TW-715 Project

Page 6: Building the Body

The dashboard actually forms an integral part of the front of the body, so assembly starts with that. The dashboard is backed by an aluminum support bracket which is then fastened to a pair of supports forming the top of the front wheel arches as shown on the right.

The geometry of these front brackets is quite complex. The angled supports and cross braces shown form the structural backbone of the front of the truck. However, since all the body panels are also metal, they significantly stiffen the entire assembly once installed.

The machined front of the truck is shown from the back side along with the photo etched grille. The light lenses would normally be installed now, but I am coming back to do the painting and electronics later so I only installed the mounting screws.

This picture shows the machined front face attached to the backing structure. It is starting to look like a truck!

The fender flares on this truck are massive and required me to make a difficult decision. According to the pictures of the real truck, the fender flares are painted the same color as the rest of the vehicle. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to paint the molded flares and get them to actually match. My next option was just to paint them black. I finally decided that since many Jeep's actually have plastic fender flares and the texture of those used on the model was a very good match, I'd just leave them alone in their unpainted condition. I don't feel like they look unfinished at all compared to the rest of the model. I did decide to tap all the holes into the plastic to prevent and chance of splitting. I also used double sided tape to attach the photo etched side vents as shown.

The next step is to install the A-pillars and windshield support. This is a heavy machined component that is actually suitable as a roll bar. Next is the air intake area behind the hood. Oddly, even though the model is clearly provisioned for wipers (probably motorized wipers), they do not come with the kit and are not available as options either.

Now I can install the hardware which will attach the hood. These trapezoidal hinges (left) look just like those on the real truck. On the right you can see the front corner hood latches.

That completes the front end assembly (left). This assembly is amazingly heavy even without the hood installed. When it was placed on the truck (right), I was able to see the compression in the front springs. You can again note how far back the engine is. There is a lot of space up front, and the rear two cylinders are actually tucked under the body. I don't know how accurate this placement is compared to the real vehicle, but it doesn't even have a V-8 so none of the engine bay is particularly representative. It looks good though.

The instructions do not call for installation of the hood until the end, but I went ahead and installed it anyway just to see how it looked. It only takes four cap screws.

When it comes to making strong parts, the designers of this model were not messing around. Take a look at that frame consisting A, B, and C pillars made of machined aluminum. Those green panels fastened over the top are aluminum as well. Considering the fact that both the real truck and the model have removable doors, this structure needs to be solid to protect the occupants.

The picture on the left shows the installation of the sliders which sit just underneath the rocker panel. On the right I've installed the door hinges which is where I ran into one of my only quality problems with the body. One of the 8 hinges was not drilled for a hinge pin. Drilling a 1.5mm hole in a tiny hinge with normal sized tools is very difficult, to say the least. I did manage it though.

I'm quite confident that the rear panel on the real truck interior is not covered with slots like this one is. Those slots were useful though. I was able to run a lot of the rear electrical wires under the bed, through those slots, under the seats, and into the radio equipment in the front.

Did I mention everything on this truck is complicated? Here you can see the parts for a door on the left next to a completed door. That mechanism inside is for the spring loaded latch. You actually rotate the external door handle to turn the aluminum gear which slide the acrylic rack gear connected to the latch. The internal door card has a separate handle and a pocket. These photos show the rear doors.

The front doors are mechanically identical to the rear but they are a bit larger and are more rectangular. Just like the real vehicle, you can lift the doors off the hinges any time they are open. The front doors also have the large rectangular Jeep side mirrors.

Let's get started on the bed. Like the front arches, these were left unpainted. The side panels and front wall are all machined aluminum like almost everything else on the body. Those slots of the front line up with slots on the back of the cabin.

Now I've attached the tail lights, the protective brackets, and the license plate holder. It is hard to see what I've added on the right, but is a small plastic cover to conceal the back side of the tail lights where the wires will be.

The three sided bed can now be attached to the chassis. This is effectively a step side bed with the wheel arches on the outside and therefore has a flat bottom. Unlike most step sides though, it is still full width. The bed is the width of the cabin and the wheel arches stick out even farther.

The tailgate latching mechanism is pretty complicated. The release button sits on top of the gate and pushes down vertically. This button compresses the spring shown on the left and also moves those two large inner bearings down. As they move down, the angled slot forces the side latches inward. Those side latches slide on two more bearings each to stay level. This whole mechanism then gets hidden by a machined carbon plate and hinged off an aluminum bracket as shown on the right.

Now I've installed the tail gate onto the chassis. At this point I can install the bed deck which is an aluminum plate. The real truck has a wooden bed deck.

There are big cutouts on the sides of the bed, so to close those off we'll use some photo etched screens. More carbon plates are used to support and attach the screens. This is one of the few places on the model in which we don't have tapped holes so we need to use tiny nuts instead.

The real truck has a soft top, but the model uses a thick aluminum plate with an open sun roof. This makes a convenient hand hold for lifting the model. Even the rear window frame is a massive chunk of aluminum. Note that there are no windows in the doors, rear, or roof. Only the windshield will have a transparency, but I'll install that last to keep it pristine.

The chassis and body are done, so now we add the final structural detail, the bumpers. Like everything else on this truck, these have to be assembled from many pieces. The bumper itself is a monolithic machined aluminum part that bolts directly to the frame, but it is covered in the rubber like plastic covers shown on the left. These are black and quite flexible. They attach to the bumper with tiny M1.4 cap screws. I ran into another major problem here. Many of the holes in the bumper were either not tapped to full depth or tapped poorly so that the screws fit very tight. I didn't have an M1.4 tap so I foolishly just applied extra torque trying to get them in and sheared off one of the heads as you can see on the right. Many of the others could not be fully tightened leaving waviness in the flexible parts. This was a problem on both the front and rear bumpers.

I ordered an M1.4 tap and waited a few days for it to arrive. After re-tapping all the holes with a pin vise, everything went together perfectly. The broken screw could not be removed though.

The next issue was with the D-ring shackles. The shackle itself was drilled and tapped for M2.5, but the screw and hole in the bumper were 3mm. I had to oversize the bores in the shackles and re-tap to M3 resulting in the installation shown. Then I could finally install the bumper onto the chassis. This is a seriously solid bumper.

The rear bumper assembled in exactly the same way as the front, and it had all the same problems. After correcting all the holes and threads using what I'd learned on the front, it went together fine.

There were a couple of things I didn't like about the shackle details. The first was that the shackle hinge bolt was way too long (see photo from previous step) and looked terrible. I cut off several mm with my Dremel and now they look much better. The four bolts surrounding the shackle would be part of a plate bolted to the bumper on the real truck, but on the model they are just for show. I did not like that they were cap screws so I replaced them with tiny hex bolts which I think look much better. Zoom in and you'll see that I am (predictably) right.

The instruction videos make no mention of a battery box, and this two piece machined box was actually in a separate container inside the kit packaging. I wonder if it was added as a last minute addition? It wasn't hard to figure out how to bolt it into the bed right behind the cabin. It does a nice job of hiding the battery, but it is kind of annoying that you need a hex driver to access the battery. I've more than once taken this truck out to a trail only to realize I didn't have a tool to install the battery and therefore couldn't use it.

That's it! The initial assembly is completed. At this point I've done only assembly; there are no electronics hooked up and nothing has been painted. Now it is time to go back and do some detail work.

The transparent parts come on an acrylic tree. It makes sense for the lenses to be transparent, but the light buckets should be reflective so I painted them with my liquid chrome paint pen as shown on the right.

My next step was to paint the turn signal lenses in transparent orange. I'm not entirely sure what those lights inboard of the headlights are supposed to be, but on the real truck they are blacked out with only the rectangular center illuminated in amber so I tried to paint them the same way.

Let's paint some tail lights next. I painted the transparent housings black and the lenses transparent red. Ideally the lower portion of the lens would have a clear rectangular inset for the reverse lights, but this model doesn't have reverse lights so I left them all red. There should also be a rectangular inset on the outer side of the housing for the turn signals but that level of fine detail is too much for me. I think they look pretty good. The other parts in the image were painted in black.

I'm pretty sure these insets behind the rear doors are supposed to be steps. They look dark gray on the real truck so I painted them the same way. It is the only place on the vehicle I used that color. I wish they had been molded with a textured step instead of just a smooth bottom. Finally, I painted the hood grilles in black and glued them in place. This was the only place on the model I used glue.

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