The Build
Engine assembly and painting…
Kitty Hawk has the builder start with the engine, so I figured I might as well go with that recommendation. After all, I love painting, detailing and weathering radials. However, my excitement for the kit became short lived given the quality of the engineering and fit here.
Detail is good, but the problem is very much in engineering; both of how the kit goes together, and sprue design. Small delicate parts are attached with huge, beefy sprue gates that have been located without much thought. You really need to take care removing small and delicate parts such as the ignition ring.
As frustrating as this is, it’s easy to overcome. The real problems are with the instructions, and how the pieces fit together. With the engine you must take care to do some test-fitting, and looking ahead in the instructions to make sure you have everything where it’s supposed to be. Even then, get out your drill because I’ve found that NONE of the locating tabs for parts fit into their locating holes; the most egregious being just how oversized the locating tabs on the exhaust stacks are.
After extensively test-fitting the various engine parts to get a sense of how to proceed with construction, I was ready to paint the individual parts. Cylinder banks were painted with Alclad Aluminum. The gearbox needed to be sprayed Intermediate Blue. Here I used Mr. Paint. I then turned to my go-to Vallejo Model Color for brush painting the black rods and cylinder heads (following reference photos).
Alclad Exhaust Manifold was used for the exhaust stacks. At this time I also broke out a bottle of Mr. Paint Bronze Green to spray the engine mounts and interior parts.
Mr. Paint is a relatively new player on the paint scene, and they’ve been getting a lot of praise for their pre-thinned lacquers. They already have a huge range of colors (191 last I heard). I wanted to give them a go with this build, especially since they offer the characteristic bronze green that until now had to be custom mixed.
With then engine details painted, I assembled everything (again taking care to align it all correctly). Now it was time to do some weathering. I started with a black enamel wash on the cylinder heads. Then using Ammo of Mig Engine Grime around the crankcase and in target areas to dirty things up a bit.