SPA Modeler

I confirmed that the tail wheel fits without issue on the new metal leg.


The plastic leg was cut off an a hole drilled in its place to accommodate the new leg at the correct angle.


To further secure the leg in place, I added a blob of Milliput into the hollow and pushed the metal leg into it. Once dry, the hardened putty should solidify things.


A simple modification but the tail wheel is much stronger now.


Does anyone know... can the vinyl tail wheel be painted? Will Mr Surfacer 1000 as a primer coat help?

As someone pointed out, the wheel hubs are not close enough to the landing gear legs. There is a recess in the Trumpeter wheel part that is absent on the Barracuda part so I need to make an adjustment.


I did some trimming and prepared another set of axle inserts.



Here are the corrected landing gear legs.


With the wheels in place...

Much better, John. Looking great so far.

I love the larger scale on this beauty, excellent! Picking up a few tips along the way too.

Fantastic work! I agree with Lyle... the main landing gears looks a lot better.

I'm glad that somebody noticed the issue... it would've been embarrassing if it had gone past the painting stage looking like that!

I decided to work on the upper wings next and see what it would take to close the gun/ammo panels. I'm guessing that these panels were designed to be posed open to showcase the machine guns and ammo belts because the fit in the closed position isn't great.


The edges around the panels are very thin, which is good if you are posing them open, but the raised lip around the edges of each panel opening are deeper than the panels, causing them to drop below the surface of the wing when fully pressed into place.



There are different ways to address this issue... I decided to ring the openings with stretched sprue, effectively reducing the depth and bringing up the panels to the same level as the rest of the wing surface. It took a few tries using different sizes of stretched sprue.



I also added a shim to the free floating connection between the two panels to give that joint more strength. The last thing I want is to have a joint crack during painting because of a weak glue connection.


I'll let this sit and dry before I permanently weld the panels in place using Tamiya Extra Thin cement.


There are still some gaps but that's ok as long as the panels are level with the wing surface.

Nice job! I'm on the fence with Trumpeter kits. I've only done their 1/48 C-47. It looks awesome in the box, but once you get going there are issues. The biggest fit issue I had was the fuselage halves. I had to file down the outside of the bulk heads to get it to close. One big thing they missed was including Rebecca antennas. Which surprised me.

great fix!

keyda81 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 22, 2022 8:11 am Nice job! I'm on the fence with Trumpeter kits. I've only done their 1/48 C-47. It looks awesome in the box, but once you get going there are issues. The biggest fit issue I had was the fuselage halves. I had to file down the outside of the bulk heads to get it to close. One big thing they missed was including Rebecca antennas. Which surprised me.

Thank you Keyda! I'm not a huge Trumpeter fan either but from what I've read, the P-47D is one of their better efforts. I've also built their 1/32 Me262 before Revell released theirs. So... if there is a choice, I would go with another manufacturer but when it is the only game in town, I'll consider Trumpeter. Fingers crossed on this one!

LyleW wrote: ↑Tue Nov 22, 2022 8:12 amgreat fix!

Thanks Lyle! Just dabbling with things here and there until I get the cockpit aftermarket parts.

Another potential trouble spot that was pointed out to me was the tight fit of the landing gear legs into the wheel wells. The fit is indeed super tight so I sanded the square pegs down to allow an easier fit.




The bottom wings also have some separate panels that need to be installed.


Like the topside, I added a few shims and strips of stretched sprue to get the panel level with the wing surface and increase the glue area.


I went ahead and fused this one into place with Tamiya Extra Thin cement. Fit, after the shim and sprue treatment was very good with a positive glue bond all around the circumference of the panel.



Jumping over to the engine briefly... I have a question for P-47 experts. Here is the kit engine's gear reduction housing, magneto in the middle and two "turtleback" distributors on either side of the magneto. Are the distributors correct for an early Razorback? Sources say that Eileen was a P-47D-11-RE.


I've read a message board discussion about the Razorback and it was stated that the "teardrop" distributors were appropriate for P-47's prior to the D-20. If that is the case, I have a spare set of "teardrop" distributors from Vector that I could use.