Hi all - some (very) slow progress due to work and the aforementioned puppy....
The engine will be a focus of any model with the cowls off. The lack of a readily available aftermarket Mercedes D.IIIa forced me to adopt an approach that Chad took with his 1/48 build; i.e. looking to utilise a D.IIIa from the old Roden Fokker D.VII kit. One snag; I didn't have an old Roden Fokker D.VII kit and didn't want to go out and buy one just for this. What I did have, however, was a previously built engine from an old (and now long gone) Roden Fokker D.VII that I built circa 2007. I had added some detail at the time but after years of banging around in the spares box, it was in this state:
Some clean up and help would be needed to bring this motor back to life. Like the Eduard kit engine, one of the annoyances (for me) is the moulded in ignition wire tube, running front to back along each cylinder. This is unrealistic and needs to be removed. So, pulling everything apart and starting to trim these pieces off was step 1:
I then needed to strip the paint, and smooth out the cylinders; this was the most time consuming part. After much sanding, checking, and more sanding, I had an engine that was good enough (not great, but good enough) as a basis for the rest of the engine:
Details were then added, including rocker arm springs and rocker arms, distributor cap details, spark plugs, ignition wires, and some other gismology here and there. I didn't add anything at the rear or under the engine bearers as these areas won't be visible on the finished model. The results, though far from perfect, are good enough to stand on its own:
And in its future home:
The close up photos show a few things I still need to address... sigh... but the hard work is done. Next up i'll scratch build the fuel tanks, which sit behind the engine.
Cheers,
Brad C
