P-51C Mustang Engine details

Now that the engine has been fully assembled, its time for some detailing fun. It's gonna take a great deal of research to figure out where all the oil, fuel, coolant, and ignition lines connect, but that's part of the fun. I started out by making the ignition harnesses out of some .040" plastic rod and then cutting things to length.

Here are the parts painted. The black part in the middle was made from .040" plastic rod that was heated and bent. This will connect the two ignition harnesses and the magneto.

While the paint was drying on the ignition parts, I experimented with making my first oil line. I used thin aluminum wire to make the line. I found some hobby hanging wire made by Ook at Home Depot. Ook is a company that makes wall hanging hardware for pictures, frames, etc. But they also have various size aluminum wire which is a perfect diameter for 1/32 scale fuel lines. As an airframe and powerplant student I would call this stuff lockwire or safety wire, which you could also use. However the Ook stuff is cheaper and you get a lot of it. Its easily flexible, but stiff enough to stay where you put it. Some other small wire, if you bump it, it bends. But as you can see, this stuff works and looks great.


 And it looks even better connecting my scratchbuilt oil relief valve and oil filter. Soon there will be alot more lines crawling all over the engine. But unfortunately I'm moving, so the work might have to wait a while