Tire time! This is one area I feel Tamiya fell a little short on. Don’t get me wrong, they are ok… but they are not “Monster Truck” tires. I’d have rather seen plain ol’ Clodbuster tires included over these. Oh well, we’ll put them together for now to get the truck rolling.

Be sure to remove the part tree sections from the wheels, and clean the tires and wheels really well before gluing. There is a LOT of mold release agent on these tires.

All tires mounted up.

Next we install the splined wheel hexes onto the axles.

Then install the TXT wheel hubs over them.

Now we can mount up all the wheels. See what I was saying about looking a bit small for the truck?

Front shot.

Body mocked up. And this is where we stop for now. The body is off to the painter and we’ll finish up in a couple weeks with Part 2.  The body is pre-dimpled for easy mounting, so lining up a painted body will be a piece of cake.

Overall it was a fun and relatively easy build. I love Tamiya kits. They are some of my favorite kits to build. Stay tuned for part 2 when we mount the finished body and get this beast ready to rip up the outdoors (hopefully it won’t be -13 degrees outside like it has been all winter here).