Tom Geiger

I'd love to see any of the first gen Barracudas, 1964 1/2 through 1966. I think we eventually will see a new tool. Where the '66 Barracuda is today.... the parts are pretty much split between two kits that have been out not that long ago... the Hemi Under Glass and the Fireball 500. Here's what I know: HUG has the body, glass and all the chrome. The body is missing some trim in the nose area. The wheel wells will need to be restored as well. The hood would need to be reopened. Fireball 500 has the original kit's Hemi engine, the interior and chassis. All of this has been modified. The dash has a new padded top. The bucket seats and steering wheel are original. The interior bucket was cut right behind the doors and the rear half is gone. The back seat isn't in the kit. The chassis is fairly intact, but plastic was added at both the front and rear since the Fireball body was extended. You could easily cut those parts back off. The exhaust is different... I forget which way, but one has a dual exhaust and the other a single exhaust, both molded in. Chassis wise, it's still old school technology. No matter what they issued, I'd be using a modern AMT '71 Duster or Revell '68-69 chassis under it. And the perplexing part... originally it was rumored that the HUG was coming out, then we saw the Fireball issued instead, a lot of folks surmised that the Barracuda body had been butchered into the Fireball. Then the HUG appeared, and we knew that both bodies existed! Here's my theory. One of the rarest Mopar promos is the 1966 Valiant Signet. There are mistakes on the body, in short AMT molded the 1965 Valiant roof on it, while the 1966 roof is significantly different. We'll never know if Chrysler changed the design or if AMT just screwed up. I believe the entire lot got recalled, and the ones that exist today came from Chrysler insiders who got review samples. Just my theory. When Model King was first doing kits with the then owners of AMT, we asked if that '66 Signet tool existed. That would've been quite a piece to bring out! We were told it didn't exist at that time. So if Chrysler wanted that tool destroyed, I'm betting that the body from the Craftsman Valiant kit that started as the 1963 and was modified all the way through 1965 as promo and Craftsman kit, was the 1966 Signet and that body got modified into the Fireball 500.

I'd love to see this reissued as you describe it! We know that the kit still exists in it's last version of the Commando. The good part is that while the two versions have different wheel bases in real life, MPC never lengthened the chassis so all those details are still correct. The big issue would be retooling the body back to the original Jeep like nose we all love. I'd also love to see the various tops... long wagon/sedan top and the pickup top. The snow plow would be cool as well as all the extras that went into the various versions. My own peeve is that between the first and second issue, they shortened the door panels to fit inside the pickup cab. I'd love to see those returned to original so the model would look complete in the pickup bed area. But then we'd have the original body and the later Commando would become the valuable one?

My TV and Internet is back! I got home last evening to find nothing on my Verizon Fios was working. Then I remembered that I passed a herd of a dozen or so Verizon trucks working on poles in the pouring rain on my way home! So I knew the issue was local. My wife was near freaking out that she had no TV. She had nothing to do at all! Kinda funny. Me? I cleaned up my workbench and fiddled with some model stuff. No problem. My concern? I'm pleased that it came back about 9pm because I'm working from home today and need the phone and Internet for meetings. If that wasn't working, I would've had to drive an hour plus to the office! On a day I didn't need to be there! So I'm most pleased!

It's not the ink nor the number of pages.... it's the cost of buying the translation services in multiple languages. I'm currently involved in sending out company wide announcements in eight languages. There are companies that do this work, and it's very expensive!

My father was famous for locking his keys in his car... I carried an extra key in my wallet... for HIS CAR!

How about a little known VW fact?? Volkswagen intended that US market Beetles were to be produced in the USA. They actually built a manufacturing facility near New Brunswick, NJ. in the early 1950s, but the exchange rates changed and became more economical to produce cars in Germany and ship them to the USA. That plant was sold to Studebaker, who thought it would be strategic to have an East Coast manufacturing plant. Enter the Korean War and Studebaker used that facility to produce vehicles for the US Army. Again, after they did an analysis, it became best to continue to produce cars in South Bend, so they never did produce civilian vehicles in New Jersey. The plant was sold to a large electrical manufacturing company, whose name escapes me right now, and it's still a production facility today... at least the last time I passed it, visible from Route 1.

My inlaws used to keep the TV controller on top of the TV

Don't know if it's the same as the Coronation Coach, but that's a pretty big deal in England. That was the first Matchbox car, as well as what the Fisher Body Guild originally built.

I have no problem with the magazine. It's like a really good club newsletter. I open it and I read articles written by friends of ours. Does anyone else hear their voices when you read? And content wise, it's subject to what the contributors submit. I'm just happy that there's always something cool. It comes out when it comes out. I understand and accept that. It's been awhile, but when Gregg was well, he was out and about at model shows across the country. He was just fun to be around, always doing something funny, and being a great ambassador to the hobby. People got the magazine just because he treated them nice at a show! If he had kept his health, things would be much different. I surely miss seeing him! Going back some 15 years, across some tall beers the night before NNL East, Gregg taught me that there was no model show more than a $100 plane ride away (hey that was a long time ago!) That was the encouragement that got me to take the big step to go to GSL in Salt Lake the first time! So thanks Gregg for all you've done for the hobby. I hope things get better! I'd surely love to see you at the shows again!

A little Bob Seger music... Like A Rock He was dumb as he could be Like A Rock Nearly anyone could see... Like A Rock I'm just glad that he's not me

Congrats! Today you met someone you will know the rest of your life!

Hmmm... kinda like my dumb buddy when we were 18, who towed a Mustang 20 miles with an old seat belt! It ended badly.

I drive the PA Turnpike when I go to work, so by myself at high speed I'm not likely to take pictures! On my way in this morning I saw a 1950 or so Plymouth Business Coupe. It was on top of a car carrier, riding up top in the rearmost position. The rest of the carrier was empty... I've seen cars in that same position before. Why do they do that? Does that weight far back and high make the thing ride better? Or are they just trying to shake the old Plymouth off? On the way home I saw a mid '60s Land Rover towing a crummy old Datsun pickup. It looked like they went to pickup the Land Rover and realized the Datsun wasn't towing it home. And a bright yellow MG on a trailer behind a Ford pickup. Yes, car weather is in the air!

Agreed. People got this idea that the Internet was supposed to be free early on, when everyone was flush with venture capital and hoping to grab a mess of users. Paypal was initially free, and once it caught on, guess what? And most of us kept on using them. I have Fotki paid accounts. Like Bill, I don't want to mess around with limited access, ads and such. For the Tri-State / NNL East account, we are always Fotki's most visited site right after the show. Dare we send everyone "Band width exceeded" messages? I think not. So it's worth paying a few dollars. Note that Fotki has always had sales. When those opportunities arose, I'd re-up the club account and my personal account for the maximum term.. like five years worth. And on those sales it was something like $10-15 a year. Can't beat that.

OH, that's one scary little bugger!

My great grandfather started a jewelry store. My grandfather and his two brothers left school at 16 and learned a trade in the store, as was customary in those days. It was a tough haul, few days off, working 9 til 9 six days a week. All three brothers sent their sons to college so they wouldn't have to work in the store. None did, and the store was sold in 1973 when they retired.

The problem with uploading photos to this site, is that these threads live on forever. So when you go and delete your photos to make room for more, all the photos on your old threads now have red Xs in them. That's the thing that bothers me most about this site. If you get a photo account.... Photo Bucket, Fotki, Flicker etc, you can leave your picture there and your threads will be much more readable for the future!

Sad. Bob's Hobbies in Pitman, NJ is also closing. They're having their final fire sale right now. Another 50 year old shop closing because the owner is retiring and nobody was interested in taking it over. Back when I was at a career crossroads a few years ago I thought about opening a hobby shop. I even spoke with Hobby Town franchise unit, and checked out local real estate. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make the numbers look even remotely do-able.

I dunno, all those big gaping front ends on new cars... to me they just scream P-L-A-S-T-I-C !!!

I hear ya Art.... That's an Aruba license plate on this one...

Valve stems made from black wire... I've used both spark plug wire and scale battery cable. Also note the Detail Master wheel weight. You get about a life time supply in the pack for around $6

I try to pin everything I can. Joe Cavorley taught me the technique many years ago. He could completely assemble one of his nearly scratch built trucks with pins, then once it was built he'd take it apart and paint everything. Here's an example on pinning mirrors onto a model body. The actual work gets done way before anything gets painted. The mirrors are just pinned on, and they stay right in place. This was a model that would get shipped a few times and was used as box art. I wasn't sure how they'd want to photo it with some of the accessories, so I never glued any of them. Funny thing, this model sits in my case today with the mirrors still pinned. Important note - look at the right side mirror, you can see the pin inside the body. I use regular straight pins for my work. I will cut off the pin end, and mount the part on the whole straight pin. I will keep parts that way through the painting phase, using the pin as a handle. Once ready to commit the part to the model I will snip the pin to the needed length. And another good thing. Mirrors, door handles and the like can be glued on the inside of the body, so there's never a worry about getting glue on your painted surface. Here's a sample engine, just to show all the pins. The distributer is pinned to the engine, and you can see all the pins ready for the carb, hoses and manifold exhaust. Much better than counting on all those little kit nubs to mount parts. This exhaust system is made from 8 pieces, all pinned together. The parts came from a '71 Duster dual exhaust system, along with the cat converter from the Volare kit. When designing and building an exhaust, there is a length of pin between each part. Just like hanging a real exhaust, I leave them all loose until I twist all the pieces in place. Once it's done, that's when I'll glue the joints, just like you'd tighten up all the brackets on a 1:1 Here's the above exhaust system in the finished model. Hope this helps!

What I saw on the news... As I watch the news from the Iraq and Syria, I've noticed that there are a lot of American trucks in the fray. Then there was a feature on one of the news shows... a Chevy pickup with a plumbers signs on the doors. The plumber is in Texas and was getting nasty calls about his truck in the news coverage with a big ISIS gun in the bed. He was on the news coverage. Said he traded it in at a local dealer with the truck still lettered. The dealer said he sent it to auction. The auction is checking their records as to who bought it, and Homeland Security is investigating how the truck got there and into enemy hands.

All I've got for Caddy! My daughter and I built this back when the kit first came out, probably 20 years ago.

Every US 1960s crew cab I remember seeing had a military origin. So there was no doubt a specification and a bid out for those. I remember seeing USAF crew cabs in use on the airbase in Turkey in the mid 1960s. Around 1980 a friend of mine had a 1968 Dodge crew cab as a company vehicle, it too had the military origin plate on the dashboard. RMR Resins does a bunch of crew cab pickups, including the 1960 you are looking for. In fact they have crew cabs for all three US manufacturers. http://www.rmrmodels.com/Products.html