Motivated by another thread on this site from a while ago, which I am too lazy to search for and link, I started buying up a handful of the old bumpside Matchbox trucks off of eBay with the intent of fixing some up and different manners and then keeping the really nice ones stock how they originally came. One of the things I wanted to do was build a crewcab Matchbox truck and had developed several different plans in my head to do it. I finally decided to use some of the "not as nice" trucks I picked up and they made the ultimate sacrifice to make this "dream" come true.
My first attempt at making a crew is going well, but I did not take photographs from the beginning. I ended up using 2 of the yellow "ranger" trucks to make this crewcab and once I already had it together, noticed that the "ranger" truck did not have the crown on the hood as our trucks do. I did not notice this before because that is where the "ranger" sticker is on those trucks (and probably why they left it off). I already assembled the body and painted it dark so I could better see where I need to fill in my seams. The sides look great, but the roof needs some more filler to get rid of the separation between the 2 trucks I used.
So there will be a little more body work on that truck and then it will be painted again. I will use 2 interiors from the red flareside trucks to make the crew cab interior, and same with the clear "glass" from the flareside trucks. The tricky part is going to be cutting and reattaching 2 chassis and get them the right length so the wheels line up. But that is a later adventure.
Here are some of the interiors, glass, and chassis that are left from the disassembly of 6 different trucks (2 flaresides and 4 rangers).
Because the lack of a hood crown bothers me so much on the ranger truck, I decided to make another crew cab using the front of the flareside truck (which has the hood crown) and then the back of the ranger truck which gives me the bed I want. I am making this truck in 3 parts because I had already cut up some trucks and do not have any more ranger trucks in poor enough quality to cut up. The 2 I have left are in pristine condition and I don't want to cut them. In a perfect world, I would have left the bed of the ranger truck attached to the cab and then just attached the cut cab to the flareside truck so it would have only been 2 pieces. But because of the mess I made before I planned on making a 2nd truck, 3 parts is what I have to do.
Anyway, here is the start of the new crew cab. I have the portions cut and ground down to the proper fit. The flareside front is being glued to the back portion of the ranger cab. Once that is dry, I will glue the bed on the back. The step after that will be liquid metal filler, sanding, and then paint. Then it will be interior time and the fabrication of the chassis (which still has me worried... haha).
Anyway, I will update this "build" thread when I get more stuff done. Just thought some of you might get a laugh out of what the lack of a truck to work on will drive a man to.. Sitting in the garage playing with toys.
