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AMT/ERTL A-20J Havoc

I'm not a rivet counter or a stickler for factual detail but sometimes you do need to go the extra mile on these older kits. The Bombardier's station is very spartan and really does need "something" to jazz it up. I added some ribbing and other bits. I can't seem to find any detailed photos of this section so it's pure artistic license. Not tons but enough, i'll add a couple of wire looms and then the bomb site and that it.



The engine cowling has 9 exhaust fairings each unfortunately these are molded blobs so they need to each be opened - 18 of them!!





A lot of effort but it makes a lot of difference...



The engine nacelles also get a bit of a face lift from the Eduard set...

BEFORE....


AFTER......


Another piece that I don't usually bugger around with is the engine itself. Most times some good, creative paint work will do the trick but in this case there is just not enough detail and the problem is how far to go and when is enough, enough.

This is the kit engine fully built....


As you can see it really is just too little. I test fitted it in the nacelle and it remains pretty prominent so I have decided i will spend a wee bit of effort here. The first step is to add some wiring. Just to explain for the detail Police, the spark plug connectors originate from the ring around the crank case but this is too small so I drilled the holes for these from behind the ring....28 of them per engine!!



....and another 7 per engine for each cylinder and 14 more per engine for the inter-ear drain tubes, that's a total of 96 holes.

 
Let's use the correct engine for reference though.

The A-20 had 14 cylinder Wright R-2600 engine

1024px-Wright_R-2600_1.jpg


not the 18 cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-2800.

P-47_R2800-2_late.jpg


Cheers, Christian B)
 
Thanks for the usefull info Phantom, i'll have to just forge ahead with my version now. I'm only really interested in making it look way better than the stock kit so mine is going to be a hybrid between the two :snoopy
 
To be perfectly honest, you might want to slide the engine in the cowl and check if you can even see the top of the cylinder heads. It might be all in vain....?

I like the way you're going with this build though . Looking good to me (y) (y)

Cheers, Christian B)
 
Got some good building time in over the weekend and got the fuselage buttoned up and some other bits done....







 
Thanks Guys, well quite a bit of progress (couple of ups and downs too) but we are almost ready to throw some colour at this sucker.....





Just got to finish the engines and nacelles then on to the paintwork. Got the first engine almost done....

 
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