Building a 1941 Chevrolet Fuel Tanker
- Cliff Hutchings converts and paints Tamiya’s LRDG Chev kit into a 3 ton (Australian) Chevrolet Fuel Tanker

Finished model Left hand side view.

HISTORY

In 1941/42 bulk fuel tankers were required to deliver fuel from large railroad tankers to storage depots around the Atherton Tablelands in Northern Queensland. Here a lot of training bases had been set up and there were large concentrations of troops. This are was part of the ‘Queensland line of communication’ area and the army workshops were given 5 trucks to convert into 700 gallon fuel tankers. Four were Ford V8’s and the fifth was a Chevrolet. These were the only five made.

THE BASE KIT

I started with Tamiya’s LRDG Chevrolet kit, kit # 3592 which has recently been re-released and is a first class kit for doing conversions into all sorts of civilian based Chevrolet trucks of the period, both Australian as well as Commonwealth and USA models.

Added to this were an Italeri GMC Water tank kit # 201 and an engine and wheels from a Tamiya GMC kit and a fair bit of Evergreen plastic, brass wire and filler as well as a lot of choice swear words when things went wrong.

THE BUILDING

The Cab/Chassis

The front body of the LRDG Chev kit was removed and cleaned up as well and all filler plastic in the engine bay area was removed so that a Tamiya GMC motor could be fitted.

This shows the front part of the Tamiya LRDG kit and the start of removing the closed off engine compartment.

The view from underneath with all original plastic not required cut out and new panels ready to be fitted.

The chassis was removed from the sprue and cleaned up in the normal way with all seam lines removed. It was then cut and pieces from another chassis that was in the spares box were used to lengthen the chassis to the required wheel base. Brass strip was used to reinforce this area until the rear body was fitted.

The chassis splice. A couple of pieces of an old Tamiya chassis were spliced in and reinforced with brass strip
until the body was constructed and fitted.

To fit the GMC motor the engine mounts had to be removed from the chassis rail and moved back 2mm to allow the fan to clear the radiator. The motor was then fitted to the LRDG Chev bell housing and gearbox and also a new set of front engine mounts was made, these fitting behind the front fan.

A Tamiya GMC kit motor was modified at the front to form the front engine mounts and modified at the back to
fit onto the LRDG Chev bell housing and gearbox.

The Radiator, which in the kit is one sided, was filled in at the back and a piece of PE Radiator grill from the spares box used to cover the filler.

The one sided kit radiator was filled in at the back and a PE radiator grill from the spares box was cut to fit.

 

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