Tom Geiger

Right now there are four projects out on the bench. All at that 80% plus stage and going nowhere! I am trying to get the two Dodge Caravans off the bench but every time I take a step forward, I wind up going two back! I still have my 24 Hour Build Dodge A100 pickup taking up bench space. Yesterday I broke one of the hinges off and spent time making a new one and trying to touch up the paint. This one isn't perfect but I need to get it outta here! My Dodge van camper is growing cobwebs up in the corner of the bench. As I stopped to try to figure a way to make the chassis removable to show off the interior, it's just been sitting and getting damaged. Beyond that, I have my 1960 Plymouth stretch limo and 1951 Chevy Traveller camper that I'm aching to get back to, but have made myself work on finishing the 80%ers first. Still, I keep buying great new kits I'm dying to work on, but there needs to be some order and discipline here! I do have that shelf with 25-30 unfinished projects. I don't call those in progress, they're marooned! And every so often I pull one down and finish it.

Can you blame them? Someone in this thread said it would be a fun job to be the parts guy at Revell. I think it would be pretty frustrating once you realized how many people are scamming them! I remember back when the '66 Chevelle wagon came out, with the custom hood. Revell got an abundance of requests for 'missing' hoods for their '66 El Camino, which happened to be the stock hood for the wagon... hmmm. And when they get a request for 'missing' tires, white wall inserts, wheels and wheel backs that come from four different sources... hmmm. And how long should Revell have to warranty their kits? Guys write in for parts for 10 year old kits. Clue- if you bought an unsealed kit for $5 or $10 at a show or on eBay, Revell shouldn't be responsible to make your kit whole! 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. I haven't requested any parts in my adult life. Back when I was a kid in the early 1970s I had a Revell '57 Nomad that was missing a back bumper and an MPC Li'l Stogie that had bad exhaust headers. I know I wrote letters, and I think I may have even sent them the exhaust parts. Both companies responded by sending me a complete new kit. When you think about it, it was probably cheaper to do so than to maintain a huge trove of parts kits and the staff that would know enough to sort through it. Even if it's cheaper, I doubt Revell could do that today. Once it was out on the Internet that you could get complete kits, they'd be swamped.

Primer is important for many reasons. First, when you do your body prep.. removal of mold lines, sink marks etc. the primer covers your putty and allows you to see more imperfections you many not have seen on the bare plastic. It also gives a neutral base for color changes. You wouldn't want to put a color coat right on top of colored plastic. It will show through. That especially goes for any kit bashing where you may have a white body and say you've swapped on colored parts, and maybe some of the Squadron Green Putty. Primer pulls all that together so you won't have variations of color on your finished model. I mainly use automotive paints like Duplicolor, and use the Duplicolor gray primer for most models and parts. The auto paints will react with the kit plastic and craze the plastic. Once you put a good auto primer on the body, it's protected and you can paint it with hotter paints. That opens up a whole new world of paints and colors.

I always thought these little Suzukis were cool. I rented one in Aruba and it was so much fun cruising around the island that I bought a Geo Tracker once back home. The above is one my daughter and I built together many years ago.

Very cool build. I like all the detail! One thing I always wondered about the Open Road camper.. how it fared with that huge expanse of glass across the back. I would expect it to flex while driving, and maybe the fit be compromised over time. I know I had enough issues with a set of Anderson sliders at my old house!

Ack! I ordered a RPM sensor for my Sears unit today off eBay. Cheap gamble, $12 with free shipping. Looking at my unit on the Sears service site, it could be that, the main board or the limit switch. I guess the capacitor is a works or not works deal. Both of mine work intermittently. So I'll try the new part in each of them to see if it cures either. I noticed that new units are in the $200 range.. plus I'd have to pay them to install them since I don't have experience doing it, nor any help. Probably should just do that, but the stubborn fools we are.. we just have to fix it!

A bit older than that. I just looked at mine and it has a date of 4/94 on it.

Woke up this morning to my wife saying it was 49* in the bedroom, so she popped the heat back on. That was short lived, it's now a very nice 69* and sunny. Found a million tadpoles on my pool cover this morning when I went to adjust the cover pump. Oh well, the pump puts them all in the creek so hopefully they'll survive and wind up a bit down stream. The 10 day forecast says next Saturday will be sunny and 70* which is good since we're having a whole neighborhood garage sale. I spent the weekend cleaning out the garage and I'm amazed at how much junk we've amassed in the 4 years we've been here! My wife had brought home contributions from my daughters so I have this fear that we'll have more junk than we started out with at the end of the sale.

Tadpoles! I went out to adjust my pool cover pump this morning and was greeted by a million tadpoles. My pump puts the water in the creek, so I'm hoping that many of them went down stream. I grabbed up a bunch to watch them develop into little froggies. That's when I let them go in the woods. The little thingies are probably mosquito larva. The tads will eat them.

Well, ya know our current trend of station wagons? Last year or so I saw a 1984 Caravan, gold with the wood on the sides, in mint condition with 20,000 something miles on it sell for over $15,000. Note that the kids who grew up in these are hitting 30! Time to collect their youth!

Back in the early 1990s I entered a car with a VW chassis and drive train in a long forgotten contest. After not winning anything, one of the judges seeked me out to say that my car would've won first in my category, BUT I had forgotten to include a battery so he DISQUALIFIED my car. He seemed very pleased with himself and eager to share that news. I just looked at this putz and said, "It's a Volkswagen, the battery is under the back seat." The guy had nothing to say.

Amazing work! When I saw the thread title I thought you would have started with the Landcruiser kit, and convert the body to ute style.. not scratch build the entire thing! Really cool. That body is sure castable! And a funny story... I once was measuring off a really beat short mason truck bed that was sitting up on the highway with a For Sale sign on it. The owner walked up behind me and asked what I was doing. He had no problem with me measuring it off, seeming a bit puzzled he said, "Well if you like it that much, why not buy it? It's only $600." I actually thought about it for a minute!

Agreed... like when a Crown Vic pulled up to the gas pump next to me and I realized it had New Jersey Historic tags on it! Never mind that the Geo Tracker I bought new in 1991 will qualify (25 years) in two years!

I've seen worse prices at antique malls and flea markets! Once at an antique mall one booth had very recent AMT releases that were marked as "Original from 1966" even though shrink wrapped, with bar code and dated in the 1990s. When I pointed it out, the booth owner got nasty and told me HE was the expert and I didn't know anything about old models. And of course the flea market...you know when you spot a kit from across the aisle. Then as you make it towards the table, you recognize it as one of those AMT truck snap kits of the late 1980s. Up close, the box is completely sun faded from sitting out at flea markets for years. The box top is sunken in and the shrink wrap is all tattered and blowing in the breeze. Just as you see it, the booth owner sees you and says, "That there is a genuine antique from the 1980s!" and utters some absurd price for a kit that you can find at model shows for $5 or $10 in much better condition!

Very few of us do! We tape off our lines. You can try the painters blue tape but we like the Tamiya tape for the actual edge. Your hobby shop should have it. It is expensive but we only use it for that critical edge, then tape off the rest of the body as needed with the painters blue or normal masking tape.

Which reminds me of the little Italian pizzeria / restaurant I worked in when I was 18. The two owners were insistent on the pronunciation of Italian food words.. my mother was Italian so I was good, but the two brothers schooled everyone else in the proper way to say things like "manicotti" and "parmesan", and they wouldn't even serve it to customers who said it wrong. So if someone was in the dining room and tried to order man-a-cotti, he'd just shake his head and tell them that they didn't have that. And there were the folks who wanted par-mes-ian cheese... nope, we didn't have that either. And you could see Joey's face turn red when someone asked for "sprinkle cheese".

First thing I thought of when I saw your truck. This company has all orange trucks and features them prominently in their commercials. You see them on the road all the time: The town of Edison, NJ has all their town vehicles painted orange. Including all the cars the building inspectors, etc use!

Funny thing is that 1957 was the first year that Ford beat Chevy. The '57 Chevy was seen as a warmed over version of the aged '55 body at that point, while the Ford was an all new car. History has turned that around. It seems the '57 Chevy is the favorite of the tri-fives, while you don't see all that many 1:1 '57 Fords at shows and such. I'm thinking more like Revell. In fact I'd be sore with them if they weren't thinking this direction for the very nice '57 tooling.

I'll bet Revell is thinking that direction off their '57 tool. We haven't seen a '58 probably since '58.

Funny thing... after all the great places we found in Salt Lake City, including Crown Burger.. the best meal I had out there was down in Bonneville. Right when you get off the highway, the only thing there is a large gas station / convenience store with a small truckers cafe next door. In that cafe we had the best Mexican food we ever had.. made by real Mexicans!

My wife has never had an issue with me buying kits. Every so often I'll sell a few at a profit just to illustrate that they're not a bad investment. She knows the hobby is the center of my friends, and thus my sanity.. Then one day she asked me if I could show her how to use eBay and Craigs List... she pulled out four $200 plus purses she owned. I never noticed, probably my own disinterest, but I couldn't say a thing!

Any Johan kit for $10 is a good deal indeed! Wouldn't even hesitate.

Is there a robust auto modelers forum? I'd love to check it out!

Since we've suffered through 8 pages already.... how do you say DECAL. Most everyone I know says DEE-CAL One clown we know says Deh-CAL (and he'll correct everyone he can on the spot! Needs a good whack!) and we've head that some Canadians call them deckels (as in Heckel and Jeckel) Let the games begin...