Tim,

that is correct, you will be making an opening which starts about 1/8" back from the spinner ring to pass the carburetor and goes back to slightly forward of the beam mount point - usually the thickness of the mount beams at the FW. Usually designs are done so that the cutout is wholly in the fuse side specifically without needed to cut into the bottom chin or top blocks. The best approach I find is to have your engine installed as you did in the proper position for side and down thrust, then, when you are ready to finish the nose, install the shims or washers (easiest to introduce the down and right thrust) and join the fuse sides to the front nose block. Add the internal cowl structure so that it can be fared into the spinner ring and then, last, add the top and bottom blocks. You can mark the front block for the rough position of the spinner ring and then sand into the block the equivalent right and down thrust prior to adding the ring. The whole area then gets sanded smooth and to contour sealing off the bay.

Once satisfied, you then proceed to open up the right side of the fuse in an under size rectangular opening and open it up little by little with a dremel tool - it goes faster than you might expect. Just go gradually so that you don't end up with an opening which is excessively large. A typical opening might be slightly larger on the bottom side (exhaust side) of the engine so you pass the engine, bring it up to the mount beams and have space to install the header (a Curare needs a pipe ). It also makes access to the screws on the under size at least a little easier. 6-32 socket head bolts are best in these applications. You can use lock nuts on the back side of the beams or lock washers and tap the engine mount beams for 6-32 threads. I prefer the former but the latter is sometimes required if the back of the beams is hard to access as it might be on the Curare.

It helps to lay your fuse on the plans to check for shaping of the front nose block to correct thrust angles. Also, if the plans/model are setup properly, you won't have to shim the engine mounts for thrust angles - it will be built into the FW - which is preferable on the Curare in my opinion. You shouldn't need any band sawing of the nose blocks. If anything, the chin block might needs to be hollowed out slightly on the inside which is something you might want to do anyway for weight reduction purposes - again a dremel tool with a sanding drum works well here.

Whether your model tracks is all together a different matter...

David.

P.S. There are pictures of engine installs in many a thread here.