Fire Truck. Racing to the Fire's

Well this is going to be the last update in the foreseeable future of my Fire Truck. It is now as complete and working as I want it to be, but there are a few items that I will come back to in the future when space and time permits. I would really like to remake the top cab panel and the two rear sections above and below the back door position. Theses parts are made of chipboard and have become slightly swollen, I'd like to replace them with MDF as I have with the new rear door and cover them in some black vinyl, similar to what was originally fitted. All the wooden edges would then line up and really top the cab off, but I'm restricted with space and now being winter I cannot work outside on the cab.

Anyway below is a photo of the rear cab with all the monitor wiring complete, I tapped the 240 volts for the monitor from one side of the interlock switches so it now essentially getting its power direct from the mains input when the interlock switches are closed and the cab is turned on.

After being happy with the cab innards, It was time to make a back door to replace the rotten one that came with the cab. It had a big section missing and was in a really poor state. The main door is a single piece of MDF cut to size, with a small section which holds it in place at the bottom.

Backdoor cut, lock hole drilled and edges sprayed

I was going to cover the door with some adhesive vinyl, but after seeing how the spray looked decided to cover the whole panel in spray and leave it at that for now. As you can see below the lock is fitted and the original Atari Information sheet was re-stapled to the inside of the door.

Backdoor complete

This next shot is a big of a tight angle but shows the door locked in place on the cab.

Backdoor fitted to cab

As mentioned above at some stage in the future I will replace the woodwork above and below the door along with the piece on the top of the cab.

The final piece of work needed to finish the cab off was to make a cardboard monitor surround. Even though my cab didn't have one, Phil who sold me the cab had one from the other Fire Truck cabs, so he lent it to me so I could make some replacements.

This was done using some heavy duty card from the Hobby Craft chain of shops and was carefully cut using multiple sharp blades, I disassembled the original monitor surround, drew round the pieces, cut them out and made the folds where necessary, finally I used hot melt glue to hold it all together.

Old bezel ready for templating

New pieces cut

Did I mention I made three of these today :)

My bezel, glued ready for fitting in the cab

New sticker with part Atari part number and a new custom revision.

In the cab. Nice!

Plexi glass installed, slight Vertical sizing adjustment need to be made.

Finally a few shots of the cab taken with a real digital camera and not my mobile phone.

Thanks for reading, and a bigger thanks go to Phil for letting me have one of the three cabs he picked up all those years ago.

FT-394 is ready to be played...

Enjoy, Mart.