I'm progressing in fits and spurts. Still have not figured what to do for seatbelts yet. Added a throttle lever and a fuel primer pump on the left console.
Putting the cockpit aside, I started looking at the wheel well opening details. The kit comes with a few things but based on the Eduard 1/48 and the Hasegawa 1/32 kits, some things are missing.
I dry-fit the wings and fuselage to see what can be seen from the wheel wells to give me a better idea of how to add some details.
There is a big space on the right hand side. The Eduard and Revell kits have some sort of coolant/fluid tank so that becomes the first order of business. Started off with a piece of sheet styrene. Actually two pieces that have been glued together.
Using a file, I chamfered off the corners...
Chamfered all of the right angle edges as well...
Smoothed the edges into curves with sandpaper... you can see a picture of the tank from the Hasegawa kit that I used for reference. Lot of work to make a Chiclet.
Fast forward and I've base painted the parts of the back engine plug. The left side of the picture below shows the results of my pathetic scratchbuilding progress to date. The black tubing is from a Tamiya motorcycle kit and bound with strands of electrical wire and will fit in the drilled holes I've made into the bulkhead. The completed coolant tank has been fitted with tubing made from stretched sprue and will be glued directly onto the fuselage side. I wish I could assemble and finish the plug in one piece and take a picture of it but it is going to have to be pieced together in parts.
The wheel well is filling up but I think I need to add a few more bits and pieces of tubing.
I had to take a break from that scratchbuilding... it hurts my head! Since the exhaust pipes need to go in before the fuselage halves are joined. I thought I'd paint the pipes and the fuselage surrounding the pipes and then mask that area off to save on touch-up painting at the end. The paint on the exhausts is really rough because I had a brain fart and was using acetone to thin the paint when I should've been using iso alcohol.
I had to throw away a whole batch of custom brewed grunblau 76 (aka 84) because of this mistake but luckily I caught it before it caused major damage. The grunblau is eyeball-mixed using the paint chips contained in the Model Art 190D/Ta152 book that I have.