1/25 'Duel' Peterbilt 281 'needle nose' hood



The movie 'Duel' made an impression when I saw it as a child, just like 'Convoy' did in a different way. 40 years later, I have plans to build two US trucks: the 'Duel' Peterbilt 281 and the 'Convoy' Mack R700. For the Duel truck, you generally start with the AMT Peterbilt 359. It's a complicated project: cab, hood, grille, wheels, tires, engine, axles have to be changed. I started work on the front wheels and the cabin's front windows, followed by the 'needle nose' grille and hood.



The design work consisted of three parts. First I designed the 'sheet metal' of the hood. I scanned the cabin front end on a flatbed scanner to obtain the shape, and then redrew that with basic shapes (lines, circles and ellipses) in Coreldraw, so I could draw it again and accurately in 3D CAD. I noticed an asymmetry in the AMT model, that I ignored. I already had the shape of rear end of the grille, since I drew that as another 3D part. I made a loft between the front and rear cross sections. Of course I did that for one half only, mirroring to obtain the other half.
The second part was added the rivets on the hood's sides. I tried to obtain the pattern from movie screenshots, but couldn't figure it out, the truck was too dirty. A photo of a cleaner Peterbilt yielded the pattern, which was drawn as tiny protruding cilinders, that were then rounded off to rivet shapes.

The third part was adding the piano hinges. Another photo study yielded the locations on the front and rear edges of the hood. The piano hinges themselves are a series of 20 rounded cilinders, partly sunk in the 'sheet metal'. The number of 20 was an estimate, I could not find the exact number.

All in all a laborius design, I think I spent some 4 hours on it.
Here's the actual part that club member Wim printed for me. The vertical sides are not perfect, with a slightly wavy edge and some 'stripes'. I will try to sort that all oit, instead of printing another copy.
I'm happy to report that the design fits nearly perfectly between the cab and the grille. It's great to finally see the 'needle nose' design.





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