MFH's 908: engine complete, mostly, finally

I spent another hour on the left side throttle return spring today before finally giving up. The PE sheet provides excess trunnions so if you lose a couple, there are more, but after losing two with no progress or obvious approach to avoid losing more, I decided enough was enough.

So on to the air cleaners and the fitting of the engine to the rear subframe. The tie-down straps for the air cleaners were a bit of work, involving threading 1 mm wide sticky tape through PE buckles, but the result is very nice, More drama arose when fitting the engine into the tube frame as nothing lined up, and the little pins provided were too short to join the engine mounts to the chassis. Some fabrication with 1.0 mm brass tube saved the day.



Below you can see the two coil wires pointing forward to the coils, located in the cockpit just under the drivers' seat. One is completely hidden but the other will be visible so the wiring will need to be done right.



I next posed the engine and rear subframe up against the tub. The fit is poor and there will need to be filing, especially since this is the primary point where the chassis is joined together -- a flaw here will mean a sag in the chassis.





But what a well detailed kit! The shot below is particularly good, showing the little sockets at intersections of tubes in the frame where rear suspension components will hopefully fit. Besides a 4X desk magnifier, a full set of number drills, from about #78 (0.4 mm) up to #53 (1.5 mm) is absolutely essential for this sort of work.



Of course the 12-plug distributor is a surprise, and it is possible that this came from the 917 kit which had a pair of these. I attach a photo from a couple of years ago showing the problem, which I obviously missed at the time even as I was drilling out the distributor to take plug wires.



So all this to say that progress remains positive but excruciatingly slow. I don't understand how 'professional model builders' can make a buck at this. At this point I think I'll park it again for a while, although hopefully not for two and a half years like last time! There are Fujimi kits of the 917 ready to go on the shelf, and I even have one of HRM's detailed 917 motors. Time to see some progress again.

Oh, and the trunnions that got fired off into space? Both reappeared in the little pile of scarf and shavings as I cleaned up my cutting mat. So I have saved them, stuck to a piece of tape inside a baggie, in case I ever get the urge to try again.



Never a dull moment. Stay tuned!