I am building a civil aircraft! Wow! I haven't done that in almost 20 years.
The MD-80 I'm building is 1/144 scale from Minicraft.
My question is what color do I paint the inside of the landing gear doors and wheel wells? White? Grey? Aluminum? I don't know. Can someone help here. Hope so. Input welcome. Thanks; Russell.

P.S. My bird will be in US Air markings

Hey!
A USAir MD80 or any DC-9 Variant would have a very heavy semi-gloss white,Trunion *& gear included. Lots of grease residue in the nooks & crannies though.
The Wheels could be white or blue, depending on the livery. Hubcaps are always the same as the main fuselage , in this case dark Blue.
(9 yrs as an Aviation Structures mech with USAirways as our customer...)
HTH!
Rob

Hi there Rob. I really appreciate your information. One more question to you or anyone out there. After really looking at the instructions this time; they call for gear struts and inside of wheel wells and gear doors to be aluminum. Is this right? My MD-80 is a natural metal finish. Just curious about this. Thanks a lot. Russell

Ah. NMF. that would be USAir before the Chapter 13 that reorganized them into USAirways.
Before my time, so I can't give you anything definite. I can give you this observation, though. NO Airliner that I ever worked on had bare aluminum gear wells or gear trunions. The area is just too heavily exposed to a multitude of corrosives(Hydraulic fluid,salt,water,grease, grease solvents,etc...) to leave it bare. So the likelyhood is that the area was primed with green zinc chromate and then overpainted with a heavy aluminized epoxy coating.
You may have some luck finding photos at airliners.net.
Oh, & remember-no matter what color the trunion & linkages are, the oleo shock strut will always be bright chrome.

Rob; thanks again for responding. It sounds a bit like the Japanese Army aircraft of WW2 which in some cases had aluminum doped control surfaces which gave them a natural metal finish even though they were a different color underneath.
It may be best to follow the instructions then and just paint the wheel wells aluminum. I'll keep researching, thanks again for the help. Russell

I realize that this is not a US Air bird, but there is a walkaround found here:

http://www.airlinercafe.com/page.php?id=108

Maybe this can help?

DC