Tom Geiger

Now I don't feel so bad! I spent $600 and that included replacing a tie rod. Note that this is my 200,000 mile Dodge Grand Caravan so I just put General Altimax 60k tires on it for $85 each minus 15% rebate. I got $110 credit on my road hazard warranty on my last set of tires. I blew two of them in a huge pot hole a few weeks ago and another had a bubble on the side.

Your car is nice, it would really be interesting showing up at a show in the USA with it! I'm happy that you figured a way to drive it. You seem like a level headed guy, so enjoy it... just not too much! In New Jersey in the USA, new drivers have restrictions too. There is no speed limit restriction, since we have many highways and anyone not doing the speed limit would be a danger. They get a small red rectangle on their rear license plate to identify a youthful driver. Restrictions keep them to driving before 11pm, and they are allowed one passenger, unless immediate family. That was because of accidents with cars stuffed with teen agers resulting in heart breaking multiple deaths. When I was young (back in the 7th decade of the last century) there was a local accident where a teen ran a Plymouth Roadrunner into a bridge abutment at 100 mph, killing all six kids in the car. So be safe!

When I was a kid living on the Pirmasens, Germany US Army Post (1969-72) there was one Superbird. US supplied gas on post was rationed with ration coupons since it was much cheaper than buying it at a German gas station. I remember my father laughing that the guy was begging coupons from the guys who had VWs and didn't drive much! I wonder what ever happened to it.... was it sold there or shipped back?

Ha! Every project goes down that merry path! Stay the course, finish it!

Cool progress. Can't wait to see it finished. I just love the bathroom... you can do the entire triple S siting there!

Sounds like you need to start a model car show!

There is a guy who does this at East Coast shows, Ernies Model Car Parts. He packs up assemblies into small bags. He's very reasonable in prices. When I go to shows I spend at least $20 on mirrors, door handle sets, sun visor sets etc at a dollar or two apiece.

Yea, Maisto makes stuff in 1/24, 1/25, 1/26, 1/27.... at least they mark it. I guess this is the modern version of 'box scale' that promo manufacturers did in the early 1960s. Someone in the hobby spoke to someone at Maisto about doing a consistent scale, and they said it didn't hurt their sales any.

Four tires and an alignment on the Grand Caravan today!

Same here. I go to a bunch of shows and swap meets. There are always $5 and $10 kit deals, especially at the smaller shows where guys like us have taken tables to thin out their collection. Then there guys who aren't as lucky as we are! In an area where there aren't any shows, so they rely on eBay and are used to paying a few more dollars.

You'll see that, where the average asking price for a certain model is $40, but there's one or two "Buy It Now"s for $180 and $200. Those guys are sitting there hoping that some idiot will stumble upon their item and hit the BUY button. It's like when you go to a flea market and there's one of those old AMT snap model pickup trucks from the late 1980s. We see them at swap meets for $5-20, but here's one for $50. The dealer doesn't know our market and figures a toy around 20 years old should be worth $50. Then some guy comes along and there's a model of his 1:1 truck. He's never seen one before and does the impulse buy.

Yes! Bring 'em, probably best place is the Misc category. As this isn't a contest, we've kept categories to a minimum, so there isn't a specific cycle class.

NNL East preparations... DONE! We had our final meeting before the show and everyone showed up... actually more than everyone, some folks brought additional helpers with them! We started two hours early and when I pulled into the parking lot at 11am, I could barely get in with all the cars. No doubt our most attended meeting of the year! We packaged up the Model Car Garage / NNL East souvenir license plates and our special NNL East gift for everyone this year. Then we had a long, two sided assembly line for the Goody Bags. Then we ate eight pizzas and fifty pieces of chicken! Great meeting, everyone is excited and ready for the show. What a team!

Elitist! :-) I'll have to introduce you to these kids.. I do have another nephew who is learning to drive in a Tesla

How about Valiants.... 1960 R&R Valiant wagon SMP '61 Valiant 2 door hardtop SMP '62 Valiant 2 door hardtop 1962 Revell Valiant 4 door sedan 63-64-65 AMT Valiants The holy grail of Valiants... '66 Signet hardtop promo And that's all of them... unless we need to post the Premier and Palmers...

I have twin nephews who at that age screwed up their faces and told me that "they'd NEVER stay at a Marriott!"

Great work! You have illustrated the intent of the Polar Lights model concept. They produced a kit that a kid could easily snap together in an hour and get pleasing results, but advanced modelers would want to use as the basis of a complex project!

What? No hotel room model building?

I have also been thinking about a similar project. I thought about this when I was looking at my unbuilt kits and restorable kit stash. What a great collection I would have if indeed I had nicely done models of all those years! You could start much earlier, with the MPC '32 Chevy Roadster. Then there's the 1934 Chevy panel that became the Barnabas van. There is a Monogram 1939, and a nice diecast '41 convertible. As mentioned the 46-47-48s have been covered by Galaxie. With the sedan, sedan delivery and upcoming coupe, you could do one of each year. Then we get into the years you are missing... here's a 1968 convertible. Set yourself up an eBay search agent. They will send you an email every day that they find something. That's how I've filled my gaps with rebuildables. a pair of '69s. The The 1970 kit is current and plentiful. It's also a good parts kit for those 68-69s. I have found the '70s cheap at shows and bought them just for the purpose of restoring the above cars when the time comes. Much easier to concentrate on restoring the glue blob body and interior when you have a new and clean chassis! I do have a 1972 and 1973, bought by way of the eBay search agent. I just don't have pix of them. The '72 was the hardest to find. This one is the 1974 1975 and 1976. The '76 has been recently released and is plentiful at swap meets and eBay. This is also the key for parts to rebuild decent 71-75 kits. The last kit of a full size Chevy was that 1976 car. That's why the tool still exists today. Beyond that, there are some resin kits of square Impalas, Modelhaus has a 1985 4 door sedan. Then there is the Monogram 1990s jelly bean police car and Impala SS. Those can be modified to make a couple of different years. Modelhaus also does a 1992 Caprice wagon.

An Oldest surviving model... This is a modern digital photo of my Polystil Mini Cooper. I've had this since about 1970-1. After seeing The Italian Job I was very into Mini Coopers. And my favorite color scheme back then was yellow and black, after seeing The Yellow Rolls Royce. I lived in Germany at the time, and every where we looked there were red, blue and white versions but I knew it came in yellow so I held out until I found one! Of course I added my own spin on it, the interior has orange cloth carpet. The engine is painted the correct green and the hood was brush painted with Testors lumpy black. The decals came from some aircraft model, and I removed the grille and painted the opening black because it was cool to me at the time. This Mini has survived well my entire life. In high school it was in our single frame animation project film. I have a photo that shows it on a shelf in my first apartment. It has a place of honor in my show case today.

Very nice! The decals make the build!

o That's me circa 1970, sitting at my model building table. I still have most of the stuff you see on the table. The ornate piece on the left is a silver condiment server, that I found in the trash and used as a parts bin. The gargoyle was bought in Paris outside Notre Dame. The odd yellow bank was in my Easter basket one year. These pieces are all on the shelves in my den today. The paisley shirt had those puffy sleeves and is long gone, but I still have the leather fringe vest that went with it! I was scratch building something odd. I remember that the chassis was a rectangular piece of sprue and that I made the body from cardboard that I coated with nail polish to get it to accept paint. It was a woody, decorated with match sticks. I don't remember much else about it.

You mean you can't just put a photograph of a car into your scanner and have a complete model kit pop out for free??

I was around for the van craze! Everyone wanted to customize an old van. Even junkers were selling for big money. While you'll see great show stopping customs in those books, most of the finished products looked like this! You know how that goes! I didn't put a lot of detail into my interior because first, the real van I was replicating looked like this, plus you can't see much through my windows anyway. My original thought was just to black out the glass.

I like anything light commercial... I had planned on doing my sedan as a meter readers car. I have the decals done and in the box. I just need to order the six cylinder engine from Ken Kitchen. Why not do the wagon as a postal vehicle, public utility vehicle, TV repair van... the possibilities are endless. Especially in their second or third lives old wagons did a lot of services... painters wagon etc.