I must admit that at this point the model sat for a while, as I was distracted doing other things, like work. About two weeks later I was able to turn my attention back to it and started off by polishing out the body.  Depending on the finish, I either use diminishing grades of fine sandpaper or may just go directly to the Novus polish.  In this case I went right to the Novus working down from Novus 3 to a final application of the Novus plasic polish. Then a nice coat of wax to protect it.

Notice the wires at the end of the body?  That the distributor for the engine in this kit. Would you believe there isn't one? Or at least nothing that I

recognized as a distributor. I went out to a very nice Healey restoration site and used it to prototype one for the kit. And that's a nice segue into the engine.
Austin-Healey painted their engines a very interesting shade of light green. I managed to mix a close match using Tamiya colors. I sprayed the cam cover gloss black to provide a nice contrast to the green, and used Allclad II aluminum for the intake manifold and steel for the exhaust header.

The carburators were not terribly detailed so I used images from the aforementioned Healey restoration site to add some detail, namely the fuel lines and the mesh over the intake.

If you look closely, you'll notice that there is no fan belt! I made one using a piece of slim pinstripe tape (not shown). There was also no obvious place for the spark plugs so I guessed using the ref pics.
Next was installing the engine into the chassis. It went in with little effort. In the picture you can see the ignition wires - the coil is mounted on the right fender. I don't know for sure if that's right, but it seems logical.

A word about the chassis - it is very simplistic, with a LOT of pin marks and sink-holes. I sprayed it with gunmetal and dry-brushed it with Tamiya metallic gray.

The engine compartment does have some moulded-in detail, which can be picked out with a brush. Based on the prototype images I had, the wires were painted black and yellow. It looks good, shows up well even after the hood is fitted.
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