Thanks very much guys. Lots to show you today as I've been off all week and had time to spend on this project.
The wheel well roof got a coat of aluminum paint and the canvass covers for the hydraulic lines at the front were painted brown. The aluminum didn't come out that great since I spent zero time on surface prep but, this being a wheel well, it's not going to be that clean anyway when I'm done with it. The black fuel line was also added, and the little windows were filled in with Testors Clear Parts Cement which did a nice job.
I have not yet shown you the rear wall of the wheel well. I thinned the plastic around the openings to make this look a little more realistic and added some struts and inspection panels to the rear walls. Also, the Hurricane carried two starter cranks, one in each wheel well and you can see one of them on the outboard wall.
Now came time to glue the wheel well roof to the walls and install the wing. As it turned out, my measurements resulted in a bit of a tight squeeze and I had to thin the wing upper halves a bit. Even so, I had to start by gluing the back of the wing first and clamping it overnight. Note how the front springs up a bit.
While the glue was curing, I turned my attention to the radiator. The Hobbycraft kit is OK from a distance but, up close, the lack of detail is apparent. The kit came with a very basic forward grille molded into the housing and a PE part for the back of the rad. The problem is that the circular oil cooler is actually supposed to be recessed in the front and sticking out the back so modifications were in order.
I did not show all the steps to get us to the views below but I simply drilled out the cooler on the front grille and made my own by scoring a piece of plastic card and adding a piece of tape for the center frame. Stretched sprue pieces were added to form the 4 vertical baffles. The back was not quite as straight forward. I tried punching out the oil cooler grille which was about 80% successful as I bent the PE and broke a piece out which, fortunately, is near the bottom edge and not easily seen. Won't do that again! Then I glued a piece of plastic tube to the punched out hole and glued the punched grille to the top of the tube. After installing these parts in the housing and gluing the housing to the wing, the various actuator rods and braces were added to the louvre which I cut and bent open earlier.
Back to the wheel well. The air bottle had received a coat of paint and a stencil decal and the word "AIR" which I penciled in on the heads. I then glued the bottle into the recess and added the support straps which are made of aluminum foil tape. After the bottle was in, I added the coolant hose and its pipe clamps, also made of foil tape. Lead wire air lines come out of each end of the bottle. In addition, two more struts were added and, finally, support forks for the oleos with brown-painted wooden blocks were cut from card and glued in to round out the assembly.
Next it was on to the elevators. Again, a lot of missing detail here and I decided to deflect these downward to add some interest to the model. On the left is the modified elevator and, on the right, the piece as originally supplied. I had to file flat the trailing edge and scribe on the trim tabs which were a big miss on the kit
Also added were rudder cables which were completely omitted from the kit. You can also see that I drilled out the fairing at the elevator and added a connector rod between the elevators
So as of now, I've glued on the elevators which are now curing. Hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow and post more pics as I will be going out of town on Saturday and will not be working on the model til I get back on the 30th. Thanks for your interest guys.