Thanks Aaron. Here's the result of today's work:
First off, I completed the pully cable for the harness in prep for closing the rear canopy. I know there's a rail at the top that should go in but to make it fit the canopy would need to be thinned down considerably so I'm leaving this off.
Next, with the engine block omitted, the exhaust stacks had to be supported on the inside. The arrangement I came up with is shown below with spacers made from card and the struts between the exhausts cut to length from sprue and glued.
The next pic shows the nose section with the exhaust stacks in and the lower cowl in place. Unfortunatley there's a bit of a step to deal with where the various cowl panels meet. The round plate behind the spinner was filed down to fit properly in the hole before gluing this in. It will also need to be sanded flat to receive the spinner. Also seen in this view is the hole drilled in the port wing root for the fuel cooler.
Next we have the finished rad covers with the linkages completed. The flanges on these covers had to be
substantially filed down to eliminate the step where it meets the lower wing surface. These are shown before the thinning.
Finally, here's the underside after various rounds of puttying and sanding. I noticed a few more sink marks in front of the flaps that were filled with primer and sanded smooth. A few more passes of putty are required to get the underside to my liking. The supercharger intake has been left off pending completion of the filling in this area.
Thanks again for your interest.