Penske Mack MH613 “Ultraliner”

[tractoraholic]

Good Evening Everyone, 

Just completed this one after working on it on and off for the past 9 months. I built this truck like the 1:1 my Uncle drove in the early 90’s for Stone Container Corporation out of Torrington,Ct. When I was a teenager, during summer break from school he would take me along in this truck delivering cardboard boxes to factories in the Bronx, Queens, and New Jersey. I remember Stone’s Torrington plant had no power units of their own but leased 10 of these Ultraliners and a handful of T-800’s from Penske. The cab I used is a 3D printed cab from global scale model trucks. He’s a newer printer, very nice, spoken to him on the phone and has many different cabs of various makes in both 1/25 and 1/32 scales. He also has hood conversions, you guys should check it out, he has a website  https://globalscalemodeltrucks.com The chassis and engine came from the Mack cruiseliner kit and various odds and ends from the parts box. Decals are from modeltruckin. Weather permitting this week, I’ll probably add a couple of outdoor shots of it,

Enjoy

[ChrisR]

Looks great!

[XYHARRY]

Really nice detail on this Justin. I especially like the trailer cable set-up. Well done.

P.S. I checked out the site you posted and am impressed with his range of foreign and domestic rigs. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers, 

David. ??

[Gary Chastain]

Outstanding build

[Jim B]

Great looking Ultraliner.  really well done.

[Dave Van]

Great realistic look. My daughter in law family owns a trucking company.....they use only MACK trucks.....

[DRIPTROIT 71]

First of all, Excellent work! This thing looks great! It really looks the part. Second, thanks for posting this! I have looked at these before and to me they seemed to look a bit toyish. However, your finished build doesn’t look toyish at all. It looks great! I might have to give one of these a try myself.

[1959scudetto]

Very cool looking fleet truck, Justin !

[Warren D]

1 hour ago, DRIPTROIT 71 said:

First of all, Excellent work! This thing looks great! It really looks the part. Second, thanks for posting this! I have looked at these before and to me they seemed to look a bit toyish. However, your finished build doesn’t look toyish at all. It looks great! I might have to give one of these a try myself.

X2, I have one on order and have been concerned the level of fine detail might be lacking.

[tractoraholic]

13 hours ago, ChrisR said:

Looks great!

Thank You!

[tractoraholic]

10 hours ago, XYHARRY said:

Really nice detail on this Justin. I especially like the trailer cable set-up. Well done.

P.S. I checked out the site you posted and am impressed with his range of foreign and domestic rigs. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers, 

David. ??

Thanks!

[tractoraholic]

10 hours ago, Gary Chastain said:

Outstanding build

 

7 hours ago, Jim B said:

Great looking Ultraliner.  really well done.

 

6 hours ago, Dave Van said:

Great realistic look. My daughter in law family owns a trucking company.....they use only MACK trucks.....

 

2 hours ago, 1959scudetto said:

Very cool looking fleet truck, Justin !

Thank You All for your kind words 

[tractoraholic]

On 8/21/2023 at 3:20 PM, DRIPTROIT 71 said:

First of all, Excellent work! This thing looks great! It really looks the part. Second, thanks for posting this! I have looked at these before and to me they seemed to look a bit toyish. However, your finished build doesn’t look toyish at all. It looks great! I might have to give one of these a try myself.

 

On 8/21/2023 at 4:41 PM, Warren D said:

X2, I have one on order and have been concerned the level of fine detail might be lacking.

Thanks You for the compliments. I’ll tell you and anyone else interested, this my experience with this cab. I agree it did seem a little toy like, but I think it was do to the cab lights, horns, and grab handles are printed on to the cab. I thought they seemed a bit out of scale so I sawed them off, sanded those areas smooth and used italeri horns and cab lights instead. For the grab handles I used paper clips about the diameter of 18-20 gauge copper wire, this seemed more in scale and overall the truck looked better. The cab itself is 3d printed, so there are raised ridges from printing, but it was nowhere near as bad as another 3d printer that has went out of business. The cab was detailed with correct trims, moldings, body shape and had all the correct panel lines that a Ultraliner has with the exception of two, which are on the bottom of the cab, driver and passenger sides going from behind the front fenders, under sleeper compartment doors and wraps around to the vertical lines on back of sleeper. I just scribed them with a scriber. The grill is accurately detailed with the proper rivets, supports, fresh air openings etc, not that you can see them because of the black background and it had bulbs in the headlight buckets. The cab was sanded with 120 grit, followed by a couple coats of duplicolor primer, a little putty and various grades of sandpaper until I got a smooth finish, wasn’t that bad. I will tell you before primer,  scribe all panel lines doors, etc a little deeper so you don’t loose it with primer. The cab has some thickness to it, but not as thick as a resin AITM cab. 
The interior, dash, and seats were all 3d printed as one unit, I opted to cut the seats out, and put my own in, I tried to replicate a Bostrom high back air ride seat like my Uncle’s and a mid back seat bolted to the floor for the passenger. The dash had all the gauges printed, but were hard to see, so I sanded them off and made my own dash panels from styrene, italeri decals and spare CTM parts. I had to construct a continuation of the doghouse under the bed, as it was just a doghouse in between the seats and a “shelf” for the bed. I also added a bed from the parts box. The windshield is made from a thick clear resin, that comes with the cab, think of how thick the AMT R Model cab glass is and you get the idea. It wasn’t super clear, so I tried using clear plastic sheet for the windshield but couldn’t get it to conform to the curves near the doorposts. I ended up using the resin glass, but found I got it clearer by sanding it with micro mesh 6000-12000 grit followed by buffing it with my Dremil. Found it mated perfect to the cruiseliner chassis with small modifications to the exhaust, cab supports, and hinge to tilt the cab. Overall I’m pleased with it, and I’m going to pick up another cab, he has a early Volvo White/GMC cab I’m interested in. 

Edited August 22, 2023 by tractoraholic

[Gary Chastain]

I just purchased a CL700 Mack day cab from GSMT, appreciate the tips you used to make it more realistic, very helpful. 

[tractoraholic]

On 8/21/2023 at 7:19 PM, Gary Chastain said:

I just purchased a CL700 Mack day cab from GSMT, appreciate the tips you used to make it more realistic, very helpful. 

You’re welcome, I forgot to mention, the grills are molded into the cab and probably In your case the hood. The grill details are shallow, so after your first coat of primer, I’d mask off for second coat and paint so you don’t lose detail, i then masked the cab, sprayed the grill flat black, bare metal foiled the outside of the grill and MACK logo, and used silver sharpie to do the horizontal lines across. I did try to bare metal foil the whole grill, and it didn’t work for me, had a tough time with paint sticking to what’s supposed to be black, or trying to clean off paint on the horizontal bars and would knock paint off the background and the grill ended up blotchy. So I painstakingly removed the foil, and sprayed the grill black and did it the way I described above and that worked better for me, but maybe you’ll have different results. 

Edited August 23, 2023 by tractoraholic

[PappyD340]

Super nice build, well done!

[tractoraholic]

1 hour ago, PappyD340 said:

Super nice build, well done!

Thank You

[OldTrucker]

Sweet looking Mack!

I drove for Stone Container Corp. in Herrin IL. for a couple years in the 1980's all we had were some old late 70's International S2200's that were held over when Stone bought out Southwest Forrest Ind..

[tractoraholic]

19 hours ago, OldTrucker said:

Sweet looking Mack!

I drove for Stone Container Corp. in Herrin IL. for a couple years in the 1980's all we had were some old late 70's International S2200's that were held over when Stone bought out Southwest Forrest Ind..

Thank You! That’s cool you used to drive for Stone. My Uncle liked driving for them until I think it was late 90’s when Jefferson Smurfit bought Stone and they closed the Torrington plant and ceased operations. One of my future builds is going to be a Stone Container R model Mack. On one of my trips with my Uncle, he had to pickup 75000lbs of paper bags from Stone’s Elizabeth, NJ plant. They had a R model in the yard used as a yard horse. I remember it was all white and had the Stone logo on the air deflector on the roof. Just about have the logo done on my computer.

Edited August 22, 2023 by tractoraholic

[tractoraholic]

Took a couple outdoor shots today, enjoy

[grodudulle77]

Very nice work !! ??

[Rockford]

What a great looking build!  Some impressive details too, really set it off.

[vincen47]

Nice work, especially with the demands of a 3d printed cab such as this - particularly with the challenge of the grille. You’ve done a fine job creating a rare model. Having an open grille as a separate part would be a huge improvement Global Scale should consider. Nice tip on improving the cab glass, btw.

Like others have said, the only thing that has kept me away from 3d prints like this, is a concern for the lack of detail and the designer’s inexplicable need to print all aspects of the cab, like clearance lights and horns, as one piece.

Have they ever heard of applying separate parts, like…assembling a kit?

I would have cut those details off, too. I understand having separate parts would complicate/lengthen the print process a little and add to costs. But instead, just don’t include those gaudy parts like air horns and cab lights. The builder will usually have them available from the donor kit, anyway.

Edited August 24, 2023 by vincen47

[tractoraholic]

On 8/23/2023 at 11:03 PM, vincen47 said:

Nice work, especially with the demands of a 3d printed cab such as this - particularly with the challenge of the grille. You’ve done a fine job creating a rare model. Having an open grille as a separate part would be a huge improvement Global Scale should consider. Nice tip on improving the cab glass, btw.

Like others have said, the only thing that has kept me away from 3d prints like this, is a concern for the lack of detail and the designer’s inexplicable need to print all aspects of the cab, like clearance lights and horns, as one piece.

Have they ever heard of applying separate parts, like…assembling a kit?

I would have cut those details off, too. I understand having separate parts would complicate/lengthen the print process a little and add to costs. But instead, just don’t include those gaudy parts like air horns and cab lights. The builder will usually have them available from the donor kit, anyway.

Thank you for your kind comment. The two things I saw in this cab is it had potential and the shape of the Ultraliner. I understand it would add to the cost but I wonder if global could hook up with the pewter supplier AITM used, and supply pewter lights and horns instead. That would be an improvement and give builders all the parts needed to complete the exterior. Plus as you suggested, a builder can also use donor chassis parts, or parts box parts, and there is a guy on eBay that buys AMT, Italeri, Revell kits and parts them out, so you can just buy lights and horns if needed. That would give options. I’d say the biggest challenge was the grill. If that was printed open and separate it would give the builder options for chroming, ie: foil, alclad, etc, and not worrying about messing up the paint job plus be easier to work with. It was a challenge to not get silver on the black or black on the silver, my grill is not 100% percent perfect, but I had to settle for a happy medium that looks good.  Plus let’s face it, my hands aren’t as steady as they were when I was 20. I definitely will buy another cab and modify it to my liking. I am interested in the Volvo White/GMC he has, there is no cab lights or horns in the pictures. I drove a 1:1 White/GMC for a while back in 2001

Edited August 25, 2023 by tractoraholic

[tractoraholic]

On 8/23/2023 at 5:46 PM, Rockford said:

What a great looking build!  Some impressive details too, really set it off.

Thank You. This cab is from a newer 3d printer I decided to try out. Some modifications and details I’m happy with how it came out.