Starting the Road-Sweeper

I've managed to do a little bit of work on the road-sweeper this afternoon. Not a lot, but it's a start. Mostly I've been gluing together bits and gathering the materials I'll need for the customisation. There are three things I'm trying to decide on before I go whole-hog on the build:
1) do I keep the clear plastic windshield or leave it out? Leaving it out would make building and painting it much easier
2) whether to glue the front and rear sections together or keep them loose
3) whether to do it on a diorama-type base

I'm leaning towards omitting the windscreen and gluing the two halves together, simply to make my life easier for the build and painting.

Anyway, here are some pics:

The bits in the baggie are the small item - screws, rotary brushes, the vacuum hose.

Various wire meshes

Treadplate plasticard

Corrugated plasticard

The rear section was originally riveted (drilled out to take the sweeper apart). I decided to grind down the stump of the rivet and drill at 2mm hole. I then tapped the hole so that I can join it to the rear wheels section with a screw. If you look closely at the pic, you should just about be able to make out the threads.

I have also removed the various weapon bits from the Baneblade sprues, but haven't included the pics here.


You may be wondering why I didn't do any work on it this morning. Well, I went shopping. I decided to try a bit further afield than normal in my hunt for particular cars, so I planned to go to the big Toys R Us in Enfield. The only trouble with that is that there is no direct bus or train, so I checked the route planner to see what buses I'd need. I was a bit confused when it told me that after taking the 230 I needed to get a 231 from Turnpike Lane rather than further up the road in Wood Green. So I decided to ignore that and catch the 231 at Wood Green.

Whoops! My mistake - it's the 232 that runs from Wood Green and goes to a different part of Enfield, nowhere near the retail park. Still it did give me an excuse to check out shops in Wood Green. Which was quite fortunate as I managed to find 2 cars I was after. I then headed back to Turnpike Lane to get the 231. And discovered that the best bus from there was actually the 217 which stops in the retail park rather than dropping me 15 minutes walk away.

Toys R Us had a rather large Hotwheels section and I managed to bag quite a bit of what I was after. There are still a few more cars I want, either for Car Wars mods or for doing customs. Anywhere, here's the haul:

5 Rip Rods (2 from Wilko in Wood Green)
Lancer Evolution
Honda S2000
Flashfire 5-pack
Velocita

The Velocita is the only new one, taking my count to 14 new cars; 10 still left on the allowance.

I'm still after 1 more Rip Rod for Car Wars modding and (at least) 1 more Flashfire 5-pack for customs. The other cars I wouldn't mind getting more of for customs are the Lancer Evolution, the Honda S2000 and the '55 Chevy Bel Air Gasser - if I find more, I'll buy them, but if I don't it's no great loss.