Wargaming Tradecraft: Postapocalyptibuggy [part 2]


Postapocalyptibuggy [part 2]


First off, now that the putty dried, I can go back and finish cleaning up the engine from my first part. Things are mostly smoothed out, though I've left some areas a little rough.. it's an old engine after all.

Here's the next section I'll be working on. The undercarriage and front wheel wells.

This is how the wheels are supposed to attach.

Look how nice and boring that is. In the harsh post apocalyptic climate, that's going to take some work. I'm thinking, I'll lower all that, so the truck is raised up.

But first! Just like gun barrels, go and drill out the exhaust.

It's that added touch of realism we're going after.
After a little bit of fake welding and cutting slices out of the muffler and rest of the metal to make things appear dented, this part's done.

(more on the welding later)

The following is why having a selection of knife bits is handy. To lower (raise?) the suspension, I cut the sides out of the frame.

This is going to have to change as well. To keep things roughly parallel, I'll glue those two side parts up top where they are after bending the larger middle section down.

The middle section also has a tab for support to keep it up top. That just gets cut off.

With some glueing, I piece it all together, and have lowered everything.

There's a few ugly spots, but once everything dries, I'll fill that with putty, then clean it up.
Time for a little fire from my handy friend the butane torch.

Click on the image to the left for a larger view.

I figure the truck's been through a lot. So, there's going to be a lot of dents and bends. What better a way than to actually dent and bend it?

Apply a little bit of heat, use a metal tool to push on the plastic, wait for it to harden, repeat. I tried tapping on areas with a small metal tool to create a hammered look, but too much of the plastic becomes malleable, so the effect doesn't really work.

Be very careful about how much heat you apply. Only a little bit is actually needed; you shouldn't see the heat affect the plastic before pulling the torch away - apply heat, remove it.. learn how much you need to make the plastic moldable.

I even drilled a few holes, then heated them up to smooth / naturalize them. I was even able to pull (stretch) the holes around a little.

Here's the completed steering section of the truck. There was a rod that didn't fit too well since things had been lowered, causing all sorts of line of sight issues. So, I just cut the rod and fit it in... looks bent.. bet that's a bit of a pain to steer. Hope in the post apocalyptic world I can find a new one at some point.
Like the wheel wells, I heat up and push out a few parts of the gas tank. (That's probably a bad sign for any vehicle)

You can also see some cleaner "welds" on the frame just to the right of the tank.


  1. At first I was amazed at the level of detail you were going to, but then I realized that these parts are likely from a model kit. Not to diminish the amount of effort, mind you, but it just turned me on to the fact that there are far superior models out there than what I'm using to putting together. After reading this post, I don't think I can honestly call myself a modeller anymore.

    That realization aside, I really like what you've done with the torch. Do you plan to eventually use this model in 40k somehow--or is this purely for the competition?

  2. Well, yeah.. I talk about it in my introduction post: http://nplusplus.blogspot.com/2011/03/postapocalyptibuggy-introduction.html

    It's part of a contest over at Massive Voodoo, doing it for fun, and will probably put it on a base and not use it.

