Tom Geiger

Love the Westfalia! I have one in my stash I will have to build one of these days!

this falls into my realm of "I don't wanna know!" Along with.. I don't wanna know how many hours I spent on any specific model. I don't wanna know how many kits I own

How about... I was irked at the pub my wife and I frequent for Happy Hour once a week. Over crowded and with an obnoxious group that pushed the other customers to the side. They always have the best seats at the bar. Bartender shares with me that they never order food, nurse a beer for an hour and leave their seats for a half hour at a time to go outside for smoke breaks. In short, not good for the business! So two weeks ago we decide to go a bit early to get decent seats at the bar. What do we see? One lady from that group was there that early, and she had stuff strewn across all the seats on that side of the bar to reserve them! And the staff did nothing! So we walked out, not going back. And here's what pleased me... We went down the road to a place we hadn't tried... bar is twice the size, never a problem getting a seat. Happy Hour specials are cheaper and the food is better. Beers are a dollar cheaper. Bartenders are nice and already know us. We are seeing other good customers from the former pub at the new place, there for the same reasons! Should have done that a long time ago!

Very nice model! Which alerts me to the fact that I don't have a '55 on my shelf. It's a nice kit to build so I should work on that!

Gregg had posted recently on Facebook that he was enduring more back surgery, with another device placed into his back. He did mention that the next issue is coming. As I see it, Jarius has been able to get the slot car magazine out, and this is what will make the next issues of Model Cars feasible. Note that when Gregg took it over, the former owner kept the subscription monies. He has been printing it out of his own pocket. I wish him luck and thank him for keeping this forum active. It is a bright spot on my day!

It's coming! I do a lot of printing through Staples. When I'm running events in other parts of the country, I email my materials to their store closest to the event. Then when I land there, I pick up my order of printing and supplies I've preordered. I got tired of bringing 100 pounds of booklets and posters on the plane with me!

My father and I collected coins together when I was in my early teens. I collected pennies and dimes, he collected nickels. Still to this day I check my change out of habit. And I have a big mug on top of my dresser that I toss in anything interesting!

Great work on one of my favorite old kits! Here's a suggestion... note that the grille teeth were a higher end option. I believe the majority of the trucks didn't have those. I took them off on my build because they weren't on the truck I was modeling. I rarely see anyone else take them off! With... Without...

I have the "Lost" version of the bus. It's a really nice piece, I have it sitting on my wall unit up next to my TV. I'm having a hard time not taking it apart! I have evil ideas!

Is it "Old Thread Day" on the board? I'm seeing a lot of 2016 - 2017 era threads being brought to the top!

Man! I've reached for the can of clear for a final little touch and accidentally picked up flat black instead. Same forehead slapping result!

Thanks for the advise Terry, I have the kit and haven't started mine yet. Mine will be a replica of my grandfather's Crown Vic in a dark brown metallic

And agreeing with Bill on using Tamiya Tape and BMF for your fine edge. Lately I've been using the Tamiya tape for my two tones. It gives a great edge! It is a bit expensive so you can use it just for the edge, then mask off the rest of the car with painters blue tape. Here's an example- In the top photo that's the Tamiya tape. The part above the tape line on the C Panel was then just covered with Painter's Blue tape. And the results. Notice that even that little detail on the fender came out right!

I call this "The Beverley Hills Hornet". It's a bash between the Olds truck and the old Monogram Green Hornet show rod. Note that these are many of the custom parts in the kit. The engine, body, windscreens, and the wheel / tire set are all from the kit. The grill is chopped down to fit. That is the bed from "Jethro's rod", cut down to fit.

Great work!

Great work Rich on an unusual subject! Glad to see you back in the saddle building again! Keep it up!

I have a good sized hobby space now, but back in the day I built one of my best, favorite and iconic models at the kitchen table. My '53 Ford Pyrite's Paddler pickup was built for our annual Tri-State Scale Model Car Club contest we held at our December meeting each year. It was a friendly competition with people's choice voting, and Todd Koncsol had won it the last three years. We always had some fun ribbing and I told him I was going to beat him next year. He responded with a smile, "Yea, if you ever finish anything!" Oh, those were fighting words so I set my focus on beating him. I didn't have a model room at the time. I found an old shelf in my lumber pile and that became my workbench. I'd place it on the new kitchen table every evening I worked. I had a clamp on light I'd focus onto the board. And I'd work there diligently every evening. I had small kids at the time, so I had to be careful with my hobby materials and supplies. So at the end of each evening, I'd put everything on the board, and put it up on top of the refrigerator. That worked pretty well. A good side effect of this process was that it made me clean up and organize my work every day. Nothing like the mess of a work bench I have today! And yes, I did complete my model and I won the contest that year! Now the irony is that I have a great hobby room today, but I still build on that very same board! My workbench is an old hollow core door wrapped in brown paper. I wrapped it out of the habit of being an old draftsman we always wrapped our drafting boards at work! The board protects that surface. On top of the board is a piece of thick glass, which is actually the glass from a Xerox machine. I do my gluing on top of that and scrape it clean with a razor blade between projects.

Yea, I've dug into my unfinished build pile and am finishing up some of those 80-90% finished models! There are ones I stopped working on out of frustration, and ones I have no idea why I shelved them. But I finished up the Valiant Stocker, the TROG Model A Phaeton and now this Dodge D-50 pickup. Back in the day I worked in a convenience store at the New Jersey shore near Earle Naval Depot. We had a lot of navy traffic in the store and these little pickups were always scooting around town. I was told they were used because they were taken on the ships and saved space. So I decided to build one for my 24 Hour Build project in 2017. I had some setbacks during the build, some of which had to do with fit of this kit. It is a nice little replica and the chassis detail is super nice. In fact I noticed it slid right up into my '40 Ford sedan delivery.. can a Turbo street rod be far off? What stopped me cold during the 24 Hour Build was the final fitment of the kit. After 20 hours of straight building, I just couldn't see where the issue was, so I called it quits. Coming back two years later with a clear head, I saw that the dashboard was too wide. I did some serious sanding on the ends and got the interior bucket to sit up in the body. That affects how the entire cab sits on the chassis. The rear pan on the pickup box was too narrow so I added some plastic to either end. I also did a lot of my drill and pinning to get the little pieces like hoses to fit and stay in place. The mirrors are also pinned in place. The model came with low wide tires and mag wheels. I needed it to be stock for the US Navy version. This little Mitsu pickup came with six lugs, so I stole the wheels and tires from a '57 Chevy Black Widow kit. I made my own decals. The paint color that worked best is actually Duplicolor sandable gray primer, with clear coat over it. Then I gave it a semi gloss overall finish. The mirrors appear too large to my eye, but they came with the kit. And I have to do something about those flat headlights! Part of the 24 Hour Build is to build something simple, not to add too much detail and try not to modify it a lot. It's also good to build a model that is expendable, so you aren't overly concerned about thrashing through a good kit. This D-50 fit the bill. It was for sale at my club meeting for the huge sum of $5, and I knew I had two more copies at home. The kit came with clear red tail lights, but the actual truck had the red - orange - white lenses. I covered the red clear units with Bare Metal Foil, then used paints for the colors. Stock Mitsubishi 4 banger under the hood. I didn't even wire it. There are a bunch of small delicate parts under the hood, so I did some detail painting on them. Chassis is also fairly nice with a lot of detail and working steering. I think I'll take one of my spare kits and see how this fares under a street rod! And my "I can't help myself!" detail was creating a dash insert. The interior was kind of stark and I knew I didn't want to try to detail paint the gauges. I started with a photo from a dealer brochure, and in the above photo you can see where I have deleted the steering wheel. The wheel was completely across the speedometer, so I copied the tach over into that space. In scale, and in the interior, nobody will notice it has two tachs! It's just printed on paper and white glued in place. If anyone wants a copy of the dashboard, I can email you a copy of the Word file I printed from. One thing that did baffle me a bit was that I repainted the hood and it's a lighter tone than the rest of the body. Then I checked my primer against the pain on the bed underside and it matches... the culprit must've been the Testors clear coat. I believe it's yellowed casting a slightly darker gray. So I took the freshly painted hood and did the same clear coat on it. Hopefully it will age to match in time. Hope you like it!

Off my lawn!

Back when I bought my Geo Tracker in 1991, it was difficult to find the 4 wheel drive version with a 5 speed. They were all automatics on the lots, even back then! I finally found one... a yellow GSI 4x4 convertible with air and the 5 speed! I used it as my daily driver for years, until I took a job in Pearl River, NY. That put me on the Garden State Parkway in NJ every day. A ride that's an hour on a Saturday morning, is 1.5 hrs on the way to work and 2 hrs on the way home. All stop and go. After a few weeks of this my left hip started hurting. I realized I couldn't continue with this, so I started driving the Crown Vic to work. And it's been automatic cars for my work vehicles ever since! I still have the Tracker. It's just for fun now.

Absolutely love it! And what a fiddly little pain in the tail that kit is! I love the logo photo etch! Icing on the cake! Here's a photo I took many years ago. This is the body data plate. It's rivited right above the trans tunnel on the rear seat front fiberglass.

Great stuff Alan! I will follow your progress on this one!

I drove a Pinto Wagon for a summer once! My brother in law knows absolutely nothing about cars.He had bought a bright yellow Pinto wagon and had problems with it. He said it ran fine, just randomly wouldn't start. Just "Click". So he'd have it hauled off to some garage who would replace lots of parts. It would run for a bit, then the same problem. He hated that car, he spent a lot of money having it towed and "repaired". He was leaving my in-laws house one day and it wouldn't start. I listened, then I gave the starter solenoid a whack. It was right up high on the inner fender well. It started right up. So I pointed to it, explained to him that this was his issue and to have his garage replace it. I might as well have been pointing into a nuclear reactor speaking French. He got none of it. Same problem, repeat, rinse! So he goes out and buys himself a brand new NIssan Pulsar. He asks me if I'll sell the Pinto for him, and he'll split the money with me. I'm good with that. It was still registered and insured so I put some signs on it and drove it around. I drove it up to my carpool meeting place, and when I returned that evening it wouldn't start. I smacked the solenoid and it started right up. I drove directly to a car parts store and bought a solenoid. That evening I put it on the car, about a five minute job. I went through the glovebox and there was a huge wad of repair receipts. Seems that garages all over New York saw him as fresh meat. Large bills replacing things like plugs, wires, distributor cap, some sensors and even large repairs like a timing belt and even a distributor. I put them in date order and saw garages billing him for tune ups like three months apart. You know those garages saw all those parts were already new on the car! BUT nobody ever touched the solenoid! I drove that car the rest of the summer without any kind of issue at all! It was actually a pleasant little tug to drive. I was actually sad when someone agreed to buy it for my asking price. He lived in Sea Bright, NJ on Ocean Avenue right across from the seawall. He was in his final year of dental school and lived in a second floor apartment there. End of story? Nope, about a year later I run into the guy. He tells me the Pinto was just great... until the Nor'Easter that flooded Sea Bright (every minor storm flooded Sea Bright) and nearly took poor Pinto out to the ocean!

I'm in the "it really doesn't matter" camp. None of us are that important that anyone would bother spying on us! Between our cell phones, EZPass, the computer in our car and the millions of cameras out there we are being tracked. No doubt about it. There's nothing you can do about it. There are even cameras on highways that record the license plate number of every car that passes. There's so much data being recorded that it would be improbable to analyse it all. Most of it is only accessed when there is a need for specific information. A few years ago my wife's cousin drove off a highway and down into a gully. Her car was obscured by forest. She was unconscious. GM's On Star program sensed the crash, made the 911 call and directed emergency responders to the car's location. My daughters have tracking software on their phones to keep tabs on each other. They did this when they were two single young girls living together. It gave them peace of mind. Summer of 2017, not 5 miles from my house in Pennsylvania, there was a road rage incident where a shooter killed a young girl. From a nearby traffic camera they figured out they were looking for a small red Chevy pickup, and what exit it took off the highway. The police appealed to the general public, asking people and businesses to check their security camera footage. Nobody screamed "That's my private information!", everyone helped and soon enough they were able to track the route and location of the truck. They ran the state database of gun licenses for a specific hand gun against red Chevy pickups and they got the guy! Yea, I'm happy we have all this technology.

I've been getting that same incomplete screen too. Not every time, but once or twice per session.