Monster Truck Madness – Monster Truck Modeling

Hello everyone and Happy Thursday!

For most of my “hobby life”, my time modeling has been spent with r/c vehicles. Not so much on scale static models. Sure, I’ve done a few military vehicles, cars, and monster trucks over the years…but I wouldn’t say I’m a modeler.

The more I got into scale r/c the last decade, the more that traditional modeling piqued my interest. That REALLY picked up last year when I started to dabble with Tamiya semi trucks, as those things are really as much a scale model as they are an r/c. I told myself that when I bought a new house and had ample room for it, I’d set up a little modeling area next to my r/c bench.

Well, over the Summer I wound up getting a new house with ample work space, and I made good on the modeling area. You know what? It’s totally grabbed me! I’m having a blast!

Static modeling is just another avenue to showcase my love of monster trucks, so after having a few finished kits under my belt I decided I wanted to build a small diorama display that pays tribute to my favorite 1:1 monster truck venue of all time- St. Louis Arena, where I witnessed many shows as a kid.

My idea- build a small display that would show what it looked like if I had a full sized monster truck back in the late 1980’s, with the Rotten Apple theming I’ve been using on my r/c trucks for awhile now.

Outside of monster truck models, I love building big rigs and heavy trucks….so I’d build a scale hauler to go a long with the monster, and have it parked out front of the Arena. Perfect.

For the truck kit, I went with an AMT International Transtar 4070A cabover. This kit is a retooled classic Ertl that was re-released somewhat recently. The monster truck would be an AMT Coca-Cola Monster truck (which is a re-labeled USA-1 kit from back in the day) that I’d try and combine with an AMT 1978 Ford truck kit body. The trailer would be an AMT Lowboy to give it that lower budget, open air hauler look that you saw somewhat frequently back in the day.

I am now finished with the Transtar and monster truck, and so far so good! Up next, finishing the trailer and building the small display base with St. Louis Arena background. I’ll make a post here showing it off when its done.

I’m having an absolute blast getting into modeling and intend to do a lot of building over the winter. I feel like it’s helping to make me a more well rounded hobbyist, and upcoming r/c builds will hopefully showcase some of my newly acquired/honed skills!

Thanks for letting me take a detour into static model land, next week I’ll be back to r/c’s!