Tom Geiger

Congratulations! Hope it lasts a lifetime!

Waaaay too hot!

Neat model! Back in 1978 my cousin had a green and white Belvedere with a flathead six. It was a cool car that had been “restored “ until you took a better look! Rusty mess under those freshly painted panels!

In different scenes that Barracuda went from slant six to v8 and back! Agreed on the rear glass.. probably saved from every one ever junked. When I had my 65 I had two of them donated to me by two different guys!

Hey Joe- from my experiences with a couple of these guys.. it creeps up on them and they don’t realize they are under water until it’s a mess! For some of them this is their first business experience and they didn’t have the skills to cost out product, project production times etc. Ever watch “Restaurant Impossible” or other like shows? There are people who run restaurants for years losing money.. great food, always busy and they cannot figure it out? Then the chef explains to them that they are selling meals for less than their cost and they’re floored! Same thing here. Some of the top casters in this hobby make little to no money, while getting great accolades from customers happy to gobble up the product at cheap prices. But the day that caster heads for the poor house, none of those customers will show up to help them move!

Chugging right along... Here we are after some sanding and addition of the Model A firewall and up on wheels... forgive the front tires, just a mock-up! The tail is a bit longer than I’d like but other proportions seem to line up. I believe I will build up a chassis and fabricate the rest the of it.. interior etc before I do any putty or finishing work on the body. I was maxed out on my Jeepsters right now and getting a bit depressing with current affairs, but I realize an hour or two a day at the bench does wonders!

Could be.. both of them seem to have stock Model A hood assemblies on them.

(Responding to this comment and the general state of after market, not regarding Reliable Resin) The quandary of the aftermarket is that most casters start out making a few parts for themselves, then some friends and it expands from there, especially when said friends post about the parts on the internet! Most of these casters are part time with families, full time employment and other life obligations. They all start in the aftermarket with good intentions. The issue is that it’s much easier to send in orders than to produce the product. With resin, each and every piece is hand cast one at a time. There are limitations on drying time and pressure pot capacity. Plus add in the parts reject rate. The orders start to pile up and caster gets over whelmed! It goes downhill from there. I have a friend who tried some casting. His intent was to pay for his materials so cost was pretty cheap. All he wanted out of it was to help some folks out and see the parts used on builds. It went downhill fast. It wasn’t nice people buying a part or two, but huge orders for 5 each of 10 sets. His capacity with his pressure pit was 6 pieces a night.. that order alone represented thirty nights of production! Within a week, the buyer was pestering him for the parts and complaining on the boards! My friend turned around that order in a month. No sooner done, same clown placed another order for double! Turns out since my friend was selling the parts cheap, the buyer took them to his club meeting and sold them at a profit! My friend returned his check! And that led to another poostorm tirade on a board. And my friend stopped casting!

I once read an article about renting your antique car to production companies. One of the warnings was that they may spray down the whole car with a solution that would keep it from shining into the cameras.

First a bit-0-background.. I have been building a series of the old Monogram Model As. I just fell in love with the series upon rebuilding a scrap chopped coupe. And it’s built from there. Today I have five of them finished on my shelf and this will be number six! My first TROG (The Race of Gentlemen) racer is my number 60 phaeton. This was a started and butchered original issue in the original box. It did have some of the unique accessories such as the tonneau cover with roll bar, the cycle fenders and low mounted headlights. The theme for the then upcoming MidAtlantic NNL was TROG so I decided to build this car. And that led to my buddy Bill and I attending TROG last September. We had no excuse since it was pretty local in Wildwood, NJ. It was a great experience that has me wanting to build more racers. Unfortunately the race has already been canceled for this September like everything else! But we can still live through our model building! The boat tails caught my attention. My first thought was to build my own body around a 1940 Ford hood as the above red car appears to be. That idea fizzled. Then last week I opened up a box of old built up parts cars.. and there was an Auburn with the required tail! The kit has been around for eons, originally a Pyro tool with two part body. I quickly pulled it apart to fiddle a bit. Now I wish I had taken photos of this donor car intact! Here is the Auburn body sitting on a Model A frame. Although the Auburn was a large car, it sized out fairly well next to a Monogram Model A. And here we are today! I have cut the Auburn cowl and Model A cowl to a point where they both matched at a taper point. They are glued together and the Model A firewall fits, along with the hood. The body had a taper at the rear where the skirts were in the Auburn. There are two layers of sheet plastic here, one spanning the opening on the inside of the body, and a second one cut to match the opening. Now onward to shaping and putty.

You are correct. This thread shows how I got to the starting point of this project. It was still just concept when I presented the Auburn body, but it’s taken on a life of its own now so I will start a build thread!

I don’t believe this was the case. The lower end model with the shorter hood had a straight six as the base engine, with the option of a V8. So both engines were available with shorter nose

I have a set of small files that my father got for me when I was 12 for my model building. I use them on my bench today. I also have my original Autoworld hot knife from same era. I found it years ago when cleaning out my father’s garage. I don’t use it

Got this far on the boat tail..

Today’s progress! The Auburn body is two part, split down the middle like a lot of old multi part bodies were back when this kit was hatched. I filled in the back area with two layers of plastic to give it strength. Then I sanded off the Auburn trim since my intent is to build a cobbled together boat tail Model A TROG car. As such it will follow the rules.. no fenders, no lights or windshield. It will have a roll bar. I mapped out the taper on both the donor body and Model A cowl to the best point where their taper kinda / sorta matched. Everything you see here is heavily glued at this point. Next step is to glue on the firewall and start shaping everything together. Then putty fun!

Very interesting! I understand different wheelbases when the extra space gives more rear seat or interior room. But what is gained by increasing the engine bay? And having two different noses and associated parts to stock and assemble ?

Thanks! Note that after wet sanding I gave it a shot of Testors Dullcote.. aka flat clear varnish in your part of the world. After that I worked with the pastel chalk dust. Note it’s not magic, anyone with patience can do what I do. If you were good with water colors and such as a kid, my methods are very much like that

Gareth, you rang? Here’s the best method.. forget that whole rock salt thing. This is layering and wet sanding time! First coat.. black primer or flat black. Second coat primer red Followed by some primer grey Now apply your color coat. Once your paint is dry, wet sand starting with 420 grit. Always sand in a circular motion. Watch what you are doing and sand carefully until you get what you want. Let the body dry, it will look different when dry. End result. This is where I will employ weathering chalks.. artist pastel chalk sticks in earth tones. Let me know if I should go further!

Great looking model. You took some chances, learned a bit and will do more next time. That’s what this is all about! I always enjoy reading about people’s experiences with cars, especially from other countries! So I will share! 1979 was the era of really poor craftsmanship on American cars. I worked for a company that suddenly was doing very well so all the executives got company cars. I was a young guy and a car person so I defaulted you being the office car manager. I bought and maintained these company cars. The new ones, especially GM cars were so awful that when we took delivery, I’d drive the new car for a week or two. I drove a lot between company offices, the airport and banks so I could put on some miles! Anyway.. as part of my duties I wound up driving a rental brand new Camaro Berlinetta. It was silver and very pretty. The second day I had it, it rained and I discovered the windshield wipers didn’t work. So I made a dash for the Hertz agency to have it looked at. I sat to wait and after a bit their agent came out and said they were giving me a different car. Not only were there no wipers, but no lights, horn etc. He said that entire area of the fuse box was missing and the car needed to be picked up by GM! They gave me a Monte Carlo instead and that one performed well the entire time I had it.

Explain what it is and how you did it?

Another dashboard to consider... 53 Studebaker, narrowed in my 34 sedan

Not elephant size!

Exactly! Different times, different market, different customers! The late Bob Paeth, who was with Revell in this era, told us all at GSL... they were in the toy business, selling to the whims of 12 year olds. At the time the focus was the now and maybe next year. A year or two old tool was toast. Nobody thought the market would ever want to see that model again! Before scrapping the tool, if a project manager could figure a variation that would get one more run out of it, he was a hero! They never ever thought that 40/50 years in the future there would be a collector market... toys were not yet collectible back then! And Bob was very humbled that people remembered their work.

But without elephants ?

Very cool! Were those water slide decals or stickers in the van kit? I saw this one at Philly Auto Show last year. I have a Jimmy Flintstonestudios resin body. Thought it might be fun!