Tom Geiger

I found this one in an dealers junk box at a show. No suspension, no roof.. just a mess. The dealer was almost embarrassed and told me to take it for free because he forgot to throw it out! I took that as a challenge! Here she is looking better than she ever did! I couldn’t take it apart so I restored around it. New suspension and wheels / tires. I touched up the green paint and then gave it a clear coat because the decals were disintegrating. I installed a new roof and glass from parts kit that gave up its suspension ( the rest of that body went to a guy who wanted wheel wells and another who needed doors!) I painted roof gold since I knew I’d never match the green. I made the roof decal on my printer from an online scan of the original decal sheet. It was fun to restore it because it was an original issue, it was interesting and how close it came to the garbage can!

Since I have a reputation for repairing the unrepairable old customs, a friend dropped this one on me in a paper lunch sack. It was all in pieces and the body was broken in two. Here it is after some repair and assembly to see what I actually had... And here she is all repaired! Couldn’t dunk it since it had a lot of ancient and questionable putty. So I had to work with the body patiently and sand out the previous paint jobs so they’d sit under primer.

On it’s way! Funny story.. the other day in someone’s under glass thread for this kit, I commented that it had gone up over $100 and that was too much for me for this kit. Then on a whim I checked eBay and there were a few for more than $100. Then I spotted this one on a Buy It Now for $59. It also had a Make Offer and I bid $45 and seller came back at $50 so I bought it.

I’ve been doing property maintenance myself.. painted the deck and just have trim left to do on my little bridge..

Good night Gracie!

...to love again...

Ollies SHOULDN’T have good kits! It’s a close out store. When you see kits there, you know some entity... whether it’s a manufacturer or wholesaler is dumping them at a loss. Which isn’t a good thing for the future of our hobby!

We walk a lot since the start of the pandemic and there are a lot of folks out walking. A lot of it, especially early on, was just to see people. Everyone says hello and we have proper distance conversations with neighbors we know. We are probably in decent shape by now. We walk up the big hill like it’s normal. My daughter did the walk the other day and came back complaining that the hill was gonna kill her! My daughters decided to take their vacations here at our house. They needed to get away and this was a safer alternative to public places. Here I am out walking this morning with the twins!

The airbag clock spring became a warranty item for Chrysler vehicles since safety items needed to last ten years per US government. I had airbag light come on in my Caravan. Dealer replaced clock spring for free

I use them all depending on the model. I use mostly the light gray, but just bought their white primer for a few things. I’ve used this for color and just clear coated over it.

My last trip to Ollies...

Great! Since you are recently back to the hobby I wanted to make sure you knew about these!

Very nice! My 73 Scamp was that same blue!

Pennsylvania is a pain in the tail. Full inspection is annual and done at authorized repair shops. Since they can fail your car and still keep the entire near $100 fee, they have a financial incentive to do the repairs. Pep Boys is awful with “finding” things to repair. When I bought my LaCrosse out of state, the dealer told me it needed windshield wiper blades and gave me $25. I went to Pep Boys and bought a pair and they offered to put them on for free. A few weeks later I took the car there for inspection and the clown comes out to me in the waiting room with a beat to crud wiper blade and tells me they have to replace them! I grabbed the manager and told him THEY replaced the blades recently! He was all apologetic. So the key is that I now have a relationship with a local garage that does all my work. They will do my inspection without issues.

As others said, they had promo contracts so the bodies were very accurate. Interiors are a bit shallow and they mostly had undetailed undersides. I think the aura is that the company and the motherlode of their tooling is considered long gone. So we get excited that something may have surfaced.

Cool! I’ll be watching. I’ve wanted this kit for a long time, since my friend Bart built a nice one. The prices went astronomic, never saw another under $100. And it just wasn’t that important to me. I do have the new Revell of Germany kit, and I was hoping that the interest in this one may get them to reissue the older one, or at least reduce the demand and allow prices to tumble! I do have a question about the underside, I see in your picture that exhaust was molded with chassis.. what is the rest of the underside look like? Is it a full detailed plate filling out the underside? I ask because my Monogram Dodge Ramcharger just had the undetailed underside of the interior bucket showing, very toylike!

$6 for Testors $10 for Duplicolor.. not much more for a superior product. I use mainly Duplicolor and some Tamiya sprays

Since you are into 55 & 56 Fords here are a pair. Friends of mine built them. The Vic is a very nice kit you will enjoy building. The tooling is mid 1960s and the opening doors are a bit fiddly. 1/25 scale The wagon was a diecast and was stripped and rebuilt as a Ranch Wagon. It’s 1/24 scale.

Drink of kings!

Here’s another idea for that wrecker bed. Mike Cappasso built this resin 1958 Dodge using that wrecker bed and wheels. Not sure if he used the chassis. These pix taken at Mama’s show back in 2003

Neat color scheme!

Wheels look good! BTW, your V6 is in the Jeepster / Commando kit!

No so fast! Remember that Johan molds were smaller than the other manufacturers and were run on older smaller equipment. That was one of the reasons these molds weren’t attractive to some buyers

Like lake water

Rancid pee tea