Eduard Meteor F.8 Wheels (648272) 1:48

[Mike]

Meteor F.8 Wheels (648272)
1:48 Eduard Brassin

Airfix's new Meatbox is a grand little kit, but styrene isn't perfect for getting nicely detailed wheels or their mudguards. Resin works superbly for those applications, and Eduard have long since recognised this, with a wide range of resin wheels in their Brassin range. The set arrives in the familiar Brassin clamshell box, with the resin parts safely cocooned on dark grey foam inserts, and the instructions sandwiched between the two halves, doubling as the header card.

The box contains eight resin parts on five casting blocks, with two main wheels and one nose wheel, all having moulded-in hubs, with separate wafer-thin mudguards. The final two parts are rather small axle caps that sit inboard. A set of kabuki tape masks completes the set with six tyre masks for clean demarcation between the tyres and hubs. Construction is almost drop-fit, although you do have to add a small length of 0.5mm wire to represent the hoop that holds the lower end of the mudguards in place. It sits in a U-shape, wrapping around the end of the guard, and fixes to the gear leg's yoke, which is about the only fiddly part. The tyres are superbly detailed with tread, sidewall detail, maker's mark and tyre data in raised relief on the sidewalls. A scrap diagram shows the correct orientation of the completed assembly, and the paint call-outs can either be taken from the Airfix instructions, or from the set's instructions that use Gunze Mr Color codes as construction goes along.

Review sample courtesy of

[bentwaters81tfw]

Send then to Julien, he can compare them to the real thing.

[Nick Belbin]

Send them to me and I'll use them.

[Mike]

I'll shove 'em on my kit when I get around to building it, as I've only got the one. I promise I'll show you it though