Nappy brown!

Back in the 1980's vehicle interiors had a certain look to them. A lot of beige, browns and blacks with the odd bold colour thrown in for good measure. Truck interiors followed this trend to be fashionable and at the time it looked good - honest! The interior of my Heller Scania 141 LB is a recreation of that fashion with a generally black and nappy brown interior broken up with some yellow for seats and beds. It will look great to the 1/24th scale driver - he is in the 1980s so knows no better - just like me! The floor coverings and dashboard are black and I had sprayed this on yesterday. Having had 24 hours to dry I masked the floor of floor pan to spray the engine hump brown as this would have been a carpeted area. 

I never made it inside a 141 but I did get into a lot of the Series 3 Scanias, especially the 91 and 113 models that came later on with similar interior décor so I was getting nostalgic with this paint scheme. Anyway, the brown was sprayed onto the engine hump, seats back of cab and cab roof and left to dry. Pulling the masking tape off shortly after applying the paint means that you will usually get a clean line to the paint. Waiting until it fully dry means that there is a risk of pulling the newly applied paint away with the masking tape. In my case the opposite happened with yesterdays black coming partly away with the masking tape. 

Not sure why but no use in holding a full scale investigation when I could actually use the time to rectify the matter with a brush and some black paint. The beauty of matt black paint is that it can be brushed relatively easily which in this case was good for me. With the time I had available a few interior parts were added to the floor pan and the seats given a couple of coats of yellow.

I also had time to fettle a few other parts and to knock up a suzie rack which is where the air lines for the trailer brakes connect to the trucks air system. The kit has a small single outlet mount which is wrong as the system in use at the time of this truck. There would be a red air line as the emergency brake, a yellow line as the service brake and a blue line as the auxiliary brake. In addition there would also be the electrical connection for the lights. 

Hopefully I might get some paint on the chassis over the next few days but that certainly will not be nappy brown!