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| Test assembly after lifting. Nothing is glued together. |
At the end of the last instalment I thought I'd move on to smoothing out the seams in the pickup box. I did a little putty work, but then thought, why avoid the next big job, just get on with it.
So I did.
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| The 'prototype' from Car Model magazine, Sept '72. To me the stance is hyperactive. |
Lift it that is.
But not too much.
Even when I was 12 I thought the body sat too high above the wheels, so when I raised it I figured I wouldn't raise it as much as the one in the magazine.
Ok, so let's get going.
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| The box stock chassis before shortening |
There are two steps:
1. Shorten the chassis because I shortened the pickup box.
2. Lift the chassis because we're goin' Baja!
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| First thing: cut out the gas tank. The 'prototype's' gas tank is in the pickup box. |
MPC kits were my brand back in the '70s when I was obsessed with building plastic model car kits. I liked their subjects and the pieces always seemed to be clean, sharply moulded, and unwarped, all of which made for a good assembly experience. Revell kits, at least the ones I bought, were a crap-shoot. It was always 50:50 odds a kit's body would be horribly warped, or the parts would be blobby, or some other insult had been inflicted on the parts that would require superhuman modelling skills I didn't possess to properly fix the thing. It was heartbreaking as I didn't just like Revell's subjects, I loved them, but they didn't always reciprocate. I built plenty of AMT too - I just saw a re-release of an old flame which likely will show up here next year - but there was something about their kits that never got a strong reaction out of me save for a rare few.
There were a couple of Christmases where I received MPC kits as presents and was very happy. Christmas was the only time I had a stash! I might receive 2 or 3 kits and there it was: a 2 or 3 kit stash! Normally I would buy and build immediately. I never suffered from the embarrassment of excess kit build up in the basement region :-)
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| After much measuring and marking and soul searching, the saw is drawn, the cuts are made. Shortness is obtained. |
So, this Dodge is an MPC and a re-pop of more-or-less the kit I built in '72, less a few custom parts for the Baja Brute version. It's showing its age. There's considerable flash to clean up, and the chassis in the pickup box area is a little warped. These aren't big things and are easily corrected, but it's clear time has passed on these moulds.
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| Reuniting the severed parts with soothing styrene glue and an impromptu jig |
Shortening the chassis and lifting the body is not overly complicated stuff, but the old CM article is very misleading as it leaves these steps out and concentrates on what I'd call detailing. That is interesting stuff, but hardly the meat and potatoes of this build. Maybe the article was just filler to boost the page count to their minimum, or maybe the magazine was too long and they cut the mundane part of the project, or maybe they ran the article to promote a new kit, or something else? We'll never know.
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| Reunited and it looks so good: A bond to build a dream on. |
On the way to this point in the build I was thinking about how a real vehicle of this sort would be constructed to accommodate a shorter box and lift. I knew mine wasn't quite right. I started to fret about it as a modern modeller would who is browbeaten by the unyielding scrutiny of digital cameras and the internet. But, I had done all this cutting and gluing and having fun and didn't care anymore. Worrying about reality was spoiling the fun of building.
I decided just to proceed based on what looked interesting to me. I'd add greeblies and details and paint as I felt necessary get the look I'm after. I'd check for real life practices if that became a concern, but I wasn't going to let that dominate the project.
It was a breakthrough of sorts.
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| Reconstruction begins: A piece of 0.040" thick styrene is rough cut to fill the gas tank hole. |
And that I realized was the hidden message from 1972.
Back then I got pleasure from these projects when I tried hard to make them as 'realistic' as possible. Getting pleasure in that manner isn't what I'm after these days. There's so much prototype information readily available today it makes kit assembly seem merely like the final stages in an industrial process to assemble the kit in accordance with all that information. Well, at least it seems that way for me. These days I want them to look as interesting to me as possible. What 'interesting' means is going to vary from one project to the next.
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| 0.250" tall styrene blocks were added between springs and chassis. Prototypical? Nah. |
As far as this Desert Dodge is concerned it was interesting just to slip into a flow state of mind and work on lifting the chassis without prototypical worries.
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| Interesting? Yeah! |
Given the fun I'm having modifying this pickup I'm thinking of doing the long delayed custom RDC project.
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| Athern HO scale RDC body shells |
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| It doesn't hurt to check things twice, it works for Santa Claus. |
Hopefully Kitbashed-X style will see a resurgence in 2026.
What's next for the Desert Dodge Do-Over? Your guess is as good as mine. Stay tuned!
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