Tom Geiger

And you should! You are less than an hour away from our club meeting! Tri-State Scale Model Car Club meets in Perth Amboy on the 2nd Saturday of each month, 1-5 pm. The home of NNL East. Small group, friendly meeting, and we always have food! Check out our website for more info, consider yourself invited.... www.tssmcc.org

Interesting afternoon.... 62* and an amazing hail storm in PA near Philly. Ten minutes later the sun was back out.

Great start! I just commented on another build thread on this kit. Be sure to look at raising the top of the windshield. It's way too low on the kit. I also had problems with faint drip rails over the door and replaced them with Evergreen round. The scripts on the sides of the cowl is very faint and apt to disappear under paint. I'd sand it off and use the decal in the Model King kit. That sheet also has the FORD letters for the hood.

Cool start! With the work you have done so far, be sure to raise the windshield top since it's way too low in this kit. Also look at the drip rails over the doors, mine were almost non-existent and I added Evergreen round there. The logos on the cowl are very faint, and the Model King version of the kit has them on the decal sheet. I'd sand them off and use the decal. The decal sheet also has the FORD lettering missing from the hood.

Welcome Kris! What automotive subjects do you like? What cars are you thinking about building?

Yea, one of my pet peeves! It's people just gone crazy with a Sophisticated Finishes rust kit from Michaels! They just smear this stuff all over a model and think those results are realistic. Nope! And models that have a totally trashed body (but with no rust holes) and a clean chassis and interior! Rust is a regional thing. Simply, East Coast and Northern cars rust from the bottom up due to road salts etc. Western cars rust from the top down, due to the sun beating on the upper surfaces. East coast cars rust more on the passenger side than the drivers side due to being parked at the curb. Streets are angled so the right side sits a bit lower. Cars of the 1950s and 1960s rusted quite quickly. My father traded in a '62 Studebaker in 1966 because rust was starting to peek through. I remember my buddy getting a 1970 Maverick in 1976 that had rust holes in the typical lower corners. And Bondo was our friend back then, with many of us having 10 year old cars, all with New Jersey rust through. Research! Every car has its own rust patterns. It's easy enough to find photos today on the Internet. My favorite place is eBay Motors since cars of all conditions get sold there. It's easy to find photo sets of 20-50 photos of a single car for research there. I will save promising photo sets for future use. Most cars have their own rust pattern that you'll see in photos. For instance Tri-Five Chevys first rusted right on top of the headlights. So common that JC Whitney sold a chrome bezel to cover it. It drives me crazy when I see a model that's rusted to heck and those fender tops are pristine! Mid sixties Valiants rusted on the fender tops. Apparently there were different metals touching there that reacted to the salty road spray. GM midsize cars of the 60s (Chevelles, Tempests, Cutlasses) were notorious for rusting out around the lower edge of the rear window. My 1999 Plymouth Breeze, a car from the modern era where cars don't rust as much, is rusted at the right front edge of the hood. Every one I see is the same. Learn where the car you want to model actually rusts. It will be more realistic and those who know will seek you out to compliment you!

a funny thing. We all take the clean up part of the build for granted and I never gave much thought to the time spent since it's a hobby and we don't keep track. Then I was doing the 24 Hour Build and started with the old Revell Miss Deal kit. Yes, this kit is old and maybe a worse case for clean up, but I was dismayed that I started at noon and by 6pm only had a pile of primed parts! Yea, there was something like 6 hours of clean up!

Cool story and memories. I have always had a thing for Studebakers since I came home from the hospital when I was born in a 1954 4 door sedan. My father loved the style, but the used sedan was what he could afford. Around 1961 he painted it green. He and his military buddies sprayed it in the motor pool and he drove it home, and parked it in the garage to dry. Me, being around 3 saw it and said "Daddy's new car!" as I put my little hand into the wet paint.

Looks great Rich. That's 50s shelf is filling up!

I am from Hazlet NJ, Monmouth County. I moved to Exton, PA a few years ago for a job. I do run back to NJ a lot, especially once a month for my Tri-State Scale Model Car Club meeting.

Ah, my modeling pet peeves! Yea those look more like a model that got left out in the sun than a realistic wreck. Same with the guys who get a hold of a weathering kit and just rust a model beyond any realism. Especially those guys who think they're crafty and take a box of $5 old kiddie built ups, melt them a little, add way too much rust in the wrong places and call them "Pro Built Junkers". Those are the guys who ruin the entire genre!

Ah, the fun of attempting a wreck on a modern subject. First you need to determine what is metal, what is soft plastic (like bumper faces) and what is hard plastic or fiberglass. The photos you have of the Charger police wrecks should get you where you want to be. When I was working on a 1990s Honda that I wanted to be worn, I was looking at vacuforming the bumpers to make them thin enough to bend and flex properly. Metal wise, the metal on modern vehicles is thin and pretty much just a covering than strength. The good part is that today's cars are meant to protect the occupants so your damage will be limited to the front end that absorbs the impact. Good luck, I'll be watching your progress!

No you didn't miss it. GSL is every two years in Salt Lake City, Utah. The next one is April 30 to May 3, 2015 http://www.gslchampionship.org/

Sounds like a date! Have fun and take pictures.

I read that cities and other PD agencies are getting into licensing.... thus we'll see more generic decals in police car kits. Note that the Model King '57 Ford was originally shown with some correct agency decals that got watered down to generic for the actual kit release.

Maybe we need to have a 'trade a doomed project' day on the board! Then again there are guys who would get upset seeing one of their stuck projects finished by someone else.

Very cool team. Looks very well financed! I used to run the derby in NJ back in the early 1980s. Never was an organized thing, it was usually about once a season when the right combination of free car and the ability to borrow a tow vehicle came about. I did like to run full size Chevys, those V8s would run forever without coolant! Last one I had was a 1970 BelAir 4 door sedan.

I think it was more the advances in technology, both medical and communications that led to the larger truck body ambulances of today. Back in the day it was a gurney and a radio. Today it's pretty much an emergency room on wheels and the patient is hooked into the hospital's systems, taking vital readings, as they roll. You still see some van based 'ambulances' today but they're pretty much owned by private services for transport of stable patients between facilities.

Correct. And I'll do it each and every time I can. It's community. And nothing makes me happier than seeing a part I supplied get someone's build finished!

I haven't had a radio in my Geo Tracker in five years. It stopped working. And two years ago I had it parked in a Philadelphia parking garage and someone stole it. Ha! I just laughed. They stole a broken stereo! I don't miss it. Driving by myself is my quiet time.

amazing work! I would have fudded it all up by now!

Very nice article. Picture of two of them on the cover. Al, great work as usual. And I need to get you off the ground! I'm going to give you a photo surface box at our next meeting!

I believe the six in the 1960 Chevy pickup or the Trumpeter 1963 Nova would be right. The pickup kit would be a lot cheaper. You'd need to look at photos of real cars to see if the air cleaner is right. Ken Kitchen of Kitchen Table Resins makes different Chevy 6 cylinder air cleaners. I know he makes one for the Tri-five years, and one for the 1958 on era right after that.

I work from home a lot and do a lot of teleconferences at my kitchen table. This opens up into my den where my dog Ted is usually snoozing on a couch. He just lies there all day with the various conferences and voices until my co-worker Andrew speaks. He has a British accent and is a bit loud, so every time he speaks Ted jumps up and starts barking.

I wasn't poking at your cage, just answering the question in general and your post was the last one that stated the question... and the answer to your question here was in my post.... what could they charge? The majority of the guys here agreed that they wanted to pay for their part, but just how much? As I said in my last post... "And what is the cost of providing customer service? The cost of the actual small piece of plastic doesn't even weigh in. First the cost of postage can be a few dollars. I found that out helping folks on the board, where I've paid over $2 to mail someone a part. Then add in the cost of the desk, phone and computer... never mind the cost of maintaining a knowledgable employee to fish through the kits and send you the right part. I'll venture that each request costs them $10-20 by the time they're through. " And that's why when you go to the car dealer because you broke some small plastic clip and they want $15 for it. Yea, the clip is worth about a dollar, but there's $14 worth of handling to get it from the factory, packaged, and through distribution to get it to you! So yes, some model companies sell parts. I can't comment on the cost since I haven't seen it. Are they selling at a profit, breaking even or doing it at a loss for customer service? They'll tick off a bunch of guys who think it should be free. Then if they're doing it at a loss, a lot of guys will see it as their right to order up a whole mess of stuff. So in the end will it be cheaper just to give away parts to those deserving?