Testors 1/4 Harley-Davidson Twin Cam 88 Engine Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

The name Harley-Davidson is synonymous with motorcycle and by definition, anything Harley is cool. Testors has engineered an interesting kit as part of their Lincoln Mint collectors kit line. This is a simple kit of a beautiful engine - the Harley Twin Cam 88.

The kit starts off with four die-cast parts that build up into the cylinder heads. These are pre-finished in black with silver cooling fin edges. These four parts serve as the foundation for the rest of this easy-to-build kit.

The rest of the kit is molded either in black styrene or chromed styrene. The carburetor cover has the Harley-Davidson logo screen-printed in place, as is the set of logos on the display stand.

After fiddling with the kit for a few minutes once I had completed the parts photos, I decided to give this quick-build a test drive. The parts are nicely molded with no problems flashwise. The fit of the kit overall was good, but a few holes in the die-cast cylinder head parts needed to be opened up a bit with an X-Acto knife as the powder-coat finish sometimes constricts the hole openings.

The instructions were easy enough to follow, although the illustrative photos were printed a little dark to see clearly. Nevertheless, the project was completed in less than one half hour. You can see by the three photos at the bottom how nice the finished engine looks!

With an MSRP of $30 USD, this kit will be a pleasurable quick build that will look stunning when completed. I imagine you'd have to pay over three-times the price to get something equivalent from the 'collectors market' and even then I doubt that it will look this nice.

My sincere thanks to Testors for this review sample!