P-51C Mustang Engine and Supercharger Details

The left side of the engine has a few less details than the right side, but this doesn't mean that you can't add a few little things to spice it up. One of the lines on this side is connected to the intercooler with a rubber hose held in place with metal clamps. I first cut and bent a paperclip to simulate the line. Then I carefully masked it off and painted the end with a few layers of gray paint to simulate the rubber hose.

I cut a thin strip of soda can aluminum and bent it around another piece of paperclip to create the curved shape. Once the pieces were glued in place, they look very much like metal clamps holding the rubber tube in place. I'll admit, they could have looked a little tighter, but sometimes you just have to live with what you got.

Another paperclip was used to make the second main line on this side. I couldn't see where the top of this line connected on the real engine, so it won't be seen on the model either. That's one of the benefits of model building. Its all an illusion sometimes.

The details on the supercharger can be a little confusing to look at since there are a bunch of black rods that seem to wind all over it, but really its quite simple. First a little surgery was necessary. I'm not sure what this rod assembly is called (Its part E13 in the kit) but its placed too low to be accurate.

So I had to carefully cut it off and raise it up. The red arrow shows the original location and how much it had to be moved up.

This little stub here was also not the correct shape and was removed.

The replacement was made using .030" plastic rod and a blob of JB Weld that was filed to shape. The finished part is seen painted and installed in a later picture.

On both sides of the carburetor duct is a simple round pivot point that is missing on the kit. This was added by drilling a small hole and inserting a .030" plastic rod that was cut to length and painted black. A thin aluminum wire was fastened to the center of the completed pivot point.

The connecting rod was fairly simple to make. A blob of JB Weld was used to create the connection down at the carburetor sanded in a similar fashion as several other lines on the engine.

With the new piece painted and added to the top of the supercharger, the little connecting rod could be added.

On the right side of the supercharger were a few more aluminum lines as well.  These were made like the others...with pain and aggravation.

At the bottom is a small arm (seen above) made of thin plastic. To make the connecting rod here, I bent the wire and then flattened the ends by squeezing them with pliers to simulate the appearance of the actual part.

Here is the arm in place on the engine.

Only a few more details to go and the engine will be finished.....finally.

P-51C Engine Ignition Harness continued

I finished installing the ignition wires on the other side of the top of the engine in the same manner as discussed in the previous blog. Here's what it looks like.

For the ignition wires on the sides of the cylinders, I had to use a different approach. I cut short lengths of the metallic string and glued a short piece of .020" plastic rod to the end and painted the rod silver.

To prepare the harness for attachment to the engine, I cut a very thin strip of .010" thick and formed them into J-shaped clips that were glued in the proper position on the harness.

I painted the new pieces silver and glued the harness in place. With the wires I cut the plastic rod a little shorter so it matched a scale length and test fit and cut the string so it was the correct length to reach from the harness to the spark plugs, which are nothing more that .020" plastic rod glued in the appropriate locations on the cylinders.

 

I glued the end of the string to the harness first and then glued the rod to the spark plugs at a slight angle. Use a picture of the actual Merlin as reference to get this right. Don't run the wires straight to the spark plugs. The real wires had a little bend and slack in them. The wires on the Merlin were attached to the plugs with spherical joints which is easy to create using some thick adhesive. I tried using super glue first, but it shrinks when it sets so it didn't create the right shape. But I had some JB Weld laying around, so I mixed some up and dabbed a little blob in the joint and it formed the perfect shape. 

After a little silver paint, the ignition wires look extremely similar to the ones on the real Mustang.

The first side of the engine is done.