AMT 1991 Silverado 454 SS-Now in Completed Section

Ok folks. I've been on and off at the bench for the last few months so progress has been pretty thin as of late. The bench time will become less frequent during the month of January due to my sons FFA show for a week in mid January. It's gonna be a crazy week with lots of preparation for the show in the days before it so I'll be trying to get what I can in on this bad boy before that.

As for now I've got more done on the engine. The air cleaner is merely resting on top of the throttle body in this picture. I be lowering it somewhat as it sits way too high. I'll also be adding some fuel lines to the back of the throttle body, some throttle linkage and will be installing an ignition coil. For such a detailed engine I'm not sure why that part wasn't included in the kit.

I've been working on the chassis as time allows for the last couple of weeks. Having acquired this kit on Ebay, it was missing one of the front molded coil springs. After looking at the one remaining spring and noting how horrible it looked, I thought it best to up the ante a little bit and make it a little bit more realistic looking. I opted for a set of steel coils that I had in the parts bin. Other than that it has been a rather labor intense seam and injector pin mark clean up. I shot almost all of the chassis parts in a coat of semi gloss black lacquer followed up by a thin shot of semi gloss acrylic paint which resulted in a more life like color to me. Not completed by any means but I thought I'd show a shot of progress to let you all know that I am in fact alive, well and building.

and for all of you who are curious....this will be my only modification to this build. I have too much love for this truck in stock form to do anything else to it. Still have some clean up left on the rear tires to get totally rid of the raised white lettering and then matching both sets of tires up color wise but here's what we're going with.

Thanks fellas!

Chassis is now complete. I painted it all different shades and textures of black with some of the highlights/ raised areas brought out with a very subtle touch of silver lead pencil. The exhaust, even though it's hard to make out in the photos, was one of the hardest paint wise I've had to do yet. For starters it was LACED with seam lines down both sides of the exhaust pipes, converters and mufflers so I first had to remove all of that. I black based the complete exhaust system and shot it all with a coat of Metalizing Aluminum through an airbrush. Next I drilled out both tail pipe ends. After that I lightly coated both converters with a coat of Tamiya Titanium gold and after that dried a light dry brushing of Tamiya Burnt Blue powder from their engine weathering kit. Both mufflers got a treatment of Matte Aluminum Bare Metal Foil for an added effect. The fuel tank was also flat black based and shot with a very light coat of Alclad Polished Aluminum. After that dried I dry brushed a light coat of ground up black pastel onto it to dull it down.
For the front suspension I did make the front wheels steerable as I've always wanted a model with posable front wheels. It was a lot easier to do with this kit than it has been with some of the builds that I've done. The ones in the past and really delicate and finicky parts or they had no option for steering at all. As a matter of fact this whole kit has been a true breath of fresh air in comparison to some of the older crap Revell kits that I've built where I had to do a TON of work just to get them to look even half decent.

I had initially primed the interior pieces to include the tub. I was looking at it even with the ejector pin marks on the floor and thinking to myself, "Yeah.....that's gonna......no....no it aint gonna work!!" The ejector pin mark, even though it's in a terrible place I can actually deal with. More on that in a minute. That chintzy brake and accelerator pedal just isn't gonna do at all.

So....I put my thinkin' cap on..

aaaaaand I found another floorboard from a parts kit that I've got in the stash and cut the whole section out of this floor board. Then I cut a section out from the parts donor.

Then the replacement piece was glued into place:

We'll be using some PE pedals to have a little more true to scale and true to references look. Now to address those disgusting ejector pin marks. Those...…..will be covered up by these floor mats that I acquired which just came in the mail a couple of days ago.

I've got plenty of matches for those tires but was afraid of going too skinny on a truck.

This interior is long from being done so I'm just posting this to post some progress. I've been working on the color tones and surface textures with the differences in the seat fabric, carpet and on the door panels by using different colored pastels. You can see the contrasting colors on the seat between the weaved and the smooth sections of the drivers seat. That seat will directly contrast the passengers side seat which hasn't been touched up yet. I've got the door handle/ switch bezel painted but still have to fill in the details on those and then get the foot pedals taken care of.

Progress so far:

Thanks Ken and Dave.

I just couldn't get over the OOB steering column/ wheel. No turn signal lever, no column tilt lever and no shifter lever???!!! Hell at least put a shifter lever on it. Will be adding all these items plus an ignition switch plus doing a whole lot of seam/ mold line clean up.

A couple of reference photos from my truck to show the various color tones and detail colors on and around the IP area.

Then the cluster itself....and yes....the odometer is correct at 401,811 miles.

And ummm…..before anybody asks about the tachometer....that ol' truck of mine can back that up.

I removed the tired 160hp 350 V-8 and replaced it with a 400hp 383 Stroker late last year with a newly rebuilt 4L60E with a shift kit and a 2000 rpm stall converter. I just got through replacing the 3.42 gears with a set of 3.90's and installed a locker unit while I was back there. This thing is fun to say the least.

and a shot of the rest of the truck: