Made the connection between the new belly floor and rear plate permanent. Looks far from pretty right now because all of the seams need to be filled in and smoothed out which is going to take quite some work and time. Idler arms will be replaced with better looking examples from Formations.

Blergh. The side wall extensions proved to be a bigger job than imagined beforehand, both entire sides had to have the tops scribed off and repositioned higher with some additional styrene when the radiator housing proved to be taller than the unmodified Verlinden pieces. You may also note the new vent openings (?) that had to be relocated, the bottom strips on both extensions come from the Formations conversion set.

On the plus side this should be the last of the major structural work. Just need to reshape the aft ends of both side walls, tidy up overflow glue remnants, then permanently mount the radiator assembly and firewall in place plus all small bits and find some white engine bay paint to slap on.

Tailor made sponson plates in their rough and overside form.



And cut to match the upper hull with tape holding them at a slight bend as they stuck out a little too far below the hull for my liking, same thing for the extensions of the engine bay walls that were pointing inward somewhat.



Starting to look more like a Sherman on the outside already!

Was all work up to now concentrated on hull parts, today those were given a break to focus on shoring up the fighting compartment side of the firewall. Reasons being a plate that had to be grinded down in the middle for better accuracy as well as a radiator that looked off on multiple details.

On top you see the thingamabob that was scribed off, as you can see it does have the right grille but is not tall enough, luckily a better looking replacement (underneath) was at hand.
A couple of things come to mind: no end tanks, the grille supplied with it was a bar short and all pipework was missing. The latter was taken from the dinky looking original, end caps were bended from thin styrene and glued on after scraping away part of the radiator and the supplied grille hacked into just the horizontal bars. One by one those were glued onto the first vertical styrene strip starting with the outers, then the middle one followed by the two others. Only the "rubber" connecting hoses need to be made now but that has to wait until all parts are glued into position so that they can be measured to exacting length.

May take a break from the marathon building effort now because the next steps will mean a final clean up of the engine bay before paint, the first start on the fighting compartment plus mounting the idler arms.

May have an idea that involves thoroughly modifying the Verlinden radiator housing but will need a long hard look at how to hack the solid block to pieces without losing those parts I need to preserve.

The headache with the Verlinden parts continues.

Both vertical fuel tanks are not only too short but their height is too low at the same time, which means the air cleaners have to move up along with them.
2 shallow recesses that are supposed to be access hatches on either side sit too low in the firewall, the top edges of both sidewalls are too thin and the vertical openings near the firewall need to be moved further aft.
Only a very thin slice of the radiator assembly can be used because the rest is woefully inaccurate and will have to be replaced by lots of scratchbuilding with thin styrene.

On top of that I have to move the access door in the rear hull plate down 1mm and I STILL don't know the story on when the weld seam was introduced on the sponson plates.

Next step is to carefully remove the side access hatches and reposition them further upwards.

Firewall and one fuel tank modified, incorporated the recess at the same time which will show up in later pictures. Both need to be positioned ever so slightly outwards in addition to the height and length increase. Apologies for the crappy pic as wanted to post the latest update while fresh.

The other fuel tank done, some tweaking and grinding in places where the fit was too snug or things were in the way and voila, fits like a glove. Hope you can see the slight recess in the right area.

Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves?
Great work Man!

Why don't you dig, how beautiful it is out here. Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change??

Thanks Paul, it's a lot of work but we are slowly getting there. Verlinden did not do a very good job on their homework I have to say so some Moriarty sounds are inevitable unfortunately. Added a 1/3rd size extension to the length of both fuel tanks and now they look just like the real thing. Engine mounts require some trimming as does the custom bottom plate.

Bought 2 bits with very tiny cutting heads to tidy up the rear from excess glue. The various bolts and nut/bolt combos also came in (bought from an Armorama sponsor ) so hopefully it won't be long before the bay will see some paint. Need to add 2 additional fans as Verlinden only put in 2 with the set and the fans from mine got damaged upon removing them from the casting block.. CRAP (in Moriarty's voice).. and butcher the radiator assembly into a custom contraption.

Slow progress has meanwhile been made with this one by adding the bolts/nuts of the idler arms to the engine bay and constructing a custom radiator assembly based on the Verlinden piece. Firewall assembly is nearly complete with only minor clean-up to do, have already looked into modifying the first item of the fighting compartment.

Good quality pictures of an engine-less engine bay to clearly showcase all fuel/oil/fire suppression system lines are greatly appreciated and will likely get me to finish the engine bay sooner than planned.

Returning to this one after a stint of aircraft building. Had to take on a few projects in between to spend a little less work on because the extensive surgery is a LOT of work, not just in material but also for the cranium to figure out what everything needs to look like.

Flattened the rear plate completely because it started becoming a mess from the rebuild, meaning new exhaust mounts had to be made from scratch. Both sponson plates did not survive the handling and will be replaced by better ones using the now obsolete examples as templates.

Right now this is the latest. Hope to be starting on the fighting compartment now.

With construction on the back section largely over it is time to start on the front. Again lots of trimming by dremel and sanding to make the grey section fit in.

As a result of some moderator [auto-censored] on a Facebook group who felt like being a rule-Nazi I will not be continuing my contributions to this forum anymore. It has been nice talking to people on here, I am out.

Mission accomplished moderator of https://www.facebook.com/groups/230736313769483/, you f*cked someone out of socialising for their hobby.

well it's a shame to loose you and this WIP. I was really looking forward to seeing it completed.