Tom Geiger

Really nice work!

Agreed. I mailed a single kit size package to someone on the board recently. Mailed on Friday afternoon. Clerk pushed Priority as arriving by Monday. First class not until Thursday or Friday. I mailed first class. It still arrived on Monday!

Just itchy scratchy

No pix... last night my wife and I were headed home from my daughter’s house in NJ to our home in PA.. easy ride of NJ Turnpike to PA Turnpike until.. once in PA the Turnpike shut down at midnight for construction and they pushed all traffic off to Route 95 through Philadelphia. About same distance and time, especially at 12-1am.. but.. Philly news always has news coverage of street racing mishaps with huge accidents of cars that disintegrated at high speed but I had never witnessed it. So here we are on a populated highway going maybe 75 and suddenly the car gets rocked by a Dodge Charger flying by at 100, with a Mustang GT right on its tail. This happened at least five times.. mainly Dodge Chargers or Challengers, one Camaro and a handful of tuners within inches of our car. Quickly changing lanes with zero clearance. Dangerous stuff!

In New Jersey two of the three hobby shops in my local home area closed up. Both of them were around for at least 30 years, for my entire time in the hobby. Both of them had relocated at least once. Avenel Hobbies was primarily plastic models. No RC. They stocked a lot of after market. Randy told me that as soon as Hobby Lobby opened up on the highway, kit sales dropped to nothing. People were coming in with HLs 40% off coupon demanding they match it. He said he didn’t have the mark up to match it. He closed up. Hobby Masters in Red Bank, similar story when HL opened up in nearby Middletown. Then they lost their lease as that entire block of old one and two story stores will be demolished for a new high rise condo building. They knew they couldn’t relocate and start over again. Gone! ”The Hobby Shop” in Aberdeen survives, but last time I was there they had reduced models to a small kiosk. They seem to do okay with RC, boy and Girl Scout supplies and had cleared out a bunch of space for tables for gaming and kids parties.

Agreed! There is something in the front assembly of the glue kit that keeps it from sitting right on the chassis. The bed is one piece on the snap kit, but the box on the glue kit fits together very well and nearly snaps together. But if you attempt to glue the assemblies to the chassis nothing lines up! The running boards on a 1:1 truck sit tight against the bottom of the cab body. There is a huge gap on both versions of the kit! Since I built the glue kit first, I moved the running board mounts to make it fit flush. Then the bed was off where it keys into the running boards. So I adjusted it’s height on the chassis with shims and pins until it all lined up. In the end my truck sits fairly high. On the two snap kits I gave away, I just left the running board gap as the kit assembles.

Ah! Finally figured it out! I will cut a second transmission hump out of a spare chassis to widen it, that should house the transfer case. Otherwise the transfer case nests well into the chassis. My other issue which skewed how the interior bottom sits against the chassis is that when I fit the new trans mount into the chassis I didn’t realize it pushed the chassis ONE FRIGGEN 1/25 SCALE INCH WIDER at that point. Of course the other day I was seeing red and never saw this. So it was best to walk away instead of hurling it at the wall. This morning with a clearer head, a spare chassis for reference and my scale ruler, the issue jumped out at me and I was able to fix it. Onward with better direction and a bit wiser for the next project!

Reading Tom’s own words, he has sold the operation to two long time employees who know the operation. He will keep an eye on it and is confident it will carry on. The message board continues and he mentioned an upcoming software upgrade. The change from Hobby Heaven to Spotlight occurred due to his divorce, not any business shortcomings.

Very nice work!

Same here! Gary Schmidt and Scale Auto brought back a hobby that had all by died. Back in 1991 I was on a business trip to Boston and found Scale Auto in a magazine store. I was amazed there was a model car magazine. I read it cover to cover and subscribed. In the back of that first issue I had was a classified ad for the TriState Scale Model Car Club and the rest is history!

Be careful what you wish for! 95% of the store is ladies crafts and home decor! One aisle of model stuff. If you have local hobby shops you are better off. A Hobby Lobby will kill them

Welcome!

Interesting they had both long and chopped panels at same time! And now we know where it ended. I have the Mild and Wild, as well as the Safari versions. As well as two earlier, just not the plow version. I know you’re not Rob, I had dinner with him at NNL Nats last fall! ?

Take a look at their website and the array of magazines they publish... jewelry making, model trains, real trains, astronomy etc. Interesting that these are all more lucrative than model cars I understand they cancelled two other mags.. bead crafts and garden railroads.

Keep in mind that most of the model manufacturers produce military etc and cars! I hope they give Kalmbach hell!

The only thing worse is coming upon her doing this on your car! ? Many years ago I used to take my 73 Scamp to the Englishtown NJ car show.. one time some numpty walked right up, laid his Coke on my hood and put his foot up in my front bumper to tie his sneaker! I screamed at the guy who was wondering what my problem was!

A few steps backward for me! I thought I had it all figured out but guess not! In fitting the four cylinder into the V6 chassis, and once the transfer case was added into the mix, the tranny and transfer case are hitting the interior floor! So I have sanded down top of tranny and just redid the trans mount lower. And here I thought I was merely assembling the chassis and would’ve had it up on wheels last night! Argh!

Yes, Tom Carter is a good guy! Interesting racing history and ran his business with morals and common sense. When a new kit arrived he’d get all the preorders out that same day! I’ve been friendly with him for years, I wish him a great retirement.

Yes! We are in for a few hot humid days!

And here’s the poor fit of the bed. The real truck has a ribbed bed and inner side panels. There are big gaps between floor/ wheel wells and inside of body. I made and fit in panels. Also, the bed does not dip down to floor level like the kit here. Flat floor with ribs!

Others beat me to it but as said the panels were short in the safari version, which was molded in yellow. Note that they still left the rear seat trim that wouldn’t be there on the pickup so I sanded it off on the red ones I’m using in my build. Rob already posted my older photos showing the two different side panels. I agree that only the first issue had the longer panels. I believe they shortened them for the pickup version.. Kelson, what is in the box with the plow? Here’s how the pickup version goes together.. an old built up of the later nose Commando BTW, I still need one right side long panel.. the original kit I bought eons ago was missing it so it’s sat ever since!

Scott, as you said those Renwal Revival kits are not the greatest. They seem to be larger than 1/24. I once thought it would be cool to build a full detail version and the AMT Lincoln chassis was too small. I remember these on the shelves at Two Guys Department Store when I was 11-12 and not having the slightest interest since they didn’t relate to anything. I believe they sold poorly when new, probably why never reissued and probably scrapped.. but never say never! I do have a couple of these bought cheap over the years. I won’t buy them at the large collector prices I see. I think this would be one of those cases where a few high dollar collector sales wouldn’t translate to good selling new kits.

It’s a good thing that Round Two could offload this stuff onto a company that will preserve and possibly issue some of it. I consult on pharmaceutical facilities maintenance and a rule of thumb is that the carrying cost of your maintenance parts inventory is 25% of value annually. When I lead inventory reduction efforts we are often able to ditch over a million dollars in inventory for equipment they no longer own! Big savings! So it does cost R2 a good deal of money to store tooling and that savings can go right to their bottom line! Regarding Pyro.. John Lester was one of the pioneers in developing injection molding and the model cars were the least of his business. Pyro is very well revered in the sci fi area as they manufactured space theme toys. Now if Atlantis finds their classic ray gun tooling, they hit the jackpot!

My store was in the midst of a restack. Carts full of merchandise going to new spaces. More diecast space in model aisle. The opposite side of model paints and supplies now is puzzles, which were at opposite end of store. Stamp and coin collecting supplies moved across that aisle and to opposite end. No clearance kits

I did manage to get a 1967 Chevy Supernatural car at my local store on Tuesday. Magic coupon of course