Thank you, Quickboost, for furnishing this review sample and thank you, IMPS/USA, for allowing me to do the review.

The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver was born in response to a 1938 U.S. Navy specification to replace the SBC, a bi-plane. It was designed around the large Wright R-2600 Cyclone 14-cylinder engine under development at the time. The Helldiver’s development was terribly slow. This was due in part to design problems, but also in part due to demanding requirements set forth by both the U.S. Marines and United States Army Air Forces with their A-25 Shrike program. These were typical of the problems associated with the development of any "multi-role" aircraft. The Helldiver was a large aircraft capable of carrying a 1000 pound bomb in an internal bomb bay. It also had a higher fuel capacity and greater range than the SBD Dauntless in use at the time. Eventually the problems with the Helldiver were overcome and it became the main US Navy dive bomber during the last two years of the Second World War.

Quickboost has released a nicely detailed set of resin exhaust pipes for Academy’s SB2C Helldiver. However, I found that they also will work for Cyber-Hobby’s 1/72 SB2C-4 Helldiver and Cyber-Hobby’s A-25-5CS Shrike. For the purpose of this review I am using the Cyber-hobby Hellcat.

The kit exhausts consist of two parts, the pipe and the faired housing around the pipe. In contrast, the Quickboost replacement is one integrated part containing both pipe and fairing. This translates into fewer parts to clean up and assemble. The resin parts are separated from the pour block easily enough but there is a little clean up in order to get the part to fit snuggly in place. The resin parts are an easy drop-in replacement for the kit part.

The kit parts are nicely molded, but the resin parts have a crispness to their look missing from the plastic parts. The hole in the Quickboost pipe has a larger diameter, more depth than the kit part and rivet details around the fairing flange. The kit pipes once assembled extend a little farther from the fuselage than the resin parts. Which of these is more “anatomically” correct, I don’t know. However, based on the picture I took of the CFA’s SB2C, it looks like the Quickboost part comes closer to correct. Because of this and the crispness of the part, I can easily recommend Quickboost’s exhaust.

Thanks again to Quickboost and IPMS for this review item.