RoG FW 190 A-8

[Greif8]

The next planned build was an FW190; I have Hasegawa, Revell of Germany and the new ZM kit covering this aircraft in the stash and had to choose which one to build.  After flipping a few coins the winner is the below kit, with some aftermarket items.

  

I have not yet decided on which markings to use, but the aircraft will be one that belonged to one of the Defense of the Reich wings.  A lesson I learned long ago when using aftermarket items that will probably have some fit issues is to think several steps ahead to try and head off, or at least minimize potential fit problems.  And also to dry fit the A/M stuff comparing it against the fit of the kit part, as far as that is possible at any rate.  

 

I chose to check the fit of the Eduard MG131 mounting hardware right at the start of the build.  Below is some of the process I did to try and keep fit issues at bay.

 

I built the kit MG tray and used a micrometer to check the demensions of the kit part against those of the Eduard part.  The Eduard part turned out to be slightly narrower then the kit part and I cut some Evergreen strip to size and added it to the sides of the Eduard part.  After some careful sanding I got to between 2/100th and 3/100th of a millimeter of the kit part size.  The lengths of the two parts were very nearly identical so nothing was done in the area.

 

The two different parts dry fit in place to check how close the fit is going to be.  I think this is close enough to avoid fit issues down the road when it comes time to install the forward canopy part and the engine bearer parts.

 

As you can see the Eduard part is close.  It is also a lot better detailed then the kit part, though if one is not going to open this area up the lack of detail on the kit part is not an issue. Though it is not in any photos of the dry fitting, I did use the kit part that replicates the main spar during dry fitting; I would have needed three or four hands to stabilize everything and take photos; this is a very fiddly area to dry fit!

 

Once I was satisfied that I'll be able to use the Eduard stuff without causing massive fit issues I pressed ahead with working on and installing the photo-etch that goes with this aftermarket mini kit.  First I removed some of the molded on items from the area where the P/E will go.

 

The P/E base part was glued onto the kit part and smaller P/E parts were assembled.  This was a straight forward job and did not pose any challenges.

 

The resin ammo boxes/ejection chutes are dry fit to check how they look; which is good enough for me as it turned out, so they are going to be glued in place in the next step.

 

Ernest

 

[Biggles87]

“Some” aftermarket items, don’t you have any more?  
 
John

[Greif8]

16 hours ago, Biggles87 said:

“Some” aftermarket items, don’t you have any more?  
 
John

 

HaHa!  And I have a couple more aftermarket things I plan to use!  

 

Ernest

[Greif8]

I decided to assemble the Eduard engine before starting on the kit itself.  The primary ides I have for the finished display will require both the kit engine and this one; however, if I screw up the Eduard engine, I can fall back on the kit engine, which is pretty nice, and change the final diorama look fairly easily.  Progress below.

 

The locating holes in the cylinder heads for placing brass/copper/etc rods needed to be enlarged and deepend to make placing the cut rods a bit easier. 

 

In progress shot of one of the cylinder banks.  I still need to add the rods that run between the cylinder heads.

 

The completed cylinder banks.  Adding the rods was straight forward and problem free.

 

I prefer to use copper wire for ignition wires rather then photo-etch because I like the look better.  In the photo below I am using the PE part as a templete to 

line up where to drill the holes for the round wire.  There will be little room to drill the holes, but I think I can do it. If I mess this up badly enough I can always

still use the photo-etch wires.

 

Photo of some of the drilled holes in the ignition ring.  I did not get them perfect, but I think they will be good enough.  

 

The engine parts seperated from their casting blocks and cleaned up prior to priming and spraying the base colors.  Getting the parts off their casting blocks

took some work, and seperating the fan disk and engine bearers was a tense time, but the only drama in the entire process was cutting the crap out of one of 

my fingers with the razor saw.  

 

Ernest

[MikeMaben]

Looks good, have fun Ern 

[Greif8]

8 hours ago, MikeMaben said:

Looks good, have fun Ern 

 

Thank you Mike!  The Eduard BMW 801D engine is a kit in and of itself, and I am adding to the difficulty by adding some wiring and plumbing.  I hope I can bring it off!

 

Ernest

[Greif8]

I primed and painted the base colors last night and have been working on the Eduard engine today.  Below is the progress.

 

Engine parts primed and painted.  I still have to do the detail painting in a few areas, but the engine is by and large painted now.

 

Closer view of some of the parts.

 

Construction of the front cylinder bank finished and ready for the wiring harness to be installed.

 

Poor photo but the wiring harness is in place.  I used .3mm copper wire that I first primed with metal primmer and then airbrushed a tan color.  I cut lengths 

of wire to fit their locations and flattened one end with a pair of non-serrated pliers.  The round end was glued in place on the ignition ring and the wire was

shaped to so that I could glue the flat end to the spark plug location.

 

Macro of two of the flat ends attached to their spark plugs.  

 

I attempted to simulate the wire couplings on the ignition ring where the wires attach by slowly building up layers of aluminium paint.  I was only moderately

successful with this idea as it looks decent at 30 or so cms away, but closer in not so much, as you can see in this macro shot. 

 

As challanging as the front wiring harness was to scratch build, it was a walk in the park compared to the rear one!  Below are two shots of what I have done thus

far.  The first one below shows my solution for attaching the .3mm wires so that they look like they are part of a continous run.  Though hard to see the molded wires

run up the rear of the part vertically where they terminate abutted to a molded retaining strap.  At this location, and three others, there is a flat piece of PE belonging

to the attachment alignment ring of the kit part.  The photo-etch is made to attach to the metal part, simulating the continous run, and then the individual wire run

their courses to the spark plugs at the rear of the cylinder heads.  Because I chose to use round wire I hade to modify thise area by first cutting a few 10ths of a

millimeterof the metal off.  I then drilled 5 .35mm holes in the edge of the resin part, after which I carefully cut a groove in the part wide enough for all 4 wires.

Those were first glued together at their ends and cut evenly; the end was bent in a curve and super glued into the groove.  Gee only three more such areas to do!     

 

The four wires run to their terminating points.  I don't think my idea using Kabuki tape to simulate the holding straps is going to work and I am probably going to end up cutting thin pewter straps and attaching those.  Forming the wires to run correctly, or at least close to correctly, is a challenge; and I have scratched and dinged both the wires and some of the surrounding area which of course means there will be some touching up to do later. 

 

My moaning above aside, I am enjoying this task as it pushes me to think of new solutions and try to execute them so that my idea(s) turns out looking

decent.  

 

Ernest

Edited October 1 by Greif8

[scvrobeson]

Beautiful looking engine. How did you possibly drill out those holes for the rods at the cylinder heads?

 

 

Matt 

[Greif8]

7 hours ago, scvrobeson said:

Beautiful looking engine. How did you possibly drill out those holes for the rods at the cylinder heads?

 

 

Matt 

 

Thank you Matt!  The resin parts have indents in them where holes need to be drilled, or one could carefully cut the wire to exact length to fit them.  I used a micro drill to drill out all the holes that I will be installing parts into.  Getting ready to start scratchbuilding some of the plumbing once I have finished cleaning up a few spots.

 

Ernest 

[Fanes]

Wonderful start Ernest - I'll be watching and taking notes, since the Revell A-8 is in my stash as well.
Regarding the Kabuki tape for the cable straps: I tried that as well (on my Wildcat build, I guess) and it came loose after some time.
Had to fix all strips with a dot of CA...

On my recent Bf 108 build the straps were fabricated from adhesive aluminium tape (the floor insulation kind) and it's holding up well!

 

Cheers

Joachim

[Greif8]

Vielen Dank für die für die Komplimente Joachim!  

 

I  ended up putting a drop of CA glue on the ends of the tape, just as you did.  Keeping my fingers crossed it holds.  

 

It looks like the outside riding season is coming to an end.  I am trying to ride 6000 kms outside this year and I am at 5259 kms right now.  I hope we get a few more fairly nice riding weather days in Bavaria before I have to train with Zwift for most of my rides for the rest of the year.

 

Ernest

[Greif8]

Finished general construction of the Eduard engine today and started doing some scratchbuilding on it; really just adding some fluid lines and maybe a control line or two.  Below are photos of where things stand right now.

 

The completed BMW 801D engine.  Installing the exhausts was more then a little tense as they fit very tightly.  If I build this engine again in the future I am going to change some of the construction sequence to make that a little easier.  The engine is very nice and should look good on the model; I am hoping there won't be many fit issues but time will tell on that!  Though they took some work to make and install, I like the look of the scratchbuilt ignition wires better then how the kit supplied PE wires would have looked.  I will give the engine a final touch up once I am finished with the scratchbuilding I am doing to it.

 

Below are some shots of the scratchbuilding I did to install some of the oil lines.  The first two photos show the oil pump before I modified it.  Real oil pumps for 

this engine had 9 connection points; the kit part has 5.  Given the limitations of scale, 5 is about the limit to be fair.

 

 

I added connectors to the pump to make lines look more realistic where they connect.

 

The brown painted lnes were then added to the five connection locations.  Three of the five "lines" do not terminate.  The one pointing away from the rear of the engine would connect to the oil tank, but there is not one, so it will run off into the dark hidden recesses of the fuselage.  Ditto two of the lines that would have run to the oil cooler, which is located in the armored nose of the aircraft.  There will be no way to connect those lines with the nose in place, and they would be invisible at any rate.  The two lines that have conneting points on both ends run between the oil filter (the brown cylindrical item) and the oil pump.  

 

I had considered leaving the nose off, but I have never seen any photos of FW190's with their nose removed while at their airfield.  I am sure there are a few, but I have not seen any.  I think removing the nose would have only been done during a major overhaul somewhere in the rear areas.

 

 

 

Ernest

Edited October 2 by Greif8

[Shoggz]

This is great stuff Ernest!

[Thunnus]

Great work on the engine Ernest!

[Dpgsbody55]

That engine looks great.  It should look very good with all the other work you've done in that area of the model.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael