Tom Geiger

Guy, Al is insane! You have to meet him to know that! When ever he posts that he bought a kit, I know I'll see it finished at our next club meeting.

Looking good as it nears the finish line! Keep it going!

I had the opposite of a Christine effect. My grandfather always had a gold Ford LTD from 1970 onward. He'd replace it every 4 or 5 years with pretty much the same car. In the 1980s he started giving the old one to my father, which was a good thing since his hand me downs were low mile cars with most of their life ahead of them. I was with my grandfather when he bought the first LTD in 1970. I was 11 and remember that trip to the dealer in great detail. I had no involvement again until 1990, when he got the last LTD, which was a brown Crown Victoria. It was the only excursion from gold, but it was a left over at a steep discount so he bought it. My grandfather died and my father assumed ownership of the car a few years later. Unfortunately my father got cancer and died a few years later himself. The Vic wound up in my driveway, so I started driving it. Originally just for the summer, then I registered it in my name for a year... which led to driving it as my daily driver for 8 years. During that period of time I put 120,000 additional miles on it without a worry. It never broke down ever! It never failed inspection ever! I had a warm feeling driving the car as I felt that my grandfather and father were driving with me, protecting me and keeping the car running all those years. Every so often I'd look in the rear view mirror and could almost see the two of them sitting in the back seat together.

Dart looks great!

Nice project Steve! I will be watching. When you said you were building a pair, my first thought was that you had two '64 Chryslers going! I have a couple of that kit, at least one each of the hardtop and convertible. I was thinking of doing a pair like that. Per Squadron Green Putty. I've used it for years and it only shrinks if you put it on too thick. I've found it works fine if I do several thin coats. I recently started using Squadron White Putty. Works the same as green but is easier to cover with paint. I've asked and nobody can tell me if the formulas are different, even the writing on the tube is the same! So I can only figure that the green is for the military guys and the white is for car guys.

and I do like that little Plymouth Mayflower ship that's in the center of my Breeze's grill!

To each his own Nick. I'm sure our model shelves look completely different. And that's just fine.

Stupidity does make life more difficult. I know a guy who spends his life going from disaster to disaster because he's stupid and makes the same blunders over and over. You can talk to him until you're blue in the face and he still goes ahead and puts himself into another Ralph Cramden situation.

Wow! Looks like you have a system going there! Colorwise, I found a lot of reference pictures on the Internet, and there were some conflicts between Revell's listed colors and stuff I saw on photos of actual cars. In fact I found things different on pictures of different actual cars.

Nice looking car Kyle.. I broke the golden rule and bought the wife a car that there is no kit for... 2005 Buick LaCrosse, fully loaded including leather. 30,000 senior citizen miles, estate car that the son traded in on a new Acura SUV. $8000 cash.

You reminded me of a story from 1966. My buddy Carlos bought a 1966 Chevy II 2 door sedan from the local electric company for $75 because the right side was all dented. Car did have a powerglide transmission but nothing else. Manual steering and brakes, flat plate where the radio would go. It was flat gold in color, no doubt from never being washed or waxed. These were the cars the meter readers used and they must've flipped the fleet because we started to see the same car everywhere. In short order we figured out that these cars were on a fleet key. That means that one set of keys worked in all of them. So when we were driving around and we'd see one, we'd use Carlos's key to move it to another space in the parking lot. Or if on the street, we'd park it on the opposite side of the street. We never did stick around to see the owner's reaction, nor did it even dawn on us that this must've been illegal!

That is cool! Love the color too. Do you have any photos of the 1:1? I'm sure the brother will be crazy happy on Christmas!

Nice work Al! Look forward to seeing it at our December meeting! Me? I'm still plugging away on my Trabbie... bet you finished yours in three days!

Hmmm, I hadn't noticed that the slant six was small, guess because I hadn't gotten to the point of fitting it into a car. But I did notice that's it's the nicest slant six ever put in a kit (aside from the Revell Visible Slant Six engine kit).

Looks great! You are a brave man to spray black over that wrinkled body! Glad you got it all to flatten out nicely. I will be needing to get that kit. I'm on a ROG roll lately and I've always loved the WRX.

No, I hired the sprinkler company on full maintenance contract to open and close the system each year. Their task. My system is a bit complicated since it also supplies water up to my pool area, a few hundred feet at the back of the property and across a bridge. So I pay them to do the annual draining.

Tough break Geoff! I just looked at those parts on my finished chassis and again on the sprue on one of my other kits. The position that part is in on the sprue looks like it would be apt to be broken off. Look through anything in the box, that piece may be in there somewhere. I'm hoping ROG comes through, I understand they are good with customer service. Otherwise, maybe someone here who is building their Trabbie as a drag car and isn't using the stock chassis could help. Interesting note- I was at a show two weeks ago and was speaking with one of the dealers. He had one Trabbie sedan and one Universal kit in his booth. I was checking the price on them, and he told me they were his last ones. He had sold two cases of each variety. And this is on the East Coast of the USA. So these kits must be selling well in Europe as well. As far as test fitting, nearly everything in this kit pretty much pops into place. The fit is very good overall. One thing to watch is that the exhaust tends to sit too low and far away from the body. I trimmed mine up and actually added a bit of straight pin (or rigid wire) and pinned it to the chassis at about mid point to get it to stay in proper position. I am currently working on my interior and one thought is that if you are using the decal for the radio, I sanded the radio flat on the dashboard so it would sit right. The radio has molded in detail that sticks out. And the decals are probably the smallest little bits I've ever encountered! The emblems in the wheel centers are the worst so far, I lost two of them. I'm fortunate that a club mate built the car without them so he gave me his so I can have them on all four wheels. The decal for the steering wheel center is another one, I cannot even see it against the black wheel. There is a lot you can work on while you wait for the ROG chassis part. So keep on building!

My lawn sprinkler company was real hot to winterize my system back in September. Once I contacted them mid October they kept putting me off. With the freeze last week I came home to water gushing out of the sprinkler standpipe next to my house. Of course they were scheduled to come that Friday. I turned off the valve inside my house, and when they came the technician was back peddling that it was 'nobody's fault' since we normally don't get a freeze this early in the year. Well, guess what? In my book it's THEIR fault and I will hold them to doing the repairs in the spring.

It had to be 1965, my birthday when we lived in Ohio. I got the Mr Kelly's Car Wash. Let's just say it worked much better in the commercial and one of those toys you played with for a half hour and lost interest.

Wow! I just found this thread so there's not much left to say that hasn't already been said! Great work, I love when people build replicas of cars they love!

I love this kit! I have two of each the little sedan and Universal. My first Universal is nearly finished as a East German postal van, using reference photos found on the Internet. The kit is very well done and nearly snaps together. As you found, the fender top trim is finicky and The Creative Emperor on this board suggested using Evergreen strip instead of the kit pieces. I cannot imagine that the instructions call for these to be installed onto a painted body, I detailed out my engine compartment, adding the two spark wires and some wiring that runs the length of the inner fenders on either side. Look up my build thread for photos of my work, as well as some of my reference photos. I will be watching!

sorry to hear about your day! I once had a 1990 Plymouth Grand Voyager minivan that was haunted. It kept getting hit by other cars when it was standing still or parked. It was gold color so it wasn't hard to see but by the time we got rid of it, it had been hit on every side at least once. + A car in front of my wife had to back up a little bit to allow a truck to swing in it's turn. The lady forgot it was in reverse and hit the gas when the light turned green. My wife looked at the van and didn't see any damage so she let the lady go. That evening I saw fluid on the ground and realized that the hit was below the bumper and the transmission cooler was destroyed. + Van got hit in the drivers door while parked in a store parking lot, while we were in the store. + We were at a wedding and came out of the church to find a tail light broken and on the ground. A car must've backed into it trying to back out of a space. + My wife had a flat tire and a good samaritan tried to change it for her. With the right front tire off the car, the jack came down and dented the whole fender. Good samaritan made an excuse and ran away! And those are the ones I remember. I got rid of it just because we didn't want to be anywhere near it!

So sorry to hear about your DixieLou. We had a similar experience a few weeks ago when we lost our Ted. We had been out for a Saturday evening and came home to find him in distress on the kitchen floor. He was alive but he didn't recognize us and wasn't able to get to his feet. He was only a little guy, 20 lbs, so I scooped him up and ran him to the emergency 24 hr vet. We got the sad news and he was put to sleep sitting on my lap. Pets are family. Condolences to your family on your loss.

I was in San Juan a few weeks ago. I went into Walgreens to get a few things and wound up asking a very nice young woman about which brand of Puerto Rican coffee to buy to bring home. Then I got some candy and stuff to eat on the plane ride. I was on line right behind her, and the clerk spoke to her in Spanish. The clerk took one look at me and said "hello" and addressed me in English. Man, do I look that American? Spur of the moment, I acted like I didn't understand her and spoke to her in German. So she did her best to help me and I finished the transaction in German. I guess that taught her not to prejudge! Ha! The woman I was speaking to earlier walked out the same time as me and we both started laughing. She thought it was pretty funny. I was in San Juan a few weeks ago. I went into Walgreens to get a few things and wound up asking a very nice young woman about which brand of Puerto Rican coffee to buy to bring home. Then I got some candy and stuff to eat on the plane ride. I was on line right behind her, and the clerk spoke to her in Spanish. The clerk took one look at me and said "hello" and addressed me in English. Man, do I look that American? Spur of the moment, I acted like I didn't understand her and spoke to her in German. So she did her best to help me and I finished the transaction in German. I guess that taught her not to prejudge! Ha! The woman I was speaking to earlier walked out the same time as me and we both started laughing. She thought it was pretty funny.

It's all relative... in 1976 I sold my 1970 Chevy 350 coupe because I couldn't afford to put gas in it... and gas was 50 cents a gallon then! The Buick I just bought should get the same range as your Sebring.