind of weapons I'll use on them (for now, the mock up setup is with machin guns).


I also started to convert 2 sandsmodels afghan minis to use as gunners. I already have 2 elhiem gunners (a bit smaller) that I reserve for the true scale technicals I'm waiting for delivery.


In this topic, I'll show you my conversion work in progress. It's my first attempt as modern warfare modelling (and wargaming). I'm also working on french and insurgents modern forces (we'll see in other topics).


On pics, minis are Elhiem (french modern and machine guns), Sandsmodels (afghans). I recommand both ranges, full of character ( I recently discovered 20mm scale, and for me it's really something almost as good looking as 28mm, but almost as cheap as 15mm  )


The first thing I'm thinking about is how make these wheels a bit less fancy. I'll probably remove the wheel spoke with Xacto, and then resculpt something simple with GS.

[Elbows]

Lookin' good.  Would be worthwhile to find a source for better wheels/tires.  Surely some specialty shop somewhere sells just rugged looking wheels tires.  The silly blinged out 36" wheels on those trucks really ruin the look. 

I can't wait to see the finished product!

[sundayhero]

thanks,


I'll find a way to make the wheels look more a worker pickup than a luxury car, don't worry

[sundayhero]

I found some parts in my slotcars wreck, some diecasts wheels someone sent me years ago. Not good for slot cars, but (I hope) perfect for this project. NEVER throw anything  


The best thing is that I have 2 full sets of identical rims. The tires are a bit thin, what do you think ? Maybe I should make my own with greenstuff, but I'm afraid to not make them good enough. I'll see if I have some too hard rubber old slot car tires a bit thicker, maybe. But these thin tires actually help the car to be more height scale accurate...Maybe once I'll put the front wheels in right position, it will appear less thin.

Forget about the bad wheels position (like the huge gap between the front wheels and car body), just a mock up presentation with some metal spacers maintaining everything for the pic.

I'll work on these more seriously tommorow.

[Elbows]

That looks loads better.    You may now continue good sir!  

PS: if the tires come off the new rims, surely something could be used as replacement tires...rubber washers of some sort, or something that could be easily cut to size.  They actually don't look too awful the way they are...but something chunkier wouldn't look bad. 

[grant]

Great looking project! 

[sundayhero]

Thanks,

Tommorow I'll search in my old hard rubber used slot car tires (I repeat : never throw anything  ) and see if I can find something a bit "bulkier" (not sure it's a real existing english word...but I'm french after all   )

[grant]

That's the right word. "Beefier" would be the slang for tires.  Plusieres grandes pneus?    (right words? Wrong masculin/feminin?)

Anyway, again I say: great project!

[sundayhero]

vocabulary and language interlude :

Plusieures : "several" (feminin)
grandes :  "large" (feminin), but can also significate "tall", depanding the context. (that's maybe one of the reminiscence of anglo-saxon influence in our language, words defined by their context, but I'm not a linguist)
un pneu : "a tire" (Masculin).

For tires perhaps "gros" (fat, but also sometimes means "large") would be better. No really french word for "big" (we could say "balèze" but that is not something a librarian would say)

So we could say "un gros pneu" or maybe "un pneu balèze". Google can translate the first one ("a large tire" it says), not the second one (but google translate seems to be better to translate english to french than the opposite, I think).   

End of the interlude 

[YPU]

I really should start to pay more attention to the 20mm cars I am post apocing. Never really gave them any tought. (then again post poc one might loot fancy tires from somewhere)
How do you strip the paint of these things? They look so much better without that thick coat of paint on them!

[sundayhero]

A bath of acetone (a few hours, especially be carefull with this chemical product) was perfect to strip the paint. Of course, I first removed all the plastic parts, I just dipped the metal body only.


I found some old hard rubber tires (tires from 1/64 slot cars wich became too hard to be used for this purpose), perfect ! I'll post pics tonight. This afternoon I'm a bit busy.

[sandsmodels]

looks a great start, if you need more  wheels we can probably supply some if you can tell me the diameter.
thanks
shaun

[jdeleonardis]

Wow, those look really good.  Once stripped, they look perfect for what you are about to do with them.  And, 1/57 my a@#!  They look perfect for 1/72 or 1/76

[sundayhero]

Thanks for the comments and help offer,  

I found some compatible old rubber tyco slot car tires in my slot car wreck, the glue is currently drying. I'll post result later on evening



edit : because of the famous statement "without pics it didn't happened" here 's some sneak pics of the current state of progress, with the new tires :

[sundayhero]

Wheels are glued in place. Tommorow I'll make it stronger with hot glue, then I'll finish the assembly (glasses, chassis). Then the interesting part of the work will start : customizing !


But I also have to repeat the work I already did on the 2nd car...Probably tommorow night.

I hope to be able to add sculpted details during week days, and finally paint (or at least, primer) these cars this week end.