I thank you gentlemen. It's appreciated.
The wheel wells have been finish painted and grimed up. I'm not overly happy with the close-up shots but am pretty satisfied with the results when looked at "live". The close-ups reveal many imperfections that, when not magnified, look fine in real life. I keep having to remind myself this is 1/48 scale.
The first 4 pics below show the final results. Starting this morning with the primed pieces seen in the above post, I cleaned off as much of the debris as I reasonably could within the tight confines of the wells and then preshaded the ribs and shadow areas with black. Once that was dry, I set about airbrusing a coat of RLM 02, allowing the preshaded areas to show. After the RLM 02 was dry, I lightened a bit of it with white and went over the high points with a fine brush. Then came the hose and oil tank, painted with a rubber mix I use for tires and RLM 66, respectively. Next came the hydraulic lines, painted with Humbrol Aluminum, followed by an oily wash to darken the shadows. Finally, using the thin wash, I flicked the brush into the well to get the random oil and dirt stains that were inevitably present in this area.
Below, for comparison, is the plain well as it looked when I started this
With the main wells done, I started on getting the brake lines attached to the main gear struts (below). This is pretty tricky as this assembly is extremely delicate. I can't remember how many times I've broken the leg on the hydraulic cylinder in the upper left of the picture. The first time was when I cut it from the tree and I've repaired it at least 5 times since as it's the only thing that stops the assembly from twisting before it's secured in the well.
That's it for now. Back to work tomorrow so limited progress expected over the next few days. Thanks again for your compliments and interest.