Ash Wastes Salvage Vehicle - The Build

When you mention to a friend that you are looking for parts to make civilian vehicles, and the friend gives you one of these...:

 

...the only correct thing to do is to knuckle down and make a civilian vehicle out of it. If you don't recognise the nice big chunk of resin above, it's the chassis from the Forgeworld Solar Auxilia Dracosan Armoured Transport. Which usually looks like this:

I decided I was going to turn my chassis into a civilian salvage vehicle - some kind of over-sized, multi-wheeled, ash wastes version of the AA. My first step was to create some sides to the chassis in order to attach some wheels to.

 

A pair of sides cut from thick plasticard, shaped to fit in the voids where the tracks should be.

After some trimming and test fitting, my sides looked good. I now turned my attention to the wheels - in this case I used 8 large Lego wheels, and glued some 30mm round based to the open ends.

Large wheels for my salvage vehicle.

Step 3 was to assemble my various parts I glued the sides to the chassis, adding an internal bracer for strength. Then I simply glued four of my wheels on either side.

Starting to look promising.

I forgot to take photographs of the next steps in the build, but basically they were:

• Fill in the blank spaces on the sides with some gubbins (primarily plastic Ork and Tau weapon parts I think).
• Liberate a boom arm from a toy tele-handler.
• Add gubbins to the boom arm (more plastic pieces and some wire cable).
• Add a heavy stubber to the side of the cab (it is the 41st Millennium after all).

And this is pretty much where things are up to currently:

I'm going to attempt to paint the curved space where the Dracosan usually has a weapon as a windscreen.

The boom arm is removable for storage.

Hopefully I'll get some paint on it in the near future!