Can anyone out there please tell me if there is any way that the landing gear doors can be postioned correctly on this model? I’ve been at this for about four hours and nothing I do will correctly position the doors. “Nothing I do” includes taking the entire landing gear assembly apart and reassembling it on the assumption that I had misaligned somthing. Driving forty miles to purchase another kit and starting the process over assuming that for some reason one of the origninal parts was somehow wrong. I even stooped to following the instructions. At this point I have come to the conclusion that there are only two ways for this to end A wildcat with no gear doors or a pile of melted plastic in the back yard.
Is there a secret handshake that I don’t know about?
Haven’t built the Tamiya, but I have built two Hobby Boss Wildcats, and if I recall the gear doors weren’t so much a problem since they kind of sat on the gear struts. On that kit, there was a center “bar” that was supposed to bridge the opening longways on the underside of the fuselage that just…did…not…fit. That and the gear assembly was a $$%(@#*! to attach on the HB kits.
I’ll try to have a look at the Tammy Wildcat I’ve got in the stash tonight and see if I can offer any suggestions.
Wish I could help you jbrady. Can you post some photos of the problem area? I would be there are some fellow modellers who have built the kit and can relate to a specific issue.
Thanks for the help guys after 11 hours of dry fitting, rebuilding, dry fitting, rebuilding, did I mention repainting… you get the idea. I solved the problem
Now I dont recall too much trouble with the doors…if memeory serves they were awkward…noe the struts…they were a pain…mine broke and i had to reapir them…overall its a nice kit…I enjoyed it…
Sigh… Well, at least the two hours I spent looking for Tamiya F4F photos, downloading them, adjusting the lighting to make the doors easier to see, and uploading them to PhotoBucket, then posting them here didn’t go completely to waste…
[whstl]
I’d have just done it up in “ditching” diorama… Plastic photo frame for a mold-box, some plaster with aluminum foil-formed waves, tempera-painted water, covered with some high-gloss clear, and drop the plane into the cut-out…
There’s a point in almost every model where you just need to walk away for a while. Work on something else for a few days, weeks, months while you ponder your problem in the back of your mind.
Otherwise this is going to get to be an expensive way to fill your garbage can
There must be more to it than that! Those gear doors aren’t that tough. If you were able to do all the rework that you said, you could have trimmed and nudged those doors into an acceptable position. By the way, Hans, nice work on the reference material. As usual, you always lay down some great help when a fellow modeler calls for help. Rick.
I wish you’d have posted a picture of the doors from a couple positions so we could take a look… Ya always wanna get fresh eyes on a target area, especially after the number of hours you say you tried to fix 'em… Might have saved it for ya, J… Also wouda been helpful if I knew that I either helped or didn’t… I only got the time stamp to go on, and enough time elapsed to have been a plus, but I don’t know if you got back here before your 'Cat exploded…
Now here’s the part where I try to talk you out of the parts so I can use 'em on a Monogram 'Cat…[whstl]
No sweat, Rick… I do what I can while the paint’s drying… I kinda got this “Google Image” search thing down, lol…
Yeah Hans, those pic are great. You can be sure that I’ll use them when I tackle that build! (and it won’t be long now-kinda like the monkey who caught his tail under the lawnmower! bada-bing!!)
Hammer: I do appreciate the time spent… I think you’re assumption was that I hadn’t done the due diligence of looking at completed builds. The sequence you posted was one I poured over. I must have looked a hundred pictures of the gear both on models and on the real thing.
troublemaker66: Here’s the problem
These were taken just before I lost it. The whole assembly is held in place with Micro liquitape. That is the best fit I got after hours of trying.
This is the third attempt to build this particular model. The first time one of the cats appropriated one of the gear doors so I finished it without them in place. The second time I ruined the finish… operator error. This time I can’t figure out what is wrong. Before I lost it last night I took the gear pieces from a kit I bought yesterday and carefully followed the instructions making sure that everything was lined up as shown. Installed the gear in the fuselage and the pics show the results. The doors just do not fit. The doors should follow both curves, inner and outer and for a semi boxed structure with the tw
As for walking away… not an option. I want a few F4F’s in my colllection. I’ll be damned if I’ll stop now. There might be a larger pile of broken plastic at the end of the day and an even larger one tomorrow but I’ll figure this one out.
I think I see the problem… Lemme do some 8 x 10 color glossy pictures with the circles and arows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to used as evidence against us…
But in short, I think your problem is that the gear doors raise as a unit first, about three inches, then they fold up into place… Are you wanting to get the inside edge flush up against the cross-piece? Cuz if you are, you ain’t gonna get it…
Unless I’m totally ate up, the entire unit raises first…
Not sure what you mean by deflated tires. If you take the tires off and sit it on its axels the gear doors are still attached at the same point
Yoou can see that there is no way that the kit doors follow the curve of the horns. This is on the one I completed without the gear doors. Kinda glad I didn’t have the doors at that point because I would have given up completely. I’ve looked at dozens of completed models and there is a way to get the doors to conform to the shape of the horns I just haven’t found it yet.
