Finally here is the work I did with cutting the tail section off one of the Tamiya P-51D's and grafting it onto a P-51B to make "Thunderbird" a reality. I could have used my Accurate Miniatures kits to do this, but I have plans to build one of them up eventually as a Paul Mantz racer, and the other one as Jackie Cochoran's Green Air Race plane. So I decided not to use these AM kits. Plus I had a reason to use the previously mentioned "fillet-less" resin tail section for an early model P-51D-5NA Mustang.
Thunderbird is going to be built using a 1/48 Tamiya P-51B Razorback. I cut the tail sections off this kit, as well as a Tamiya P-51D, with intentions of swapping them.
This shows the fuselages before surgery...
The process is started. I used a Tamiya razor saw to do this.
I cut them along a panel line, just as the real plane was done. The Mustang fuselage was assembled from smaller sections. Where I cut the model actually represents one of these sections.
Initially I tried to glue the tail sections back on to the correct fuselages. You can see the Razor back now has a fillet ahead of the fin, while the bubble top does not. However, my seams were off a little on the bubbletop. So I removed the plastic tail section before it was completely dried.
Here you can see the Ultracast resin tail replacement. It appears to be a drop fit part. So I have an extra fillet less tail section for now... Until I decide to do something with it that is.
I decided to reinforce the inside of the joint. So I added a small strip of sheet plastic on the inside. It is a small white square.
Next up is the landing gear bay modifications. On the Tamiya kit, the landing gear wheel wells are blanked off. This is not how the real Mustang is. Up until the release of the Airfix kit, this was a common theme. I have a Hasegawa and a Revell Mustang in the stash, and they are all like this too.
This shows you how the main gear wheel wells are boxed in.
This next photo shows the assembled wheel well from the Airfix kit. You can see the differences. It becomes even more visible once in position.
So I had an idea... Oh No ! Here he goes again... It's OK, it worked well in the end.
I started out by carefully cutting away the rear wall of the gear bay. This will allow me to scratch build the wing spar, which is actually a part of the real wheel well on a full sized Mustang. The wing in the top of the photo is un touched. The bottom one has been cut on.
Using pictures I took of the real thing, I started cutting plastic...
Here you can see the difference by simply cutting away this rear wall. Now it is opened up like it should be. This took me around 5 minutes so far...
Here the top wing has been modified. You can see where I cut away the plastic very well in this picture.
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1. This area needs cut off.
Tamiya has a wheel well insert that covers the inner portion of the well. It too needs a little bit of trimming. I have marked where the inner section needs trimmed. This needs cut off, because it is molded at an angle. In order for it to fit in line with the main wing spar, it has to be straight. So off it goes !
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1. .030 plastic added
2. Here too
Using some .030 sheet plastic, I added two small strips. These will line up with the main spar when I'm done... This gets done on both sides. 10 minutes into the conversion now... all while taking my time.
The upper wing has the landing gear bay details molded into it. It was very easy to add details here. I added some thin .005 strips of plastic along the top side. This represents the stringers used inside the gear well. These give the wing structure strength and make it strong enough to walk on the upper surface of the wing.
I simply joined my strips to the existing.
Then I scratched some lengthened wing ribs. These were extended back to where the wing spar should be. The wing spar was also fabricated and glued in place.
This is how it looked after a little more than an hour's worth of work. I made master patterns, so I might be doing this to the rest of my Tamiya Mustangs.
If you try this at home please be careful not to ruin your parts or cut your fingers. Both can happen.
This is the end result. Now the Tamiya Mustang looks much better in my opinion. It will look even better once painted and the gear is installed.
Here you can see how the modified wing is a little different from the box stock version.
I didn't want to cut away any more than necessary. This affected the strength of the wings. If you are not careful it could possibly affect the dihedral as well. I mocked this one up, and so far it looks good.
I did not try to modify the leading edge of the wheel wells. They are not accurate either, but this is a huge improvement I think, and not too hard to do. This will be highly visible when the model is on display, especially if the penlight Police get going... 😉
The front spar is not all that visible, likely next to impossible to see, when the model is on display. It only becomes that way if someone picked up the model... and they better ask first ! or risk bodily harm 😉
As always, comments are encouraged, and thanks for stopping by.
