Tom Geiger

I use Fotki.com and they reduce the size of all your stored photos to fit within their sizing parameters. Those are just right for posting on the web.

Ah, one good thing about getting old! Digging through the model room is like Christmas morning! I once went digging for the two '66 Barracuda built ups I knew I owned... found five!

That kit was later converted to a curbside snap kit, which is available fairly cheap. It has a stock flat hood, and stock interior which your kit didn't have. If you were looking for a body, this would be a good replacement. Otherwise, there were two versions of the kit you seek. The red car as shown and there was another release with a blue car on the box, and molded in blue. I'm not sure if the content was the same or varied between the two. If indeed, you score an unbuilt kit, why not build the fresh kit and save your old model the way it is now. The two side by side will show the dramatic change in your building skills.

I remember back when we established a $12 annual membership for one of my model clubs. A couple smokers refused to pay, but the same guys spent that every day on cigarettes!

It's more like what I'm still missing! I've got most of a Hubley Renault Daulphene in a box. The body ran off and is hiding somewhere... for years now!

Just looked... mine is a Jada. Here's how the hood bumps were created..

Mike- The sixteen page one at the Amazon site is the same one for $12.76 plus $8.99 postage. The postage cost stayed the same when I entered 3 of them. The Hobby Lobby deal with the 40% off coupon is less than $10 each.

We had another one of those "Storm of the Century" warnings for this past weekend. It was supposed to snow like a dickens Saturday into Sunday, then warm up to a day of bad rain storms. And of course a funny thing happened. Around noon on Saturday, it started to snow. My wife said, "It wasn't supposed to start until 1pm like she had an appointment or something. I had to assure her that within an hour, was a pretty good prediction. It did snow until about 11pm on Saturday. I expected to wake up and find it has snowed more over night, but nope. That's all we got. Maybe 4" if measuring generously. Then it hit 44 degrees on Sunday. Suddenly we were in one big melt. Not enough snow to get out my snow blower, and the snow we had was very heavy and water sogged. Kinda like a snow cone. I did one path down the driveway, which immediately became a river with all the melting. Then I cleared the sidewalk, and since I live on a hill, that became a river as well. Now we are back below freezing, so I assume a lot of that melt is now solid ice. And I'm not going outside to check! We should be back down to single digits again tonight. Nothing like yo-you weather.

Yup Dan, I think I'll just throw away the camper I was working on!

Here's a tip for decal storage that comes from my involvement as a stamp collector. This is a SuperSafe brand stamp stock book. It has 16 pages, each with 10 glassine strips to store stamps. Each page has a glassine leaf between them for storage. Hobby Lobby sells this book for about $15, but using the magic 40% off coupon, the album is less than $10 including sales tax. The store nearest me only stocks one of these at a time, and when I'm there and don't see anything I need for models, I grab one for my stamp collection. Then it hit me... this is the perfect decal storage book! Since both stamps and decals require flat dry storage, and they come in all sizes, from an individual decal cut from a sheet, to full sheets. They sit nicely behind the glassine storage strips and you can see the whole decal sheet, unless you over lap the sheets.

The remains of someone's collection, more like parts hoard, were spread out for sale at the recent Jersey Shore Model Car Club meeting. I looked at this old relic and must've put it down a couple of times, but in the end I knew it was coming home with me. It goes on the antique build shelf.

I just dropped a chunk of change on my 1996 Grand Caravan Mark III Hightop. Had the transmission rebuilt, some front end work, new fuel pump and the final was when I lost all the coolant, and it turned out to be the fitting to the rear heater system... which meant they had to remove the intake. All this work no doubt surpasses the resale value of this 200,000 mile vehicle. But we've had it since new and like owning it. It would cost more to replace it.

There are some inaccuracies... I tried to line up an AMT '57 Chevy hood and the whole shape of the cowl mount and such was different. That's why I eventually just added my incorrect hood bumps made from toothpicks. Fooled near everyone to date.

More like when my daughter was 10!

It's snowing like the dickins here and I'm not trudging down to the curb to see what's in the mail box.

I'd keep the door beams. Here's the Celica that my daughter got t-boned in. See the beam? That door held fast and jammed in place. Just like Toyota wanted it to. Saved my daughter from any injury, maybe saved her life.

I acquired a Dymo Label Maker when cleaning out my inlaws house. My father in law used to label in his photo albums. Looked horrible!

And for you guys whining about modern crate engines, you ain't seen nuthin' yet. I'm sure this guy is pondering how to get this Tesla chassis under his '55 Chevy!

Maybe not the greatest photo, but these mirrors have been drilled and pegs installed for mounting. I do this with all my exterior mounted parts...mirrors, door handles etc. I drill a small hole in the part and insert a straight pin. I do cut off the point first, then insert the pin with some CA glue. Once that's dry, the part pretty much will stay in place in the corresponding hole drilled into the body. Once in place, I will glue the pin on the inside of the body. That way you never get any glue on your painted exterior surfaces. With door handles and mirrors with two mount points, you only need to insert one pin. One the part is in place, if it's not sitting flush against the body, I may sneak a bit of CA onto the other mount point. As far as CA, I mostly use the stuff that has some body to it like Zap-A-Gap. The really thin stuff is like water.

I think it comes down to money and that our opinions really don't matter in the big scheme of things. In the old days, we all had the romance of finding some old hulk in a field and completely rebuilding it, either as a restoration, or as a hot rod. We would rationalize the car as a hot rod because, "it was too far gone to restore, and that's better than rotting in a field". Well, work, both labor and materials has gotten expensive, making starting with a hulk cost prohibitive. So today the rule is "start with the best car you can afford", and ironically ripping apart that nice clean original car is actually more cost effective than redoing a rusty hulk. And once you have two things, big business and the prices people will paid for these modern resto rods, all bets on saving those nice originals are off. For instance, the Insurance Institute For Highway Safety bought a clean 1959 Chevy for their 50th anniversary campaign. Only they didn't tell the owner that they were going to crash it head on into a then new 1999 Malibu. I don't know what they paid for that car, but it was obviously within their budget for that stunt. And they got their money's worth of publicity for the stunt. Sacrifice one classic car. Next example is the Gas Monkey Garage contract build for Diet Mountain Dew and Dale Jr. Obvious deep pockets, the cost of one classic car isn't even a blip on their promotions budget. Start with one very nice red and white 1956 Nomad that I really would've loved to have in that shape, tear it apart and add in all the latest junk... suddenly its this high dollar rod with a TV pedigree! You will never get that stock Nomad back, but again that served it's purpose. There will always be enough 1959 Chevys and 1956 Nomads that we won't lose all memory of those cars because of the above two events. We lose desirable old cars every day due to mishaps. Everything from crashes while out for a cruise, nuts loose behind steering wheels, falling off trailers, and forces of nature like fires, tornados and floods. There were 100s of antique cars lost in Hurricane Sandy. In fact I was listening to a talk by one of the officers of the NJ Antique Car Museum last evening. The museum took a big hit and they were fortunate that they had moved all the cars to higher ground, but they lost a nice Model A. The insurance company paid off and took the car. Another one lost. In the end it's no different than when we decide to cut up a nice old promo or crack open a vintage kit to create our vision of what that car should be. Just different dollar figures!

What?? We are getting gypped out of a pair of bumper guards? That kit price needs to be adjusted downward to reflect the loss of these two parts! We need to stand up for our rights! (the usual really silly rant that follows an announcement of any type! )

Ford should've sold the original Transits in the USA. I remember when they first brought in the Transit Connects... people said they wouldn't sell here, and the next thing you knew they were all over the place. I'm sure these Euro Transits would have sold here too!

Does Michaels or Hobby Lobby sell the 100 pack? 40% coupon ya know...

Just checked out in the garage... yup, still there! The big brother of Samurai! Bought new in 1991, tough to fathom that a car I bought new will be 25 years old next year!