Tom Geiger

And the entire system is not in favor of the consumer. When my wife had the Jaguar accident (small corner crunch), we didn't have collision on the 12 year old car, so I had to deal with the insurance company of the person who was at fault. They sent me to a body shop for the estimate. The estimator whispered to me that this insurance company's MO was to total my car and offer me half of what it was worth. He said they made more money in the junk car business than the insurance business. With all the trailer loads of fairly new cars I see on the turnpike with minor collision damage, I can see this is a major industry. In another incident, my daughter wrecked her Corolla, her fault and we had collision on it. Our insurance company company did a very good job. The car had been towed to their recommended body shop. They inspected it within a day and made me an offer. When I objected, they agreed to the number I wanted immediately. We had a check by the following Monday, and they told me to keep the car. Pleasant experience. The car had a front corner crunch, and they totaled it out economically but it was a 43,000 mile car so it was worth fixing. I get a call from the body shop telling me I needed to give them the title for the car. They said this with such authority that an average person would have done so. I asked why, letting him know the car was mine. He stumbled and said it was just worthless junk and they'd forgive me the towing and storage fee, which was some $200. I told them no, I was going to fix it and asked for a quote, he refused, and demanded I pay his fees and remove the car immediately. So I filed a complaint with my insurance company. No doubt if I gave them the Corolla they would have fixed and sold it. We repaired it and my brother in law drives it to this day.

My irk of the day? Jumping through corporate hoops and dealing with the idiots they outsourced services to! I am trying to throw a conference. I was told I needed to have the outsourced Conference Services Department handle my negotiations and contract. They spent the last two months creating paper, going out for bids, and in the end negotiated it to pretty much what the hotel quoted me as a person off the street! At the same friggin place I was when they started.

The tough part about insurance is that you can get a quote for half of what you are currently paying, and it works fine as long as you are just paying for that insurance card for your glove compartment. You only find out exactly what you have purchased when you need to place a claim. And then it's pretty much too late to do anything about it!

Yea, yea, yea... follow me around the Internet fixing my bumbling posts! You are right, Crosley tried manufacturing cars prior to WWII and wasn't all that successful at it. They were selling them right in their appliance showrooms.From 1939 to 1942 Crosley built 5,757 automobiles. Production was interrupted by WWII and Crosley did what the government needed, producing components for Walkie-Talkies Radios, IFR Radio guidance equipment, Air Supply units for Sperry Bombsites (used in B-24s), Air conditioning units, Martin PBM Mariner bow gun turrets and 1/4 ton trailers. The gun turret was the largest contract. After the war their vehicles remained in production until 1953 producing another 84,844.

Brett is right with the corner congress has put USPS into. And we're all paying for it with the rate increases of the past few years. Remember when Priority Mail started? It was 2 lbs for $3.99 in their free box. Couldn't beat that. Still I marvel that I can address an envelope to any address in the entire United States and it will be delivered to that specific mailbox in a day or two!

Yes, Crosley was an appliance maker who decided to go for the big time and become an auto manufacturer in the days right after World War II when anything new on wheels sold quickly due to the pent up demand for vehicles after the war. Same reason Henry Kaiser tried. Both did okay until the demand subsided.

I'd be careful with baking soda since it has a high salt content and will absorb humidity from the air. Early on I was told to use it for rust, but later I saw BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH spots on the models in my case during the heat of summer. Roger, have you had any issues with that? That's why I was looking to try the embossing powder. Hopefully an inert product that won't cause problems. That's why I asked the heat question... since it's designed to be heated up to melt and expand, would it do so on it's own?

Nothing like original! I'd go with it. I like that color scheme too!

Cool! Joe Cavorley used to say that all you needed to do was break down a part into the basic shapes. Once you figured that out, scratch building was easy. And it's a matter of getting your confidence to try new things. Looks like you are doing fine!

It was for a New Jersey car. The big issue was that all the chrome clips rusted behind the chrome, and that transferred to the body as well. I had taken off all the chrome to expose it, and it all was surface rust, with pitting. Quite a mess. Now they make plastic clips for restorations to avoid that. I sold it to a guy who had just sold a neat Caddy custom he had built. He wanted a '60 for his next build, paid what I was asking, and said it would be redone into a mild custom within a year. That was about five years ago, so maybe I should drop him an email.

Ah, I responded to your PM prior to seeing this post. Yes, I always loved the style of the S Type from the day they were first made. Four years ago I had the opportunity to pick up this one owner car with 23,000 miles on it. I bought it at a Bentley / Rolls dealer where it had been traded in, along with a Bentley, on a new Bentley. Story was that it was a spare car on an estate, not used much so they traded it. I found an old registration stuck in one of the manuals and did the Google map thing on the address and it was quite a place!

Who me? I don't think I'm qualified to answer your question.

Thanks Steve. I'm looking to try the embossing powder technique to get carpet texture. I want to see how easy it is to work and how it looks. One of my concerns is that embossing powder is supposed to be melted with heat to expand for the final result in embossing. I'm hoping that never happens on one of my models... anyone know how stable the stuff will be? One of the reasons I'm looking at this is to do away with flocking.

When you take into the proper perspective that we all serious model lifers are 1% of the kit market... The manufacturers will always cater to the other 99% of the market. Those are the less serious builders, the guy who will buy an occasional kit. That guy doesn't have a vast automotive knowledge. He can identify a Corvette, a '32 Ford and a '57 Chevy. Put a Packard or 1950 Oldsmobile in front of him and he can't identify it. Pick up a generic car calendar at Hallmark or Walmart.. it will be full of those belly button cars because that's what the general public knows about cars. Also, we will buy and build one 1958 Plymouth kit, but we will always have another idea for a '32 Ford or '57 Chevy. Why? Because of their overall popularity and presence in the media. Thus, they make popular subjects for models. Saying that the existing tooling is owned scott free is wrong. The tooling was created by a company 50 years ago that no longer exists. It has been sold and resold each time that company changes hands. For the AMT tooling for instance, it's now owned by Round 2. They bought it maybe 5 years ago so each and every piece of that tooling has debt associated with it. For instance, take a house built in 1950. The original owner paid $5000 for it and if they still owned it, it would be owned debt free. But that house has appreciated in value along with inflation. It has changed hands several times. The current owner bought it 5 years ago for $300,000 and has a $250,000 mortgage loan on it. Same deal. So a company like Round 2 cannot let tooling just sit around. It has to earn it's keep. Thus they will try to reissue that kit as often as the market allows. Guess what? Their market research shows that the average modeler... that 99% of their market, only sticks with the hobby a year or two. So if they reissue that kit every two years, the theory is that it's brand new to the majority of the market that they serve. Forget us crazies... we are less than 1% and just don't count in these numbers. Still to Art's post, a new issue tool will result in 125,000 kits being pressed. A reissue can be as small as 2500 kits, often in multiples of that like 5,000 7,500 or 10,000 units. And that's not a lot of units. In the heyday of the hobby in the late 1960s kits would sell a millon copies.

Here's my Jag... never saw a need to change a thing! and the Lucas jokes... The Lucas headlight switch has three positions. Off, Dim and Flicker!

Sounds like your a local! That Ranchero is maybe 10 miles from my house.

Thanks James- People had mentioned a few shortcomings of the bed to me and I actually shared this thread and other information I got with the salesman. They have addressed many of the concerns in newer versions of the bed. For instance, as we tried out the beds in the showroom, the compressor is now silent. We also have a few airbeds in our house that have super noisy built in compressors. I slept on one of those for the year that I lived in PA prior to my wife coming with our furniture. I actually will leave our rock hard bed and sleep the rest of the night on the air bed which we have in a guest room. Those nights when I wake up with my shoulder aching, it provides great relief. That experience had me liking the airbed feature of the Sleep Number bed. The air bladders are pretty much separate now and don't affect the other sleeper. It's almost like two twin beds on a common frame. And someone mentioned that there was a no man's land in the middle that had a hard ridge. That's been fixed too. The salesman stripped down the bed and showed me the inner parts. So I'm really looking forward to this. Yea, it's a $8000 bed, which I bought on a half price Labor Day Sale, so I've got a hair under $4000 invested. But that's nothing next to our comfort and health for years to come!

Another thing I don't allow in the model room is flocking! I keep it separate and when I need to flock something, I do that downstairs, last time out on the deck! That stuff flies everywhere, and is attracted by static charge! I see models at shows with flocking and it's all clinging to the inside of the kit glass. I keep mine far away from the model room, and use hair spray on my finished work to keep it in place... I did that on the seat covers of the Chevette I recently finished

that sounds like my grandparents house in Jersey City, NJ. When they upgraded from coal to a huge oil burner (complete with asbestos paste finish) in the early 1950s, my grandfather decided to finish the major part of the basement. He went with that early 1950s style "Rec Room" look of green asbestos floor tiles, real pine board paneling half way up and the upper half was done in green printed panels made of what may be something like a modern ceiling tile, but probably contained asbestos! When my father and I cleaned out the house to sell it in the mid 1990s we found a box on the shelf, unopened of "Asbestos paste for furnace repairs". We quickly put that in a sealed plastic bag and got rid of it! The coal room became my father's photography dark room, the walls in there were probably built before cinder blocks, being rocks and mortar. There was a business end of the basement that held the furnace, shelving and closets for tools as well as my grandmothers work area, sink and wash area. I do remember her using an old style wringer washer when I was little, and the dryer was a line the length of the back yard! She did have a modern washer and dryer set in the later days. I was allowed to work on model cars in that area on the floor next to the furnace. When we were clearing out that space, I actually saw spots on the floor, shadows of model bodies I had sprayed directly on the floor as a kid. I don't know your basement space, but the first thing I would do is paint all the walls white to brighten it up. You can put up shelving that doesn't need to be secured to the walls. I did that in my old house. The shelves don't need to be super strong since model kits are light! It doesn't sound like you are confident with electricity, but you don't need much for modeling. Have someone access what power you do have there, and if it's a separate circuit from the rest of the house. Your wiring down there is probably old cloth wrapped cable, which would be brittle from age. I'd go back to the power panel and run new wire. You can probably run a circuit or two that would work for greatly enhanced lighting, as well as some outlets around the room for your tools, heater and such. Maybe we have an electrician from PA here on the board??

Steve, here's my 1960 Buick. I sold both cars a few years ago. That was my driveway back in New Jersey. The cars got sold as part of my big move to Pennsylvania. In retrospect..

My solution for that is that I put a series of shelves over the workbench where all the boxed, unfinished projects reside. That way I have to look at them. There are times I sit at the bench and look up at the labels on the boxes. One will catch my attention and I'll pull it down. Sometimes I just grok a few, and put them back, but other times the next thing I know I'm working on it. Sometimes I get a step or two done and it winds up back on the shelf. Other times it gets finished. No matter what, the project is a step better than before and those projects don't get lost in distant memory!

Welcome to the board! It's cool that you built a model of your own car. I don't know the stickers you are talking about, but a lot of us make our own on our printers. They can be done on pressure sensitive labels, or on decal stock you can get at the hobby shop for water slide decals. And the guys on this board will guide you along the steps. You can also print out your own license plates. http://www.acme.com/licensemaker/ Check out this site. You can do Maryland plates with your plate number on them. Once you save the image, it will be large, but you can scale it down to print the right size. I am assuming that since you are a young guy, that you are computer literate! There is a good model club in Maryland, the Maryland Auto Modelers Association (MAMA) who call themselves the Mama's Boys. They meet a bit south of you, but well worth the ride to go to their meetings. I can think of several of their members who are into tuners and such.

Yes fer shure! I will have several things going on the bench at one time. Part of that is I get to a stage of working on a model where you can only do a little before waiting for paint or glue to dry. So I like to have another project so I can continue working that specific evening. The second reason is that I like to have several projects going at different stages, so that if I don't feel like working on one, I can move over to the next one. I"ll be working on some fine detail on one model, but I feel like chopping plastic... it's good to have a project at that stage to swing over to. I do get to the point of workbench overload and I have one of those "Hold Everything!" moments. That's when I will sort out the inter-tangled projects into boxes, clean up the dust and yuck, and start over with just one project on the center of the bench! Funny thing is one of the best times I had as a modeler was when I was between model rooms due to house renovations. I had a project I was working on for my club's Christmas meeting contest. I worked on a board, on top of my kitchen table. I worked in earnest every evening, but at the end of the night, I had to regroup and put it all away. It wound up getting sorted out, bits of mess tossed out, and all put on the board, on top of the refrigerator so my little kids couldn't get at it. That kept me neat and honest! Maybe I should try that again!

Hi Brian! Good to see you on the board. Great photos! Tom G

I went to the show yesterday and had a great time. Many thanks to Len Feinberg and the host club. They had a record year with close to 600 models on the display tables. I know I showed up within a half hour of opening and had problems finding space on the display tables for my models. They also had record attendance, although I don't know that number. All the usual suspects were in attendance so we had a great time catching up with folks, looking and photographing the models as well as buying a few goodies. I show those under the What did I get today thread... I did take a load of photos, difficult to do since there were so many models and they were tight on the tables. There were a few categories I just had to give up on. But I believe I have a representative album... click on the link below http://public.fotki.com/ModelCitizen/model_cars/model-car-shows/super_september/super-september-sho-1/