Tom Geiger

Here's the van before putting the clear on it. The blue paint was uniform. The decals stunk, so I got that right, including the spacing, the second paint job.

Hey, then you tell me what happened! This was Duplicolor gray primer with Duplicolor blue on top of it. I made the decals with the BMF brand decal paper, and coated those with Testors decal sealer. I then put the Testors Wet Look Clear on it and this is what I got. I asked for advise on this board and was told that the red plastic had leached through. It was fine before the Testors clear. To show that it indeed had something to do with the plastic, see the window area which is still the original blue tone. That's because it was clear plastic. In this photo you can see that the plastic that was protected with the decals (on the drivers door) also stayed the same color. If indeed, the entire van wound up the darker tone, I would've kept it, as it wasn't a bad color. It just wasn't working with the two tone thing, and the Sharpie leaching. After advise from the board to seal in the plastic with a coat of silver, I started over with the Duplicolor primer, then Duplicolor metallic silver. Between not knowing if I had enough of the blue left to paint the van again, and actually liking the silver, I decided to keep it. I don't have a current photo, but the van had new decals now. The original decals came from my old printer that developed that line in the color output. The new decals are much better from my new Canon printer. So you can believe what you want.... until you come up with a better explanation!

I had a problem with the Testors Wet Look... see above. This is a Lindberg Dodge Caravan, molded in red plastic. Duplicolor automotive primer, Duplicolor blue. Sprayed it with the Testors, and somehow it pulled the red dye all the way through those many coats of Duplicolor. It didn't do it on the side glass areas, because that started as the clear parts. And it didn't mess up or go through the decals. You can see the lighter color under those. It also liquified anything I used a black Sharpie for outlining things and in the panel cracks. so into the drink it went!

Maybe they were too busy ferrying the wounded to emergency rooms? "AAAARRRGGGHHH! My hand!"

Charlie- many of us are using either clear paint or Future to affix the photo etch. Until I heard these options, the thought of using super glue scared the heck outta me!

I remember one of my dogs that would go hide in an interior bathroom during fireworks. My last dog Ted couldn't have cared less. There he'd be asleep on the couch as the sky fell around him. I live in a neighborhood where all the well to do folks are at their beach houses for the weekend, so it's been relatively quiet. That's quiet to the point that our guests on Friday said they didn't see a single person in our development on their way to our house. And I like it that way!

Well, I've been stumbling along with the Meyer Manx. Nearly everything is painted and I've started assembly. This is an AMT kit, but you'd think it was an old Revell tool for all the fiddly-ness (if that's a word..)! No wonder kids turned to drugs in the '60s! Many parts don't have a sure fit, just instructions that point to a spot to glue it to. That includes the headlights that are supposed to just stand on top the pedestals molded into the body. I will be drilling and pinning these. The steering gear colides with the place where the center structural member meets the steering assembly. I will be researching exactly how this sits, and will be fashioning it out of wire. Of course, not within the time frame of this build! The final straw? I had the perfect color for the interior, Duplicolor Buckskin. Got about 3/4 through painting everything and fzzzzzz! the can runs out. A quick trip to Pep Boys provided no replacement. Yea, I could just pick the next beige and respray, but this color looks so nice next to the body. I will either find my color at another store, or another brand of that color. So I will continue on with the Manx, but for now it's really nice outside...

No exotic cars here, I wouldn't want to be mistaken for a Sheik! If it was "money is no object" I'd like one of those Tucker replicas that IDA Automotive was making on Cadillac chassis. I don't know if they're still producing them, but I'd ask them to build mine on a Tesla chassis. And then I'd drive it every day!

Around 1990 I was at a hobby shop picking up gift certificates they donated to our show. The owner had me follow him to a back room and I spied 6 Johan '62 Studebaker convertible kits on a shelf. I inquired and was told that those were old junk nobody wanted. I wound up buying them for $1 each.

Yesterday I was headed to the beer store and I did a double take. There was a Model T Phaeton traditional (dare I say rat) rod, sitting at a stop sign waiting to get out on the highway I was on. It was fenderless, hoodless and really cool. It was a pale worn yellow. I'd say it was a hopped up 4 by the sound it made as it went by! On the way home, I witnessed 6 lanes of highway traffic come to a dead stop to allow a flock of geese to cross the road. If I was back in NJ there would have been feathers everywhere!

Hi Tim- That's a great find, especially in England! While yours is probably an original issue from the early 1960s, the exact same kit has been released again recently by Round 2. Of course I bought several! Now let's see what you build!

Yea, yea, yea! I've posted a few times but nothing worthy of a photo. So here's what I've got... has I've got most of my main parts all prepped and painted. Here's the body done in Testors One Coat "Firey Orange". I accidentally bought this about a year ago when painting my Dodge A100 pickup "Flaming Orange". I stopped in a hobby shop to get a second can, only to find out there were two colors! So here we go.... I have a lot of parts painted and drying. This kit has way too many parts in chrome, so I have a bunch of parts sitting in stripper. Unfortunately, all key parts like the two engine / transmission halves. I did go outside to do some of my weeding, got about 2 hours in, and it started to rain. So I'm back indoors. In the meantime, I was also pre-cooking all my barbecue in the oven. So come 6pm I'll start the grill up and have ribs and wings!

Lotza painted parts drying at this point. Figured out my colors for body and seats... spent the morning up until now. And have to break a bit to prepare my wings and ribs.. and maybe do a bit of gardening. With all this rain the weeds own this place! And I have 24 good size perennials lined up on the back deck just begging to be planted. See ya'll later

Don Emmons tells a story about when some of his models got stolen. Aside from his work in the model business, he also owns a glass business that has supplied a lot of the glass cabinetry that is in the International Model Car Builders Museum. He had a display case of the model cars he built for the magazine articles in his glass shop. There was a young guy, maybe 18 who came in and was enamored with the models. He came in a few different times to look at them. Then one night the shop was broken into through a small window on the back of the building. Nothing touched but a few of the models were missing. Don knew exactly what happened, but there's not much to do about it except file a police report. And I can understand Mark's dilemma. The police really aren't interested in doing a big investigation. About five years ago I was doing a gut job home renovation. The house was near done and apparently the contractor I had working on the house got into a dispute with one of his subs. We show up at the house one day and the central air unit is missing! Instantly I knew exactly what happened. The house was on a corner lot and the back yard was very visible. I ask around, and sure enough one of the neighbors, the retired fire chief, saw the contractor removing the unit. He didn't act because they were the guys working on the house and he figured they weren't doing anything wrong. But a perfect witness. I file a theft report. Detective comes around, takes a few photos. I had to go to the station and file a report. I hand this guy over to the cops. What do they do? They don't go and arrest him, they call him on the phone, and I'm listening. He ADMITS he took the unit. The cops tell him it's theft because I have receipts that I paid the contractor, and his dispute is with the contractor and not me. And that what he did was theft and trespassing. What do they do? Nothing! They tell me the guy lives an hour south of the town and they're not sending anyone that far to pick him up. So I keep on them every week for something like a year and nothing. They tell me that if he comes to our town and gets pulled over, he'd get arrested. Never happened. So what did I do? It cost me $2500 to replace the unit, which was less than my deductible. I reported the serial number of the unit to the manufacturer, which voided it's warranty. And since he just snipped the cooling lines, I sent a complaint to the EPA that he illegally released the gas into the atmosphere. I burned his reputation as a contractor on every board I could find. And that's about all you can do.

Sorry to hear that Bruce. That's where Rule 16 comes into play.... I have at least two of the Meyers Manx. I've found the Cragar wheels to be misformed around the edge. So I'm working with the best 4 out of 8. Comes in handy.

Wow! Wonderfully pink beef and she even brought you my brand of beer! When you live in Pennsylvania nearly every bar has it on draft. You don't as for a Yeungling, you just ask for a "Lager". A bit-0-trivia... Yeungling has started making ice cream. Back during prohibition, that's what they were making instead of beer. I believe they said it's a small nostalgic operation and for local distribution. I've seen it in our grocery store, expensive and they only had vanilla. They have a flavor called Black and Tan, I'll get some of that!

There is a lesson to be learned there! I've done the 24 Hour Build and that makes you build systematically, so you are cleaning up all your parts at once, painting everything that's primered or black at the same time, so there are efficiencies. And you find out that half the stuff you waste time cleaning up... seams, ejector marks etc aren't even visible on the finished model. It does make you think!

Is that stuff legal in Oregon? Otherwise they're really stupid leaving evidence at the curb. Make a phone call! Back when my Geo Tracker was new my idiot neighbor across the street set off a mess of fireworks in the middle of the street. Tracker was parked at the curb. One of his duds didn't go up, instead spun around in a circle on the street surface, spewing sparks, many of which hit my car. I had many burn marks on the convertible top and on the decals on the drives side. That cost the jerk about $400.

I've always used Mr Clean kitchen floor cleaner to strip my chrome. I put some in a regular drinking glass, toss in my chrome parts and let it sit over night. No nasty smell, it's lemony fresh! When done, I just put the Mr Clean back in the bottle for next time.

Okay...we had company today. Since my wife is still recovering, we didn't do a barbecue thing, but went to a nice local place with a patio. Had a great early dinner in fantastic weather. They left around 8pm, and I hit the model room around 9pm, just finishing up now. I'm working on the Meyers Manx. All I got done was to get everything off the trees, cleaned up and sorted. I had hoped to get some priming done, but it's too late to crank up the spray booth. I am using the street tires and the Cragars, a disappointment is that the edge of these wheels are screwed up by the attachment points being right there. It's beyond the point of having to carefully trim, there's actually a swelling of plastic under the chrome on the face of the edge. So I've sanded them all flat and round. In the morning I will figure out if I want to try a quick shot of Alclad or if I will BMF the wheel edge. I'm behind right now, but with rain forecast for tomorrow, I may get in some bench time.

Since there are a few 50s Chevy pickups posted already... This one was built when the 55 Cameo first came out... a long time ago!

I did look through Google Images and saw that the license plate lights are indeed on the top inside of the bumper guards. I saw one photo of a junker, and there was a big hole there, so they are inset. Pretty far apart, and a distance from the plate so I don't know how good a job they did. I checked a few sources... a '57 Ford brochure, and the Old Cars / Krause Standard Catalog of American Cars, that lists out all the options including their original price, and they don't list license plate lights as an option, so I assume they were standard. I found this on the Internet so assume it's correct: By 1928, at least 38 states already required license plate lights. The federal agency "NHTSA incorporated license plate lamps into FMVSS 108 in 1968", making it a nationwide requirement that all vehicles manufactured in the future for U.S. sale would need to have license plate lights.

Crummy photo of a model that I started a long time ago and never finished. But the side trim was done by first spraying the insert with Testors Silver, and then Bare Metal Foiling the trim around it.

and that's the visible part... Purple Power, Brake Fluid, Gasoline... you absorb it through your pores and it makes it's way through your tissue and into your blood stream. Do that a lot and you can have some issues. Seriously!