Tom Geiger

I often will do headliners in pickup trucks. I have a box of old business cards with a nice ribbed texture to them. I will cut a template using the paper doll theory of bending it in half and cutting it so both sides are symmetrical. Then I will copy it to a fresh business card and paint that prior to gluing it in with white glue. And yes I do save the templates. Guys have said nobody will notice, but I do it for me! I always add sun visors and rear view mirrors also.

Very cool! A model after my own heart! I love builds using that Foose chassis! I have built the original kit and have since sliced and diced the chassis to fit under a Datsun pickup. I keep cruising Hobby Lobby to see if they've gotten any more! What modifications did you have to do to get the Foose chassis under the 1950 Chevy? Oh, and you didn't tell us why you named her Maggie McGill... no doubt from the Doors song.

I don't believe we are doing ocean dumping of trash anymore, at least in the USA. A lot of ocean trash is stuff washed out in storms like the tsunamis and hurricanes. It took months but stuff from Japan was washing up on US western shores. And just recently I saw a photo on Facebook of a New Jersey real estate sign on the beach in France, supposedly from Hurricane Sandy. The issue with plastic in the ocean is that it never breaks down. Paper, wood, metals and other debris will eventually break down and go away. Some of it will be consumed by ocean life. But plastic is forever. It is very resilient and will be floating around for a very long time.

as stupid does

Yup! I had a '63 Lark 4 door sedan. My father was a Studebaker guy and his last one was a '62 Lark sedan pretty much like this one. I bought it to work on with him, and I thought just for fun I'd do it up as a police car. I even collected all the police parts. I think I still have the spotlights. It was a 72,000 mile car with a good running 6/auto. It looked okay when I bought it. Little did I know that some kid must've "restored" it ten years earlier. As I took paint off I found liberal amounts of putty sculpted structural pieces... like the top of the A pillars and driver side B pillar were nearly unattached. When I removed the rusty front fenders I found the rear mounts to the cowl were into rivited soda can. My father even chimed in that he traded the '62 in on a '66 Pontiac Lemans, and even at four years old it was starting to rust! This was back in the 1980s when Newman and Altman was still in South Bend with an amazing parts hoard. I bought all four NOS doors for $125 each. Fiberglass fenders, new bumpers, every friggin piece of trim and a complete rubber kit. I was loaded for bear, over $2000 in parts to go onto a car I paid $300 for. Car guy logic! Once I stripped it down and the local neighborhood welder guy and I looked it over, both of us agreed that we didn't want to be responsible for this car on the road. So I closed the garage door and let it sit there for ten years. As I got near selling that house, I figured I could at least recoup the parts cost. I contacted the local Studebaker Drivers Club chapter and they put it in their newsletter. Guys came from far and wide to buy parts. Guys cut stuff I never would've thought selling off the hulk. I put parts on eBay and sold the fiberglass fenders to a guy who had a race car. I even got pictures of them on the car! Another guy bought the 4 rusty doors just for the glass and regulators. I still had the rolling chassis with engine and trans in it, and I put it on eBay for $1000. A guy came and offered me $750! He wanted to transfer it all over to an old Studebaker pickup. All told I sold it for over $4000. And everytime I see a Studebaker to this day, I swear I can hear it rusting!

Wow! There's two kits I've never seen before! Just when you think you've seen everything.

Very nice!

Last night I start accessing the interior. The Valiant kit interior bucket has all the seats molded in and light door panel detail. I started to check out the donor Duster interior. That kit builds up off the floor. The nicely detailed door panels have been whittled to fit, now it's a matter of modifying the upholstery. I'll still use the Valiant seats.

Hi Scott- My first car was a 1966 Valiant V100 2 door sedan, slant six car. We then added a '66 Signet 2 door hardtop with V8. Next came my '65 Barracuda, the '64 convertible and a '67 2 door sedan. I also drove a '73 Scamp and a '73 Barracuda. I've had numerous parts cars as well.

I like it! Dirty rusty and weathered are my wheelhouse!

Thanks Ron! Sorry we didn't get more of a chance to chat at the show last month!

If you are really stuck.... I used bent wire on this one.

Non-progress report! My '50 Ford pickup project is ticking me off! I had bought a number of different hardware store type paints in yellow since the original builder told me that's what he used. This was my quest to match the light yellow on the truck. Not to happen! Anyway, since I already owned the paint, I squirted Krylon Indoor / Outdoor Bauhaus Gold onto the fender unit. It has a banner across the can "Dries in less than 10 minutes" Bull Hockey! As in "Whey We Don't Mess With Cheapo Paint". The instructions state to recoat within 10 minutes or after 24 hours... which right there tells you it ain't dry! I waited more than a day and then recoated. Paint immediately crinkled up. So I took a deep breath. Waited a few days and sanded it all out. The fenders were originally painted last Friday. I sanded them out on Monday and shot them again yesterday. Still some issues. The hood was a different story. The red is Duplicolor, which dries dull and needs a clear coat. The hood was the worst. Both second and third coats, with massive sanding in between went crazy! So I have spent a week screwing around with this $4 can of paint. I'm kinda stuck right now since I don't want to start all over, but if I had done it all Duplicolor or Plasticote, I'd be done and onto final assembly! Argh! And don't be telling me "buy a dehydrator" because I won't be needing it. I won't use hardware garbage paint again! It's all automotive paint, or model paints from here on out.

Pretty much correct. The same basic stamping from 1963 onward, not sure of that first gen 1960-62. The V8 was introduced in 1964. The base was modified in 1967 to allow for big blocks. There are small differences under the hood, enough that you would probably want to fix 'em, but I've decided just to go with it and nobody would notice. Here's how shortening the chassis worked for me... note these pix were of my original experiment with a junker chassis. If you cut straight and true, there is very little clean up. and on the top side there is a trough which is the indent from the rear unibody. I used brass rod to join those together with press fit.

Neat Danbury Jeep! As a stamp collector, I have all their postal vehicles. I just ordered Missing Link's mail jeep as well.

Hey, you could always use your NNL East cloth goody bags for groceries!

That was the end of my teen age model collection. I had it carefully stored in a closet in my parent's house. Termites had gotten into the exterior wall and had chewed boxes, all the paper and such. And of course termite goo on everything. My father had cleaned it all out and tossed nearly everything before telling me!

Love the bobcat story! I get this Neighborhood Next Door email chain for my town. There are always posts from well meaning ladies about lost cats. Usually they've dragged them inside, taken their photos and have posted their capture. I always get a laugh when the responses are "That's Tigger, he's an outside cat who lives on North Street. He's not lost, let him go!" As in EEK! you've just kidnapped a cat!

in the clocktower

I banter with him on Facebook, he's usually posting there.

Cool! I'd love to have a Canadian Signet too! Back when I was in my teens in the late 1970s, there was a Valiant / Dart hybrid in a local New Jersey junkyard. Someone remarked that someone must've swapped that Valiant nose onto the Dart and then went to the trouble of putting Valiant emblems on the rest of the car. We didn't have a clue that it probably was a Canadian car! Today I'd be dragging it home. Sorry I'm not a caster, just a mere mortal model builder. I know that Jeff Ballard from Missing Link has a '63 Valiant for sale. He has opened the hood and includes the Duster pieces as well. He also has done a '63 Valiant wagon, I'm waiting for mine right now.

These two photos were to be included with the original post, but I kept getting 404 errors. Then the board disappeared entirely. So I walked away. Trying again.. As we sit right now.. I pulled out one of my donor '71 Duster kits and started carving. Same conversion I did on the '63 Valiant stock car. That's the Duster's engine bay carved from the body and transplanted into the Valiant. And we shortened the Duster chassis about 6 scale inches. And it's a fit! I've already carved the back seat out of the Valiant interior bucket to narrow it for the top iron side pockets. Next step is to pull a slant six from the hoard! And this is how easily I get distracted from the projects currently on my bench!

I believe I posted my '63 Valiant stock car on this board when I finished it. The roof on the blue Valiant body was totaled. So why not steal a roof off a near pristine '64 Valiant body to aid the near trash '63? Simple modeler's logic! Which got me thinking about that '64 Valiant that sacrificed it's roof. So I pulled it out. And it was in the box, just the body and a convertible roof section that I had cut off a surplus '66 Hemi Under Glass Barracuda. That got me fitting and gluing the windshield section to the body. And that just fueled this whole thing... Back in the day I owned this '64 Valiant convertible. I drove it around one summer and then stored it in my garage for a number of years. It wasn't a great car, I've always described it as the original owner lived in two feet of salt water. Yea, rusty and not worth a full resto, so I passed it on to someone else. Got two grand for it, have no idea whatever happened past that! So we will build this Valiant. Bad old film photo but the car was light blue with a white top. The interior in it was '73 Monte Carlo with the bench seat, just because a buddy of mine had it available for free. We'll skip that part, and put in a stock Valiant interior.

One of Tom's Rules of Life is "Always root for the underdog" so I am hoping that this all works out. Good luck to Gregg!

sand up crack!