Attaching the engine

Today is the big day: the monocoque will be joined forever with the engine, until death, or a cat, does them part... The operation was not straightforward. Without the bottom black tubes, the engine fits quite easily: the bracket slide in and the engine is put into place thanks to one plug on each cylinder bank. With the tubes, nothing moves, so I have to widen the holes at the bottom of the rear bulkhead in order to give more room to them. Nothing is quite rosy though, as the engine seems to be tilted upward at the rear...

Last details on the engine

The wiring is now in place and each piece of flexible tubing glued into place. Cyano glue was necessary to join those different materials and to save the time usually dedicated to applying some pressure on both parts until the bond correctly together. The black tubes are bundled together with a small strip of electrical tape.

Finishing the engine

The cam cover highlights were painted flat aluminium and the spark plug holes flat red. The flat red from Tamiya is a real pain: it is as clear as their flat black and strips itself when it dries a bit too much on the brush. Many coats have been necessary to get a dark finish, not really astounding even by my poor standards!






The various accessories were painted in different shades of metalic paints: chrome aluminium, flat aluminium, silver titanium, and Citadel's chainmail and boltgun metal. The golden bits are from Citadel too, but I should have made a mix of gold and mithril silver to cut the brightness of the paint a bit.

Continuing the engine

I did not describe the assembly of the gearbox as it is completely straightforward. I made however early mistakes, as I wanted to make parting lines (those on the cylinder block) disappear and found out later that they were useful for painting! The whole part was primed again before being painted. As usual, the primer was a great help for highlighting surface defects and correct them.

The whole assembly was painted flat aluminium, except the cam covers (they will be dealt with at a later stage) and the strap and pulley side. The later was evenly painted with semi-gloss black. Seeing how the engine will be attached to the body, the details will never be visible, so I just made sure to have an even colour and no missed spot. Two layers of paint were sufficient enough to give the engine a nice metallic aspect, but a third would have been required if I wanted to leave it as is. My goal is to weather the engine through a black ink wash and a flat aluminium highlight over it.

The wash is a tricky thing if no attention is paid to it. By its principles, you drop a liquid paint into crevices to highlight the tiny shapes. Consequently it follows the basic rule of fluids: it flows from the higher spots to the lower spots. That means you need to be careful when you leave the engine to dry: the washed portions must be perfectly horizontal otherwise the ink will accumulate in the lower recesses. That also means that you cannot apply the wash on every side at the same time. So patience is your friend for this operation. The flat aluminium brush I did after that took away most of the wash to leave only what was in the deepest recesses.

The cam covers are painted flat black, except for the tips where flat aluminium was used. As with the dashboard, successive layers were applied perpendicularly from one another to ensure a good paint covering and to minimise brush patterns.

Begining the engine

As work on the body is to take some time, mainly waiting time for the putty to harden, I decided to have a go at the engine. I have sprayed some primer on all the parts still attached to benefit from their being easily accessible to the paint. Of course, there will be some job to cut out flash and mold lines when parts are separated and prepared to be cemented together.

I followed religiously the instruction manual. I first glued the upper part of the block to the gearbox side end, and assembled the lower side of the block (side walls and pan). This sub-assembly was flexible enough when I glued it to the strap and pulley end. My aim was to align the wavy patterns and I will deal with the protruding edges at a later stage.




I then assembled the lower and upper sections in two steps. First I cemented the upper part to the strap end, and once this hard enough I glued the lower part to the gear box end. That gave the free play between part required to make a good alignment in preparation for the cam covers. What is left is a good deal of work on the parting lines to make them disappear.