Tom Geiger

The Model Car Garage photo etch set for the 1967 GTO has some Tempest and LeMans emblems. Note that LeMans is separate letters spelled out on the quarter panel on the '66 though. This car in blue is what my father had.

Note- Model Builders Warehouse will be at NNL East in a few weeks!

I"m someone who preserves significant old builds, especially customs with interesting or unique features done back in the day. That said, there's nothing significant about this build, so I would take it apart and restore it. A clean coat of paint and BMF would make this wagon very nice! Once you have it apart you can judge if the glass will come out easily. If not, I believe Super Clean will not hurt the glass. (correct me if I'm wrong, guys!) I know 90% alcohol won't, in fact it made age tinted glass clearer for me! I had the glass issue with a number of cars I've restored and have simply masked off the glass on both sides and it worked well, not contest quality, but good enough for a rebuild. That paint appears to be right over plastic and should fall off easily. I think I see that the ribbed panel behind the rear wheels is distorted, as if there were fender skirts at one point. The same panels on the '59 Ford retractable hardtop are separate pieces and you may be able to piece them in, or foil cast off of them. The good part is that your wagon is pretty straight. I've seen many of them warped like pretzels! Even the kit version.

A blast from our past! I know someone who did this using the custom grille that came in the original Jeepster kit. I don't know how close it is, but maybe as a starting point.

You could also mask off all the trim with Tamiya Tape on the critical edge (you could mask off everything else with painters blue tape), then give it a spray with Alclad. I don't know if you are using an airbrush for the gloss black, but Alclad also comes in a spray can.

First, you are better off finding the image of what you need already assembled. I have found pictures in car brochures and instruments for sale on eBay Motors. This is an instrument panel for a 1950 Ford pickup from eBay Tested on a spare dashboard I bring the image into Word, and then scale it down in 5% increments across the sheet. Then I print it on plain paper and compare the size of my images against what I need on the model dashboard. Sometimes it takes a few tries. Once I get the image the right size I will print a dozen of them across the sheet. Again print on plain paper, you do not need decal paper for this. Cut it out, and install with white glue. And a final copy on the model.

And what pleased me today? We are in the home stretch for NNL East! I am finishing up the vendor badges and envelopes this weekend. Buttons have been done.... We have license plates this year! Model Car Garage has provided us once again! Next Saturday our club will meet to pack up the goody bags. End in sight!

No he's for real. I've met him a number of times when he's visited US shows. He is the nicest and most humble man. It's like he cannot understand why we are so impressed!

My irk? Reading model car advice on Facebook... Guys telling people to just spray dollar store paint on the model, and that primer is a waste of money. And that's a good tip! Of course we don't have any finished models from these experts to review. Seriously, we should have some kind of certification to give advise to modelers!

I've gone bald on the top. I have a friend with a full head of hair who was making fun of me. I informed him that very smart people's brains ran hot and over time burned out hair roots!

Sounds like nobody is minding the store! Absurd to put a different SKU behind an older product like it's milk with a later expiration date. The HL in my neighborhood has this thing about making shelves and racks look full. If you look you'll see a lot of the kits are only one deep. The worst is the paint racks. Instead of having everything on the rack in stock, they choose to fill in an out of stock slot by moving other paint into it so the rack looks full. Yea, it's full, but you have three slots of gloss black Testors spray and none of the other two SKUs. It's amazing that a business so big has no real expertise in how to serve this market!

Sounds like a great birthday! Have a great year and see you in a few weeks!

I will not be there this year. I start a new job tomorrow. Plus it's the weekend after NNL East. I'm exhausted by the time that's over so I cannot see myself climbing into a plane the following Thursday!

When my daughter was a baby I had a '73 Barracuda whose interior is spooky close to the Challenger I rented a few years ago. So I know what it's like to climb back into the rear of that balancing a baby! Not fun! Same daughter is now an adult and the mother of my 16 month old grand daughter. She is now pregnant with twins, so they ran out and bought a one year old Dodge Grand Caravan. There will be three car seats in that one mid summer! I'm at the same point you are, with my 1996 Grand Caravan. I am the original owner and it's served us well. It's up over 203,000 miles right now and as you said, it's one thing after the other. The last round my garage buddy tried to council me that it wasn't worth putting all new brake lines on it. Then I pulled out the big folder of receipts to realize everything that's been replaced in the past few years. So for $1000 parts and labor I fixed it. It's been home a week and the battery refuses to take a charge. I'll be buying a new one tomorrow. I don't have any rust through on it, and it is a very nice Grand Caravan with a Mark III high top. I do like to have it around as a utility vehicle and it sees very low usage. It is the NNL East swag van that carries everything to the show each year. It will be there once again but this may be the last year. Once I get a few things under control, I may keep an eye out for a low mile replacement.

My wife wanted to go to a Fleetwood Mac event, a tribute band called "Rumors" from Atlanta that was at West Chester University last night. We must've been the youngest folks there. Lots of gray hair!

Charlie, it's a good thing that you will not further damage your shoulder doing your work. I know you did store resets. I hope you build a lot of models in your retirement! Be well!

Bingo! I was thinking that myself. This should be the most advanced one!

I brought my recent build to the Philadelphia NNL. People there thought this was a 1/32 scale Falcon Ranchero box.... no it's a sliced and diced 1/25 scale part!

This is the original AMT kit from the first movie. My daughter and I built it together when it first came out. It fits on the top shelf of my display case!

There was a thing a while back about money laundering through eBay, postings of printers for thousands of dollars. They were sending monies to fund terrorism. I don't doubt anything these days!

Do you still have tags on those bushes? The pots they came in? Receipts from Home Depot or Lowes? They guarantee their plants for a year. Haul the dead ones back to the store. I did so last year. Got pretty new ones!

Been there a few times with legally owned artwork! Here's a good story.... back in the day when I was a facility manager for Bristol-Myers Squibb, I found out the Excederin Busch League car was making promotional rounds in New Jersey. I got a hold of the right people and worked it out to have the car at our company location on a weekday. Excederin was our product at the time. Everyone was so excited to have our race car coming to the site. I drew up a poster with a our promo photo of the car on it and brought it to our printing department. They had instructions to print the posters, and have them posted on the doors of every building on site by morning, the day of the event. The next morning I get into work and... no posters anywhere! I ran to the printing department and the smug little supervisor started to lecture me.... "Do you know anything? You cannot print a copyrighted photo..." I cut him off right there.... "IT IS OUR COPYRIGHT!" and gave him an hour to have those poster out there! And as a bonus they sent the shy young driver nobody had ever heard of along with the car. He was very humble and signed everyone's photos. I took him to lunch in our cafeteria. His name? Jimmy Johnson!

Very cool. That is one loooong bed!

I"ve seen a few of these fake coach roofs on recent luxury cars and recently on a new Toyota Camry.... should've left these back in the 1970s and 1980s!

I'm pleased because I went on another of my postmark road rallies on Wednesday. As always I had a preplanned route of post offices where I needed post marks for my NJ post mark collection, and I got curious about it so I plotted it out in Google Maps just to see the efficiency. As you are running these it seems you are zig zagging and I wouldn't have been surprised if I back tracked and crossed over my route. But nope, this one seemed to be pretty well planned. This route was in the upper northwest corner of the state, where it meets both Pennsylvania and New York in the corner. It's a hilly region where the Pennsylvania Pocono Mountains begin and the NJ ski resorts in the Vernon area reside. It was an interesting drive and I managed to visit 11 post offices and get 10 needed cancels for my collection. The last time I posted about this a few board members said they'd be interested in reading the story. I post my tales on the Stamporama stamp site, pretty much like this site but for stamp collectors. My screen name is BenFranklin1902 there. Here's links to my latest two trips: North Jersey Run on Wednesday: https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=22163#159950 South Jersey Run earlier in the month: https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=22015#159494 November 17, 2018 Run in Fort Lee NJ Area https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=21268#156545 Cape May County Run in July 2018 https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=20557#151085