The two XB-38 (Allison V-1710) conversions from eBay were delivered a couple days ago, would have commented sooner but a couple of health care appointments took precedence so a bit lat on sharing the news.
The conversion is certainly more extensive than the XB-38 conversion I purchased several years ago from some guy in Las Vegas selling under the name of "Rebel Alpha" that had a cheap for the time resin conversion for the XB-38 that turned out to be a real POS. It was horribly done and I was not impressed with the quality of workmanship. I conveyed my displeasure to the seller and he offered to send me his "improved" XB-38 conversion which was also a POS. I declined the offer and made it known to fellow modelers far and wide to avoid this guy and his crappy conversion. I hope it hurt his business.
That being said, this new XB-38 conversion is only slightly better with one-piece engine nacelles but the propelller spinner is moulded to the nose of the nacelle part that has the air-intake for the oil cooler and engine so that sucks. The propeller spinner is also not indexed to show where to drill the holes for the separately moulded propelller blades. Kind of disappointing to be honest. All of the other parts included appear to address the physical differences in the B-17E fuselage vs the donor kits that will be used (Revell B-17F and Monogram B-17G). So for almost twice the price of the Rebel Alpha XB-38 conversion I now have something better but still not ideal to work with in converting a 1/48th scale B-17 to the XB-38. There is another seller on eBay that offers an XB-38 conversion that runs about $50.00 but it is not identical to the conversion I just acquired. It might actually be better but at $50.00 I am not eager to spend more money to find out just yet.
Posted to this thread in lieu of reporting in the usual "Recent Acquistions" thread for relevance.
