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Tech Sergeant
Excellent stuff!
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Hi Andy!Let's start with the oil coolers. Tamiya does a good job of replicating the labyrinth of ducting to these coolers. It's good that I didn't paint these on the sprue as I would otherwise have been removing a lot of the paint for the glue surfaces. Each duct is made of 6 parts which, needless to say, fit together perfectly. Below you can see one finished assembly at left and the various parts that make up the finished assembly at right.
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Here's one partly assembled main wheel bay. I need to shoot some more aluminum paint in here as I removed some ridges on the coolant pipe and glue seams on the duct to the turbo. I'll then need to pick out a few parts in black and give it all a wash to grubby it up (the wall was done previously but not the roof).
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Some of the parts have a moulded-in "L" or "R" but this assembly didn't so I had to mark it with a Sharpie. Here's a closer view of the front bulkhead showing the delicate undercarriage structure that takes a bit of patience to assemble. Again there will be another shot of paint followed by a wash.
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Thanks again for following along gents. More tomorrow no doubt.
Thanks for the information! I saw your question in the other thread and tried to figure out where this filter might be. I too have never seen this relatively big element in a wheel well of a P-38 (mostly the restored ones).HiCATCH 22 Yves. Coincidentally, I was about to post these pictures. Tamiya have included the parts for the dust filters in this kit but the instructions do not mention them at all. All they say is to cut off some mysterious lugs from the main undercarriage. This got me curious and I asked Davecww1 if his Tamiya F/G/H kit had these parts and he said yes and that, in fact, the instructions for that kit address how to install these parts. That prompted me to do some digging and I found a schematic of the arrangement in one of my books and I also posted a separate question on the topic here: P-38 Air Filter
I am inclined to install these filters unless someone can tell me that they do not belong on a post D-Day, France-based P-38J. I dry-fitted the filter halves together and pinched them onto the strut as seen here:
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When installed (temporarily) the assembly looks like this and the open end of the filter duct fits perfectly to the Tee in the intake duct:
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I never knew about this filter until I saw it on the sprues. The Academy kit I did a while back has no such provision and so I was pleasantly surprised to find this feature on the Tamiya kit and I learned something in the process.
I have never seen a picture of the installation on the actual aircraft and period pics of course don't reveal it since it's buried in the wheel well. If you or anyone else knows of the use, or non-use, of these filters on ETO P-38J's I'd love to know more if it hasn't already been addressed in the linked thread.
Geo - aware of what?I've been through my books and nothing in the English language ones. 147 page conversation here that involvedtomo pauk Maybe he is aware WI: NACA Modified P-38
The dust filter should be the item 31 on the P-38H diagram, or item 27 on the P-38J/L diagram. It required the wheel well to be opened (doh), for these to work.Dust filter installation as mentioned above
i was about to ask why the filter and intake were inside the wheel bay, that would be closed in flight ?The dust filter should be the item 31 on the P-38H diagram, or item 27 on the P-38J/L diagram. It required the wheel well to be opened (doh), for these to work.
During the 'normal' flight, the air entered through the ram air intake, item 81 or 59 on P-38H or 38J/L, respectively. Note the interconnected levers to shut or open the path for the air. Levers were connected to the commands in the cockpit for the pilot to operate them on the later P-38s, while the earlier models have had automatic operation.
Hope this helps
These new Tamiya kits are well researched as can bee seen by the fact dimensionally they are very accurate including their P-38. I added the filters in my build and showed you guys a picture of them fitted. There were no comments on whether they should be fitted or not and I was never able to find an actual period photo showing them fitted so assumed Tamiya was right.