1/87 1978 FREIGHTLINER FL8664

Decided to start a new category for each truck maybe?? It might get too complicated, something I meant to do right away but didn't know how it all worked yet.

Taking an Athearn White Freightliner and transforming it into a Freightliner is not as authentic and accurate as I would like but in this scale it is very hard to tell the difference. The most noticeable changes were in the 1973, White Freightliner offered the wider cab along with the wider 3 vertical rung grille leaving the single vertical bar, although there were both offered for some time but not that I can find after the 1977 model year. The old grille also had finer mesh then the 3 rung and as luck would have it, Herpa did offer the Freightliner but I find the cab not to be as accurate and it is even narrower then Athearn.  This was also the final year for the White involvement which started to dissipate after terminating the agreement announced in 1975. First off, 15 years ago, Athearn did some re-tooling of the details from the original version offered in 1975(ish?) which had inset glass and no chrome, no windshield wipers, single air horn, single exhaust stack an even the rear cross member of the chassis was slightly altered to accept a mud flap bracket absent in the original.  None of the owner operator paint schemes were available in the original either. The cab however, was absolutely way ahead of its time in terms of accuracy an detail, IMO one of the best if not the best injection molded cabs to date in this scale. All that being said, with the updated details this kit became even better then before as we can see.

Here is the updated resin cast grille along with one piece bumper and the re-working of the wheel arch.entry ladder and flare carefully saving this awesome factory paint job

working the chassis, adding fuel tanks from A-Line and scratch built exhaust brackets

now to match the colours, the white was just touched by brush using GM frost white, the chassis colour turned out to be a 1978 American Motors colour, but when calling my supplier for a formula, it was not available so 2nd choice is a 1969 Chrysler colour, mixed, applied and automotive urethane clear coat added to the whole model

here is the finished unit

My son Jamie did his version (left) years ago, he was 15 or 16 then, he made the resin grille master

hooked into a Lonestar Wilson 42' grain trailer with painted sides -this is an outstanding trailer kit too BTW

one more view of the tractor, aluminum tube exhaust with curved tips and Masterbuilt photo-etched heat shields, also shown with the model's updated Alcoa style wheels, the original had some wheels that were not quite so nice, the ones shown earlier on in this post are from Promotex just used for the rebuild

Jim.