TOPIC:

The yellow gives a racing style.

Finished most of it today. Original Japan build. Greetings from Kyoto.

heres my offering

Canadian decals or diy, like the green/yellow

Yay, the Aussie green and gold........on a Japanese race car... :-/

Posting this more as a placeholder/collection of thoughts rather than a firm commitment to start this immediately...

I've accumulated a full set of Wild Willy body parts, and TBH they've been kicking around for a while, time to put them to use I think ...

I went through a phase of building & painting the driver figures so got the main WW2 body part to align the arms without having to dismantle one of my cars each time, after that it made sense to add in another sprue each time I ordered from Siedel so the 9.99 EUR postage was better value ... then a M38 replica grille from Shapeways to make their postage seem less onerous when ordering a couple of other bits; then a set of M38 decals from MCI Racing to qualify for their free shipping...

I depends how do your accounting - so far it's either "free" (aka "Man Maths") or cost what the bits usually would ...

I plan to make an M38 lookalike body (remove the "reinforcement" ribs, fill in the hole in the floor under the driver feet, relocate body mount and antenna holes, grind off the extra side details, make fake windscreen mounts etc etc) and add a canopy as I think I could do better than my last attempt at one. I already have a boxart Willy so it makes sense to do something else this time. I was impressed by Stingray's "fire" tender Willy, but copying that would be, well, a copy; the "Navy flyer" Willy I did a while back wasn't exactly historically accurate & didn't quite work for me, so I looked to official Tamiya materials ... I think the "flame" paintjob (from the body set box) is just too "out there", the "prototype" Willy (from the 1983 catalogue) is just a different driver colour scheme, instead I'll have a go at airbrushing a camouflage pattern, somewhere between the body set alternative drawing & the 1983 catalogue "studio" shot.

I'm also thinking of a roof - I did have a go at one back in 2008(?), but my standards are a bit higher now (also note the the mould lines on the driver, Grasshopper tyres, damage, purple antenna tube and crap decals on that Willy ...), I'm also inclined to apply resin & paint it to it to make it a lot more robust & dirt resistant.

TBC ...

Obviously I need a chassis of some sort ... it would be nice to have an original vintage one (short or "long" wheelbase) but that's going to be far too much to spend on a little "fill in" project like this. I did consider a WW2 chassis (a 60 GBP one without wheels or body on eBay) but I'm not a big fan of it .. the plane here is to make the effort on the body (so it can fit a vintage chassis at some point in the future) - in the meantime I really don't need anything more than a set of wheels held in the right positions.

I've gone really cheap & ordered a toy grade crawler for less than 18 GBP (NIB, posted). Nominally it's 1/18 scale with stated dimensions of 15.94 x 8.07 x 8.46 inches (405mm X 205mm X 215mm) ... in practice it's actually much smaller (260mm total length, 183mm wheelbase X 163mm wide X 136mm tall) so it's a much better fit than I'd anticipated. The driveshafts are purely ornamental with a motor in each end like the Clod Buster ), so further shortening is quite possible with a homemade chassis, it'll depend what I find i the way of control electronics when I dismantle it further.

Performance is not quite as crap as you might expect for a cheap toy, speed control is proportional both ways with a double tap brake then reverse, climbing ability over obstacle up to about brick size is pretty good, there's a distinct lack of torque when it comes to any sort of slope though. Turning circle is very poor, especially so in left turns, maybe there's something I can do about that... it's non-proportional though, either full right, full left (or half left), or straight on ...

Nice project Jonny. The m38 was used during the korea war. And they haden't camo paint. They were only OD. The french fire willy were only painted in red too.
I love your navy version.
You have another solution,
The ones were on tarmac with a yellow/black squares paint.

goo.gl/images/Wt1cMZ

"driveshafts are purely ornamental" -