Still looking nice..
I found those pics i was talking about..
alot of detail pics from teh actual vehicle...Pm me your e-mail, or msn address or somethign and i'll zi['m up and send them your way...
As far as the Afterburner can in the back...
My advice, is just model it as a seperate peice of Geometry and Parent, or Group it to the main body of the geometry..Not everything can alwsays be a single mesh, and sometimes, its actually beneficial to make somehting a seperate mesh, even if you have to just..oerlap it wiht some other geometry..
Look at my two threads in my Signature,.. all the detail in them are seperate peices of Geometry mostly... A base mech for shape, then alot of little bits added in for effect..

Hope this helps
G