Build Review - Tamiya's F-51D Mustang (built as a late WW2 P-51D) - Part 1

It's been a while since I last looked at my Christmas Mustang project. The Academy P-51B Mustang, Old Crow, (kit #1667 or #12464) is now at a stage where's it's been painted and is ready for the decals to be applied. However before I do that I thought I'd get the Tamiya kit that I'd planned on building to the same stage.

You may remember I planned on converting the F-51D to a late Second World War P-51D, one flown by Charles Weaver of the 357th Fighter Group, named "Passion Wagon".

As previously mentioned I was to replace the kit decals (which had perished) with a set from Kits-World (set #2049) and the cockpit with a resin set from CMK (#7172).

So to start with I had to build the cockpit. The set from CMK provided a nice cockpit but as there were no side walls (unlike a lot of the resins sets from Aires) I didn't initially feel it offered much more than the part it was replacing. However where it came into it's own was the highly detailed seat, the photo-etch parts and the instrument panel. These did eventually make enough of a difference to convince me that this set was worth buying.


The resin parts fitted well, but I did need to remove the rear wall from the original cockpit piece as a rear wall wasn't included. I found the best way to do this was to glue the resin cockpit to one of the sides, let it set and then added the plastic rear wall and then finally the radiator. Each time I also dry fitted the other side of the aircraft to ensure that when I finally put them together they did indeed fit!

It should be noted I've since removed the seat to make masking the cockpit that bit easier

So initial thoughts are the main difference between this kit and the Academy kit was that there weren't any of the frustrating fit issues that you get with the Academy kit. The Tamiya kit appears to have been made with that slight bit of extra precision. Of course you are going to pay more for this but I'm slowly coming round to thinking that the extra cost is worth it for less hassle when assembling.