When you first open the box you are just astonished at the sheer magnitude of all the cool looking pieces and dozens of screw bags and then it hits you… Where am I gonna put all this stuff during the build? What I opted to do was use my main workspace as the build area and then use my portable table as a staging area for everything I was working on. With 70 pages of instructions you start to wonder what the heck you just got yourself into. Let me be the first to tell you there is no more turning back. But what you do need is some very essential tools. We always stress to buy the best items within your budget and with building a kit these rules definitely apply.

I CAN NOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH PEEPS…. DO NOT …. I AM SERIOUS DO NOT just Willy Nilley remove all the individual pieces from the parts trees. All may be lost if you jump ahead.
The cleaner you snip the pieces from their parts trees the less clean up with your blade or a touch of sandpaper will be needed. Boy this is really sounding like instructions you got way back when as a whooper schnapper when you put together your first Revell model. Well that’s because you literally will be assembling the entire body from scratch … almost.

Do the very un-macho thing at this point and take a peek at every step in the manual…. I did that and was still bitten by some pieces in this kit that did not follow the instructions.
Pretty much out of the gate in step 1 assembly 1 you are gonna notice that the pieces are keyed together … Ohh that’s nice! Do yourself a favor here and in the early stages only tack the pieces together lightly. Grab a small square or something you know is square to help you line things up or else. DO NOT follow step 2 and put the windows in…. they can go in much later.

At step 3 you start to see some hiccups.

There is no definitive line or even a measurement in the instructions on how to place the front window trim? We are talking about something that’s less than 3mm wide so a hint or two would have been nice. Let’s Digress. Then it’s another slam on the brakes as we go to STEP 4 and here we again have no “keyed” pieces or anything in writing to tell you where exactly to place the main front panel? So being the smart guy I thought I was Pre-Build I decided to “Eye Ball” it. HUGE MISTAKE. Wait until you have attached all the pieces in step 5 then place the front on. This will give you the exact height needed for alignment. Remember we are working with Styrene and actually welding the pieces together, I had to actually cut the entire face off and sand it all down smooth and re-attach it. Oie Vie. Having had to do that started some minor alignment issues that had me working triple time on final assembly and adding filler and sanding and adding filler and sanding etc..etc.. Moving on it was smoother sailing and there are definitely some things you need to take your time with. There are a ton of small tiny pieces on this kit so if you don’t have a decent set of tweezers or tiny pliers write the check. Now is also a good time to think if you are willing to lose your mind and do a custom interior, if yes then figure out your end goal and maybe don’t glue on the top of the cab until you are mostly done fabbing up the interior.

You can go as crazy or as stock as you want with this kit, that is the real beauty of a Hard Body, cut it add to it, sand it, paint it, take away pieces.

….. Next time I will share some tips and tricks on building up the interior and hacking the doors off… so stay tuned to that same bat channel for more Beast 6×6 II Build chaos.

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