While the two putty bearers were setting up, I started looking at Option 2 which, it appears, may turn out to be better than the putty ones. The picture below shows the two resin bearers, the one having had the lightening holes hollowed out and the other as it has been removed from the mold. As you can see, the one removed from the mold has the lightening holes on the inside and the outer face is completely flat. Removing and replacing the bearings on this one and adding a piece of card to the other may result in an acceptable bearer.
We'll see. In the meantime, I moved on to work some more on the engine parts and cowl. The resin cast lifting eyes on the block were removed and replaced with copper wire and the resin oil thermometers were glued to each side. On the underside of the gear box can be seen an added lube pipe that I had to scratch build as the orginal resin casting broke here.
Next we have the annular oil tank. Although only one engine block is supplied by CMK, they supplied two oil tanks, both of which do not extend far enough around the gear box. In the picture below, the as-supplied part is shown at top right. I made the second piece sacrificial, having cut it in half and away from the back plate to supplement the other piece.
The finished tank with the added bits and the seams hidden with furnace duct tape.
Next it was on to the lower engine cowl. After having dry fit the engine into position, it became evident that the inner surface of much of the lower cowl in front of the oil cooler would be visible, so some detailing would be necessary. The locating pins and the ejector pin mark would have to be removed and ribs added.
The finished lower cowl with added ribs made of card and sprue is shown below. The rear edge of the cowl was also thinned down with my Dremel tool.
Finally, the resin side panels are added. However, these are not perfect in terms of fit and I may remove these in favour of cutting up the kit-supplied upper cowl. Need to check into that.