E. L. Moore's Husky time travelling VW pickup

Converting the Husky VW pickup diecast to look something like the one E. L. Moore used in a few of his photographs was a fairly easy job.

I must admit though that I didn't use any techniques commonly seen in YouTube videos dealing with diecast restorations. I decided not to completely disassemble the toy, strip away the paint with chemicals, respray it, and then put it back together with screws. I don't think Mr. Moore would have done anything like that. I took the easiest path, and I speculate he would have too.

Picking up a Jones Chem Co. | Outside the Carolina Foundry | Picking up at Bunn's Feed & Seed

Before I got started I had to pull together my reference material. I used images of the vehicle found in three of his construction articles: Jones Chemical Co., Carolina Foundry, and Bunn's Feed & Seed.

The first job was to carefully use a flat bladed screwdriver to pry the extensible scaffolding out of the truck's bed. It was in there quite solidly and took considerable force to free. I can only assume that was to make sure a child with kitbashing on their mind couldn't do an impromptu deconstruction :-)

And there's what you're left with: a big square hole in the bed. I eventually covered this over by gluing on a 1/16" piece of balsa wood as that appears to be what E. L. Moore did according to the reference photos.
 

One reason I didn't deconstruct this thing was that it appears to be held together with 4 rivets instead of the usual 2: there're 2 to attach the chassis to the body, and another 2 to hold a wheel springing plate in place. Yeap, the wheels are sprung on this baby so it doesn't bounce around at high speed on rough roads :-)

The chassis also indicates why I refer to this vehicle as a pickup and not a flatbed, which is what it appears to be: 'Volkswagen Pick Up' is stamped into the chassis.

All the painting I did was pure speculation. Even my assumption that Mr. Moore painted his and didn't use it box-stock is speculation. Just thought I'd note this.

I assumed that if he painted the body he'd choose some shade of Moore Green. All the colours I used on this project were brush applied Tamiya acrylics, and for the body I used XF-5, Flat Green. The bumpers were painted XF-16, Flat Aluminum, the chassis used XF-1, Flat Black, and the headlights were XF-2, Flat White. The wooden flat bed was painted with X-19, Smoke.

The part I haven't shown is where I installed the time machine. That'll just have to be my little secret, but I'll share photos of its anachronistic adventures :-)