Looted Cargo-8 Ridgehauler almost compltely built

I have done some more bulding today, and the Cargo-8 Ridgehauler that has been looted by the Orks is almost done. I am missing the crew, and I plan to go look for that in my storage unit tomorrow. I will need to cut up some Orks no matter what I find, as their legs are to wide to fit inside the cockpit. I tried today to place one of the gunners from the Battle wagon on the side of the gunner for this set, and his left leg ended up in the middle of the driver's seat. So either I must have a Grot crew driving and defending this wagon, or I must reposition the legs of some Boyz. Maybe I take an Ork gunner and driver and a Grot co-pilot. I will see what I find. 

I got the idea to take a Deffkopta pilot to drive the Cargo-8 as I had a box handy, but the pilots were attached to the Deffkopta so it would have to be a lot of cutting and also it would leve a unit one pilot short so I decided against it. 

This is what a standard Cargo-8 Ridgehauler looks like without a crew. The spikes can be left off if one chooses, but I think in hostile terrain having sort of a battering ram would come in handy. And since the special Battle wagon front fits outside it I decided to put it on. I also glued on the lights as they fit with the front as well.

Here I have placed the front, but it is not glued on. It stands on the ground in this picture, but it will be raised a little higher so that the top of the plow will stick to the bottom of the headlights. 

This is another challenge that needs to be solved. It turns out the front is just a little thinner than the Battle wagon, so the plow doesn't attach against the sides of the Cargo-8, but I plan to fix that by cutting up some spare vehilcle parts from my bitz boxes and glue it on to the sides to block it out, I figure that would be something the Ork Meks would do, not caring that much about estethics but more about function. I think I know what parts to use as well, so that will be done tomorrow. Then I will add the ladder parts above to hide the holes on the driver side of the vehicle where the ladder is supposed to be.

The Cargo-8 comes in two configurations. One with a flatbed and one with a container. I was thinking to use the container for this vehicle, but now I'm not so sure. This is what it looks like with the container standing on top of the flatbed, but I am thinking I might have both unglued so I can swap beween them.

Here is the container seen from the top. As one can see there are hatches on top of the container, and it is designed so that you can add gun turrets on top of those hatchs and get more firepower. I think the Orks would like that, but then I think I will need the turret parts from a Battle wagon or a plane to get the right size for an Ork or Grot gunner to work the turret mounted weapons. 

This is what the vehicle looks like with the flatbed. It is quite a bit of room, so if I choose to keep this modular and not glue it in place, I can add some sort of gun on this platform. Forgeworld has something called an Ork Supa Cannon that I think would look geat on this, but I might also be able to use a Mek gun (I have several that is still in ther boxes on sprues in storage either at my storage unit or at my cabin) or I might even design my own sort of scrap cannon. Maybe if I find an altrnative gun-arm for a Stompa, I could use the huge gunbarrel that works as an arm on the regular Stompa as the barrel of a self made gun. I am alredy thinking on trying to find an alternative arm for the one that will get the long bellygun, so I will see what I come up with, and I do love to make veird conversions so this could be an interesting challenge...