Hi master zen, italeri have a very bad costumer support, first you must try with your local distribuitor, take a look here :
http://www.italeri.com/importatori.aspx
if your local representative don´t help you (like mine) ....well, you can try write to italeri, but they don´t seem to much interested in help customer (maybe this is diferent from country to country....)
I have the same problem with a 1/48 Kamov hokum canopy, I sent first email in february, and maybe now I will receive a new canopy directly from italeri, all months in between was filled with emails with my request for a decent customer support.
in my case, problem is than they have previously a representative, and now they have another, so the current representative refuse to help me because my italeri kit is not from "their" imported kits........but all are italeri kits....
good luck !