1:32 Trumpeter TBM Avenger Build
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Tony Hill
Tech Sergeant
Very Nice!!
Crimea_River
Marshal
Agreed, Good progress there.
- Thread starter
- #84
Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
Thanks folks!
Today, being Friday the 13th, was one of those days where I probably should have read a good book, since the quantum parts-sucking rift must have been hungry. I lost more parts to the rift in one day than I've lost in the last few months. Normally, 13s are my wife's and my lucky number. Both kids were born on 13s, I've had two jobs on the 13th, bought new cars, etc. But today, it wasn't so good.
It started with trying to add a stupid piece of PE on the back of the tailwheel strut. I removed the plastic nub as instructred by Eduard, bent the tiny piece and then attempted to CA it to the strut. Tried 3X until it went "Pwang", for the third time. I found it the first two times it took off. Last one, it was in the rift. I then attempted to make my own out of some brass off the PE frets. Again three attempts. I broke the two remaining #88 drills I had while attempting to insert a pin in the hinge point to provide something for the PE to hold onto. Then they too eventually took off into the rift. I gave up. No one, and I mean no one will ever know that this microscopic piece is not there.
Onto the tailwheel itself. The tire is some kind of semi-hard plastic, with an injected molded hub. The hub has a raised ring in the middle of its circumference which is supposed to engage in a similar groove in the center of the tire. Only thing is the tire doesn't give. I tried to press the hub into the tire in a vise and it wasn't working so well so I thought I would do what I did years ago to get vinyl tires onto very fragile wire wheels that were a hallmark of the 1/8 scale Pocher model car kits. I would heat the tires in hot water and they would go like butter without destroying hours of work creating the wheels with their individual spokes. So I decided to heat the tire slightly with the hot air gun. I was careful to blow downward on the tire to keep it from blowing away, but I forgot that the hub was sitting nearby. GONE! It was blown directly into the rift. It did not pass GO and did not collect its $200. I went over everything within an 8 ft radius. GONE.
This was a critical part so I resorted to turning another wheel out of brass on my miniature TAIG lathe. It lacks the spoke detail of the plastic one, but it's the right size and is again an obscure part that doesn't get much scrutiny.
I painted the insides of the tailwheel fork Vallejo Dark Sea Blue before gluing the other half on so it would be properly colored. I then assembled the rest of this complex assembly. To the front of the tailwheel bulkhead goes another frame that supports the belly machine gun. I put the gun together and then went to install it, but something was missing. The drawing shows a tab on the bottom that engages a spot of this frame, but that tab wasn't there. I don't remember chopping off when cutting the part from sprue. I'm usually very careful doing this and I use a good pair of flush cutters to do it. I thought maybe the instructions left out a step to attach the tab, but there were no parts left on any sprue that fit the description. So again, I was forced to jerry rig something or else the gun would not be on the model. I took a part of the sprue with a number tab on it and shaped it so it would do the job. The number is still visible, but will be hidden when the fuse is closed. The arrow shows this part.
All landing gear and gear wells on this model TBM is gloss sea blue like the rest of the aircraft so I painted the tail wheel side that color and next session will mask it and paint the inside parts interior green. I gave it a quick shot of Tamiya Primer since it really helps the Model Master acrylic hold onto the styrene. Then I fgave a quick two coats. I was going to use Microsol Liquid Mask, which I just purchased, but it said DON'T USE IT FOR WATER-BASED PAINTS. So I used Aleen's Tacky glue instead to mask the tire while I spraye the blue.
I put the tailhook together. The only part needing paint will be the hook itself (white and black stripes). The rest is buried in the tail and unseen. The hook is operable.
Lastly, I finish painted the cockpit right-side panel and glued it in place, glued in the left side panel that was made a couple of weeks ago, and put together and painted the radio operator's seat. Before closing up the fuse I have to build the rudder. This kit has workable hinges and the rudder must be installed when you're closing the fuse.
So, there you have it. Not much production for over threee hours of work.
Have a great weekend! And stay warm and dry!
Today, being Friday the 13th, was one of those days where I probably should have read a good book, since the quantum parts-sucking rift must have been hungry. I lost more parts to the rift in one day than I've lost in the last few months. Normally, 13s are my wife's and my lucky number. Both kids were born on 13s, I've had two jobs on the 13th, bought new cars, etc. But today, it wasn't so good.
It started with trying to add a stupid piece of PE on the back of the tailwheel strut. I removed the plastic nub as instructred by Eduard, bent the tiny piece and then attempted to CA it to the strut. Tried 3X until it went "Pwang", for the third time. I found it the first two times it took off. Last one, it was in the rift. I then attempted to make my own out of some brass off the PE frets. Again three attempts. I broke the two remaining #88 drills I had while attempting to insert a pin in the hinge point to provide something for the PE to hold onto. Then they too eventually took off into the rift. I gave up. No one, and I mean no one will ever know that this microscopic piece is not there.
Onto the tailwheel itself. The tire is some kind of semi-hard plastic, with an injected molded hub. The hub has a raised ring in the middle of its circumference which is supposed to engage in a similar groove in the center of the tire. Only thing is the tire doesn't give. I tried to press the hub into the tire in a vise and it wasn't working so well so I thought I would do what I did years ago to get vinyl tires onto very fragile wire wheels that were a hallmark of the 1/8 scale Pocher model car kits. I would heat the tires in hot water and they would go like butter without destroying hours of work creating the wheels with their individual spokes. So I decided to heat the tire slightly with the hot air gun. I was careful to blow downward on the tire to keep it from blowing away, but I forgot that the hub was sitting nearby. GONE! It was blown directly into the rift. It did not pass GO and did not collect its $200. I went over everything within an 8 ft radius. GONE.
This was a critical part so I resorted to turning another wheel out of brass on my miniature TAIG lathe. It lacks the spoke detail of the plastic one, but it's the right size and is again an obscure part that doesn't get much scrutiny.
I painted the insides of the tailwheel fork Vallejo Dark Sea Blue before gluing the other half on so it would be properly colored. I then assembled the rest of this complex assembly. To the front of the tailwheel bulkhead goes another frame that supports the belly machine gun. I put the gun together and then went to install it, but something was missing. The drawing shows a tab on the bottom that engages a spot of this frame, but that tab wasn't there. I don't remember chopping off when cutting the part from sprue. I'm usually very careful doing this and I use a good pair of flush cutters to do it. I thought maybe the instructions left out a step to attach the tab, but there were no parts left on any sprue that fit the description. So again, I was forced to jerry rig something or else the gun would not be on the model. I took a part of the sprue with a number tab on it and shaped it so it would do the job. The number is still visible, but will be hidden when the fuse is closed. The arrow shows this part.
All landing gear and gear wells on this model TBM is gloss sea blue like the rest of the aircraft so I painted the tail wheel side that color and next session will mask it and paint the inside parts interior green. I gave it a quick shot of Tamiya Primer since it really helps the Model Master acrylic hold onto the styrene. Then I fgave a quick two coats. I was going to use Microsol Liquid Mask, which I just purchased, but it said DON'T USE IT FOR WATER-BASED PAINTS. So I used Aleen's Tacky glue instead to mask the tire while I spraye the blue.
I put the tailhook together. The only part needing paint will be the hook itself (white and black stripes). The rest is buried in the tail and unseen. The hook is operable.
Lastly, I finish painted the cockpit right-side panel and glued it in place, glued in the left side panel that was made a couple of weeks ago, and put together and painted the radio operator's seat. Before closing up the fuse I have to build the rudder. This kit has workable hinges and the rudder must be installed when you're closing the fuse.
So, there you have it. Not much production for over threee hours of work.
Have a great weekend! And stay warm and dry!
Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
Looking great! I love 1:32 just can't often afford the kits. But I do love watching them go together!
Lovely work so far!
- Thread starter
- #88
Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
Thanks guys!
Well folks, got a rare Saturday work session and it was much more productive than yesterday's struggle.
Started with completing the tailwheel assembly with interior painting interior green and painting the 30 Cal MG with semi gloss black. I then scraped paint of all the gluing surfaces.
I masked and painted the tailhook's zebra stripes. I tacked the ends of the tape (which I cut to narrow strips) to itself, but it proved prone to leakage and made for some delicate touch up painting.
Next was the rudder. Eduard calls out some microscopic PE to replace the plastic simulated linkage to the trim tabs. I knew looking at these parts that this wasn't going to end well. I hate when I'm right.
Look at them compared to the #11 Xacto blade. You were supposed to fold the ends over themselves and then fold them towards the middle. Not only couldn't I fold them, I couldn't even pick the part up to handle it and I have a pair of very nice expensive tweezers. I tried one and then gave up, realizing that it was such a small detail, it was effectively invisible unless someone picks up the model and stares at that spot... and they won't. Some PE is ridiculous. This was just such an example.
Trumpeter uses a strange PE bar that has a steel rod threaded through it as an actual hinge. The lower part of the rudder is hinged by a pin into the tail. This PE part drops into a slot on the fin which sort of captivates it when the fuze halves are put together. It works, but seems to come out of the slot very easily. I thought about burying it in medium CA. I think I'll do that for the others going forward.
There's another piece of Eduard PE glued to that apparatus in the fin. I don't know what the purpose of this feature is, but there's now PE details on both sides of it.
I always rough up the brass on the back side of PE, otherwise, CA may just pop off whenever it feels like it.
It was time to glue all of the interior pieces into the left fuze half. Prior to placing them, I also scraped all the paint off mating surfaces on all parts. I used the Touch-n-flow glue applicator to apply solvent cement to all the interfaces. I glued the radioman's seat with medium CA so it stayed put. So here's everything in an waiting for the other half.
I used Testor's tube cement applied with a toothpick to apply glue to the mating edges. I used various rubber bands to hold it all together, and then went back and used the Touch-n-Flow to add cement to the joints from the outside. There were a couple of trouble areas that needed addressing. The first was the cowl fairing gap that appeared on both sides. This is an engineering error since I read another build thread of this plane and the fellow had the same problem.
The second was a narrow part of the fuze that had broken off some time ago and was in the quantum rift with the other parts lost off this project.
I fabricated a styrene piece to replace the lost fuze part. The part has a little less curvature, but it will work since it's hidden behind the cowl flaps.
For the cowl gaps I started by making styrene filler pieces and solvent cementing them into place. After they dried I sanded and filed them to good fits, and ended with fllling them with Tamiya Filler. Here's the filler piece.
After filing and sanding. I removed a lot of blue paint, but that should be okay to repaint when I do the whole deal.
And lastly, application of the filler. This will dry overnight before finishing. I filled all the other seams at the same time, but they were pretty good not needing very much.
I wanted to see how the cowl fit and was a bit discouraged to see that it looks out of alignment, and there's nothing I can think of to fix it. It seems to stem from the same engineering error that had the cowl gap.
I may fabricate intake and oil cooler air trunks for the inside of the cowl to separate those areas from the cylinders. This was also done in that other build I reviewed. I'm also going to look at prototype pics to see if maybe the cowl wasn't centered, but I think it probably was.
Well, here's a frontal view of a very glossy sea blue TBM 3 and the lower cylinders seem more exposed that the upper so I'm not going to worry about it.
I used my new razor saw to open up another access panel to show off the cylinders of that very cool engine. I also stuck the propeller on to see if the angle was too bad. Notice, I didn't even trim of the attachment pips.
A couple of other things happend that gave me pause. A rubber band broke off the front bomb bay actuator arm bracket. No big deal, got it back it reinforced with CA. The second was a little more scary. The turret plate was not seated correctly in the right fuze side and was keeping it pushed outward. I was able to spread the sides and pop it into position, but then the rotating part of the turret came out of its track. Luckily, I was able to take the elevating portion out of its trunnions, and work it all back into position. That was a close one, but it ended okay. Pretty soon I'll be starting on the wings.
Well folks, got a rare Saturday work session and it was much more productive than yesterday's struggle.
Started with completing the tailwheel assembly with interior painting interior green and painting the 30 Cal MG with semi gloss black. I then scraped paint of all the gluing surfaces.
I masked and painted the tailhook's zebra stripes. I tacked the ends of the tape (which I cut to narrow strips) to itself, but it proved prone to leakage and made for some delicate touch up painting.
Next was the rudder. Eduard calls out some microscopic PE to replace the plastic simulated linkage to the trim tabs. I knew looking at these parts that this wasn't going to end well. I hate when I'm right.
Trumpeter uses a strange PE bar that has a steel rod threaded through it as an actual hinge. The lower part of the rudder is hinged by a pin into the tail. This PE part drops into a slot on the fin which sort of captivates it when the fuze halves are put together. It works, but seems to come out of the slot very easily. I thought about burying it in medium CA. I think I'll do that for the others going forward.
There's another piece of Eduard PE glued to that apparatus in the fin. I don't know what the purpose of this feature is, but there's now PE details on both sides of it.
I always rough up the brass on the back side of PE, otherwise, CA may just pop off whenever it feels like it.
It was time to glue all of the interior pieces into the left fuze half. Prior to placing them, I also scraped all the paint off mating surfaces on all parts. I used the Touch-n-flow glue applicator to apply solvent cement to all the interfaces. I glued the radioman's seat with medium CA so it stayed put. So here's everything in an waiting for the other half.
I used Testor's tube cement applied with a toothpick to apply glue to the mating edges. I used various rubber bands to hold it all together, and then went back and used the Touch-n-Flow to add cement to the joints from the outside. There were a couple of trouble areas that needed addressing. The first was the cowl fairing gap that appeared on both sides. This is an engineering error since I read another build thread of this plane and the fellow had the same problem.
The second was a narrow part of the fuze that had broken off some time ago and was in the quantum rift with the other parts lost off this project.
I fabricated a styrene piece to replace the lost fuze part. The part has a little less curvature, but it will work since it's hidden behind the cowl flaps.
For the cowl gaps I started by making styrene filler pieces and solvent cementing them into place. After they dried I sanded and filed them to good fits, and ended with fllling them with Tamiya Filler. Here's the filler piece.
After filing and sanding. I removed a lot of blue paint, but that should be okay to repaint when I do the whole deal.
And lastly, application of the filler. This will dry overnight before finishing. I filled all the other seams at the same time, but they were pretty good not needing very much.
I wanted to see how the cowl fit and was a bit discouraged to see that it looks out of alignment, and there's nothing I can think of to fix it. It seems to stem from the same engineering error that had the cowl gap.
I may fabricate intake and oil cooler air trunks for the inside of the cowl to separate those areas from the cylinders. This was also done in that other build I reviewed. I'm also going to look at prototype pics to see if maybe the cowl wasn't centered, but I think it probably was.
Well, here's a frontal view of a very glossy sea blue TBM 3 and the lower cylinders seem more exposed that the upper so I'm not going to worry about it.
I used my new razor saw to open up another access panel to show off the cylinders of that very cool engine. I also stuck the propeller on to see if the angle was too bad. Notice, I didn't even trim of the attachment pips.
A couple of other things happend that gave me pause. A rubber band broke off the front bomb bay actuator arm bracket. No big deal, got it back it reinforced with CA. The second was a little more scary. The turret plate was not seated correctly in the right fuze side and was keeping it pushed outward. I was able to spread the sides and pop it into position, but then the rotating part of the turret came out of its track. Luckily, I was able to take the elevating portion out of its trunnions, and work it all back into position. That was a close one, but it ended okay. Pretty soon I'll be starting on the wings.
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Airframes
Benevolens Magister
Good stuff, and it's going to be an impressively large model - I have one built in 1/48th scale, and that's big enough !
Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
I honestly think fitting the fuze halves together is always the most nerve wracking part of building, especially on a kit with warped or mis-engineered parts. But you have compensated beautifully for each of the issues. I am very excited to see more photos of this monster. Out of curiosity what does she measure in length of the kit?
Crimea_River
Marshal
The fact that there was a large gap on the right side and not as much on the left side of cowl is what's caused the engine to point a little like Marty Feldman's eyes. Good work otherwise.
Tony Hill
Tech Sergeant
Good work and looks like you'll beat the problems.
Lucky13
Forum Mascot
Great work buddy!
Lucky13
Forum Mascot
Here's a color pick of a Mk 13
A Mk 13 torpedo undergoing maintenance in the Aleutian Islands 1943.
Lucky13
Forum Mascot
On the TBD, the Mk 13 was carried externally. Operational pictures taken prior to the Midway torpedo attack disaster indicate that the warhead section was gray, probably the same color as the bottom of the TBD, while the rest of the body was brass colored.
Tailhook Topics: U.S. Navy Aerial Torpedoes in World War II
- Thread starter
- #96
Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
The model is 15". I don't know what the wing span will be since I haven't yet decided to have one or more wing folded. It's big, but it's not huge. A 1:32 F-18D is huge!
Good pics of the torpedo. And thanks for the support, but hold on, there's more problems to be solved.
Had a rare working Sunday. Wife and daughter went to see "La La Land" (chick flick) and I got another work session in the shop.
I folded the PE liners, CA'd them to the outer bomb bay doors and painted the liners Chromate yellow. They fit nicely, but they're not going on until the plane is painted.
Terror struck!. The turret came out again and when I peered into the fuze's innards I see that the radioman's seat didn't lodge into the correct spot, but was upwards at a weird angle on top of the ammo box on the fuze side. So much for "fuze closing anxiety". And then I saw something much worse. The turret mounting ring was fractured AND it was not sitting against the fuze sides. Why? I checked the instructions to see if there was a clue to its orientation. There was, and I missed it. There's three lugs on the ring that captivate the turret; one on one end and two on the other. The end with the one lug faces foward. I had it facing backwards. I realized that the ring had one end wider than the other. I mistakenly thought that the wide part was foward. Nope. The fuze is actually a bit wider behind the ring.
To get this out while the fuze was glued together seemed impossible, but I persisted. I split the fuze a bit in front of the ring, used the fractered part as a way to manhandle the ring out after breaking the glue bonds holding it to the left fuze side. I got it out, reversed it and reglued it and fixed the broken fuze joints. It positioned the ring more centered under the opening AND it enabled the fuze to close more completely in front of the opening. I wondered why that joint kept popping open. Now I knew. Here it is correctly seated.
I'm leaving the turret off until the end of the build since that gun's going to get broken. I know I can snap it back in whenever I want to. Speaking of breaking guns, all this handliing ended up breaking the barrel off of the belly gun. I drilled and inserted brass 0.021" rod and re-glued it. It may break again, but not in that spot. I'll touch it up at the end.
I sanded and filed all the filled areas and then went back and re-scribed all the panel lines and rivet dots. After the primer goes on I'll see more areas needing work.
Next I attempted to create an intake trunk in the top of the cowl. Another builder did this so I should be able to also. I used my rarely-used pin profile copier to get the curve shape and made a cardboard template. I cut the pieces out of some styrene sheet and glued them in. The cowl didn't close at all.
I trimmed the trunk way back and added a floor to it. But the cowl still fits terribly.
I'm really bummed out about the cowl fit. The engine's orientation is making it impossible to get it right. In retrospect, there's no reason why the engine had to be glued to the shield when it was. It exposed the engine to lots of handling, and made it impossible to realign it for this specific reason.
So...I woke up this morning thinking about how to fix this. If I can cut the engine off of the shield, reshape the its back to bring the thrust line downward and then reglue the engine in a slightly lowered position, I could restore the geometry and get the front correctly fitted. I would use an epoxy to reattach the engine and would have the cowl fitted over it while it set so it would be in the right place. I just went downstairs and checked to see if I could get a razor saw behind the engine without breaking anything and I beleive I can. So stay tuned and we'll see how this works out.
Good pics of the torpedo. And thanks for the support, but hold on, there's more problems to be solved.
Had a rare working Sunday. Wife and daughter went to see "La La Land" (chick flick) and I got another work session in the shop.
I folded the PE liners, CA'd them to the outer bomb bay doors and painted the liners Chromate yellow. They fit nicely, but they're not going on until the plane is painted.
Terror struck!. The turret came out again and when I peered into the fuze's innards I see that the radioman's seat didn't lodge into the correct spot, but was upwards at a weird angle on top of the ammo box on the fuze side. So much for "fuze closing anxiety". And then I saw something much worse. The turret mounting ring was fractured AND it was not sitting against the fuze sides. Why? I checked the instructions to see if there was a clue to its orientation. There was, and I missed it. There's three lugs on the ring that captivate the turret; one on one end and two on the other. The end with the one lug faces foward. I had it facing backwards. I realized that the ring had one end wider than the other. I mistakenly thought that the wide part was foward. Nope. The fuze is actually a bit wider behind the ring.
To get this out while the fuze was glued together seemed impossible, but I persisted. I split the fuze a bit in front of the ring, used the fractered part as a way to manhandle the ring out after breaking the glue bonds holding it to the left fuze side. I got it out, reversed it and reglued it and fixed the broken fuze joints. It positioned the ring more centered under the opening AND it enabled the fuze to close more completely in front of the opening. I wondered why that joint kept popping open. Now I knew. Here it is correctly seated.
I'm leaving the turret off until the end of the build since that gun's going to get broken. I know I can snap it back in whenever I want to. Speaking of breaking guns, all this handliing ended up breaking the barrel off of the belly gun. I drilled and inserted brass 0.021" rod and re-glued it. It may break again, but not in that spot. I'll touch it up at the end.
I sanded and filed all the filled areas and then went back and re-scribed all the panel lines and rivet dots. After the primer goes on I'll see more areas needing work.
Next I attempted to create an intake trunk in the top of the cowl. Another builder did this so I should be able to also. I used my rarely-used pin profile copier to get the curve shape and made a cardboard template. I cut the pieces out of some styrene sheet and glued them in. The cowl didn't close at all.
I trimmed the trunk way back and added a floor to it. But the cowl still fits terribly.
I'm really bummed out about the cowl fit. The engine's orientation is making it impossible to get it right. In retrospect, there's no reason why the engine had to be glued to the shield when it was. It exposed the engine to lots of handling, and made it impossible to realign it for this specific reason.
So...I woke up this morning thinking about how to fix this. If I can cut the engine off of the shield, reshape the its back to bring the thrust line downward and then reglue the engine in a slightly lowered position, I could restore the geometry and get the front correctly fitted. I would use an epoxy to reattach the engine and would have the cowl fitted over it while it set so it would be in the right place. I just went downstairs and checked to see if I could get a razor saw behind the engine without breaking anything and I beleive I can. So stay tuned and we'll see how this works out.
Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
Repositioning the engine sounds like a lot of work, but if the cowl is giving you fit issues sounds the way to go. Not something I could manage at my current stage of skill, but I am looking forward to seeing how you manage. WIP pictures please cause this is certainly something we all may face at some point and would love to see how you manage it!
Lucky13
Forum Mascot
Doing great mate! 
- Thread starter
- #100
Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
Thanks! Well... I hope this is instructive since I did attack that engine problem.
I was successful in severing the engine from the shield using a fine toothed Xacto razor saw. I had enough room between the exhaust ring and the shield. It came off without screwing anything up too badly. Once off, I had the chance to really see what was going on with the fit.
Using the Dremel with a sanding disc at low speed I ground off the old glue surface and then removed some stock from the upper side so the engine would tip upward starting the thrust line adjustment.
During all this handling, I dropped the engine and broke off the exhaust pipe extension and OF COURSE I couldn't find it. Another part into the rift... So I measured the other one and machined one out of brass. Again, having a small lathe is a real savior. I've lost count of the small model parts that I've created with this machine.
I drilled a -.032" hole in the back end and soldered a rod of the same side into it as a mounting stud. I then dipped the brass into a blackening solution to help it hold paint better.
After drilling a simiar hole in the plastic exhaust ring, I CA'd the new pipe extenison in. This enabled me to fit the engine back onto the shield. I had to relieve the cutouts for the exhaust outlet so it would snuggle down a little better.
That intake trunk was still interfering with the top cylinders so I ripped it all out. The trial fit showed a nicely centered engine.
And here's the cowl in place showing the cowl actually fitting squared up as it should.
To get the angles right I added 0.040" of styrene shim which I've cemented in place. I'm not going to mount the engine now. I'm going to finish the rest of the model and mount the engine as one of the last steps. If you're planning on tackling this model, I would leave the engine off until near the end. There's nothing in the way forcing you to mount it when the instructions say, and if you're super-detailing the engine, most of those parts are very fragile and having that engine hanging out there during all the subsequent assembly just invites damage.
The shim really puts the thrust line down the middle. I have to check some construction drawings to see what that thrust line actually is. I'm sure it wasn't pointing upwards. You may also be able to adjust the thrust line early in construction by breaking an refitting the plate that the engine mounts glue to. It was right there that all this misalignment occurs.
Once again, waking up thinking about the problem found a workable solution. I have to admit, this one really had me stumped and annoyed since the cowl and the engine inside is a main focal point for a radial-powered aircraft. Having it all askew wouldn't work for me. It's not uncommon for early Trumpeter kits to have geometry problems. My grandson built their 1:32 F-18 Super Hornet and there was big fit problems in putting the fuze together.
And once again, you see how stress-free my retirement is when the worse thing I think about is the engine not fitting well on my ABM-3 model. Have to put things in perspective.
I was successful in severing the engine from the shield using a fine toothed Xacto razor saw. I had enough room between the exhaust ring and the shield. It came off without screwing anything up too badly. Once off, I had the chance to really see what was going on with the fit.
Using the Dremel with a sanding disc at low speed I ground off the old glue surface and then removed some stock from the upper side so the engine would tip upward starting the thrust line adjustment.
During all this handling, I dropped the engine and broke off the exhaust pipe extension and OF COURSE I couldn't find it. Another part into the rift... So I measured the other one and machined one out of brass. Again, having a small lathe is a real savior. I've lost count of the small model parts that I've created with this machine.
I drilled a -.032" hole in the back end and soldered a rod of the same side into it as a mounting stud. I then dipped the brass into a blackening solution to help it hold paint better.
After drilling a simiar hole in the plastic exhaust ring, I CA'd the new pipe extenison in. This enabled me to fit the engine back onto the shield. I had to relieve the cutouts for the exhaust outlet so it would snuggle down a little better.
That intake trunk was still interfering with the top cylinders so I ripped it all out. The trial fit showed a nicely centered engine.
And here's the cowl in place showing the cowl actually fitting squared up as it should.
To get the angles right I added 0.040" of styrene shim which I've cemented in place. I'm not going to mount the engine now. I'm going to finish the rest of the model and mount the engine as one of the last steps. If you're planning on tackling this model, I would leave the engine off until near the end. There's nothing in the way forcing you to mount it when the instructions say, and if you're super-detailing the engine, most of those parts are very fragile and having that engine hanging out there during all the subsequent assembly just invites damage.
The shim really puts the thrust line down the middle. I have to check some construction drawings to see what that thrust line actually is. I'm sure it wasn't pointing upwards. You may also be able to adjust the thrust line early in construction by breaking an refitting the plate that the engine mounts glue to. It was right there that all this misalignment occurs.
Once again, waking up thinking about the problem found a workable solution. I have to admit, this one really had me stumped and annoyed since the cowl and the engine inside is a main focal point for a radial-powered aircraft. Having it all askew wouldn't work for me. It's not uncommon for early Trumpeter kits to have geometry problems. My grandson built their 1:32 F-18 Super Hornet and there was big fit problems in putting the fuze together.
And once again, you see how stress-free my retirement is when the worse thing I think about is the engine not fitting well on my ABM-3 model. Have to put things in perspective.
