Tom Geiger

Band Aid for what? If you perceive that having a model collection and having fun with it is a problem, then sell all your stuff and become part of the boring majority. People who go through life as TV watchers without any interests besides eating and sleeping. My wife has a friend that lives in a model home where there are no possessions and nothing ever out of place. She and her husband live in a large house. She doesn't work but she's made a full time job out of keeping that house spotless. She literally tears down and cleans every unused room weekly. Shampoos carpets once a month. Her husband came into a box of 1950s car magazines when his father died. He proudly showed them to me. Next time he went looking for them, he found out the wife had thrown the box out because she couldn't bear having that 'clutter'. You tell me who has a problem?

Yea! So much cool stuff coming out recently, it's just backing up near my work bench! I lived in Europe from 1969-72 and these were all over the place. I specifically remember one trip we took from Germany, through Switzerland, to Italy in our '66 Valiant. There was a family of 4 traveling in a Renault 4 that we kept bumping into along the way. They stayed in the same hotels as us for two nights, and we ran into them at tourist stops. The father tried his ten words of English on us, but just a lot of smiling and nodding. Yea, I'll be needing a couple of these! and for those who think I just make this stuff up... that's my Valiant in Switzerland on that trip. And that's my grandfather standing there.

Um, no. Thoughts from your head maybe, reality no. The Prowler was a limited edition car actually sold at a loss per unit to bring attention to Chrysler and Plymouth in particular. Thinking you need a V8 today is Neanderthal mentality. There are plenty of 4 cylinder Honda Civics that will leave cars of the muscle car era far behind. Prowler 0-60 is 5.7 seconds, a 1970 Hemi Cuda was 6.3 seconds. A Honda Civic Type R Rally beats them all at 4.9 seconds. Any questions? The Prowler was a modern adaptation of the hotrod, for adult baby boomers who had money to plunk down, but not the time or gumption to build their own hotrod. Purely a cruiser. The production was limited by design. A certain number of cars to get the PR out there. They were hard to get because they were desirable. Pretty much sold out before one hit the showroom. You had to know someone to get one, and at a premium over list. I know two people who tried. The reason there are Prowlers available for sale today is because people saw them as desirable cars and kept some as no mile cars from new. Most for sale have very low miles, as they were garage kept babies, only taken out for recreation. I've been watching and the prices aren't falling, If they were $10,000 cars today, I'd have one.

Try this link: http://www.finescalerr.com/smf/index.php?topic=2237.0

New shower head?

Hi Rob, I've always been interested in these old MPC Dodge Van kits. It's interesting that they faithfully issued an annual each and every year. And then they issued some customs what appears mid-year. That was the custom van era so I believe they did well with these kits. It's interesting how well they recorded the annual changes too. One time I wanted to build a trailer that would have needed two Dodge van bodies to build. I pulled out my junk box and found that each and every body I had was different. Subtile details like roof ribbing were acurately changed each and every year! So I never built that trailer! Bad story - many years ago a guy in one of my clubs brought in a big box of built custom Dodge vans that he bought at a garage sale. They all showed great imagination and the work was fairly well done, no doubt built by an older teen or adult back in that era. Well, this goob sat at the meeting and was pounding these apart for parts. Seems that he was interested in building limos and wanted the TVs and some other luxury parts that were in these vans. He was literally breaking apart the bodies so nothing was left at all. I was upset that all this history was being lost. Back then I just sat and watched, today I would have restrained the guy! And as all these stories end, he never built a single model. He didn't have any skill level to even try to achieve what he wanted. He eventually wandered away from the club. I am attaching a link to my Fotki album of the Dodge van boxes.. Note that I did steal your "Truckin' USA" photo as it was better than the one I had. Do you know the year of issue? http://public.fotki.com/ModelCitizen/model_cars/dodge_van_kits/ If anyone can add a box, or give a year to the boxes I show without years, I'd appreciate it!

Thanks! Steve takes the photos very serious! He lives in CT now and can't make the club meetings but shows up each and every year to take the photos. We met him as a 15 year old kid who came to our club meeting with VW models. And that was 20 something years ago!

http://public.fotki.com/tssmcc/nnl-east-photo-albums/nnl-east-28/ The official NNL East show albums. Steve outdid himself this year... I hear there's 1900 photos in there!

The torrential rains we just got irked me! The news just said it was the most water to fall since the 1880s or something like that, and without a tropical storm thingie. I got stuck in New Jersey. I was working in New Brunswick for the day and at 6pm it was raining so hard that my clothes got completely wet even though I had an umbrella. I texted my wife that it would probably be a 2 hour ride... then the fun began! It took me 2.5 hours to get from New Brunswick to Princeton, NJ. That's maybe a half hour ride normally. Route One got flooded so we got a tour of back roads, all stop and go. Every road the GPS told me to try were closed for flooding. What a friggin mess. I had plenty of time to text and make phone calls, so I got ahold of my daughter who is sales manager for a hotel in that area. She got me a room at her hotel, so I spent the night. Put back on my icky clothes and drove home this morning!

My big NNL East haul! Yea, the Chevette, that's it! The show was busy this year and I didn't get much of a break, so I never looked at the vendors other than for show purposes. I spied this Chevette sitting high on top of a vendor display as I breezed by... it's the one I've been looking for, with the correct grill. Yea, I paid $35 for a grill.

"resinous"... best I could come up with this late was "gook" And it's off to bed. I'm still tired from NNL East... haven't even emptied the van yet. And this week I'm running a training program twice a day at 4 different locations! This would have to be my busy week!

Thanks Rich, it was good seeing you as always! And we did have a nice dinner with Dave and Art. I usually drive right home after the show, but my wife was at our daughters' house for the weekend so I stuck around. Glad I did!

You don't want to burn pine... burns fast and coats a chimney with gook quickly. You want to burn hardwoods.

Um, no. The Prowler was actually a design experiment. It was the first car developed in the then new Chrysler Design Center, and the study was to see if they could reduce the design cycle using modern technologies. If I remember correctly it was under 24 months. The car was sold in very limited numbers as an image car for Chrysler and Plymouth. They were very hard to get new, and have held their value well. Just check eBay, there's a lot of them that were kept new, and they sell for big dollars. They were never meant to share traffic jams with PT Cruisers nor produced in large enough numbers to be common.

James, while it's still on the bench... I don't believe the grill under the windshield wipers is chrome on the 1:1. It wasn't on my 1960.

Cover the tail lights with Bare Metal Foil and then color them with a red Sharpie.

That NNL East is over for another year! And I still haven't emptied the van.

I had a huge pine tree in my front yard of my old house in NJ. When we bought it, a lady down the street asked if she could collect pine cones to use in craft projects, and being a good neighbor I told her to go for it. Past that I saw a few pine cones when I was raking leaves or mowing the lawn. Then she moved away. I never saw so many pine cones in my life! A guy at work said his church as collecting them for kids crafts. I left two of those huge black garbage bags full at his office door! And I still had pine cones!

Dave, thanks so much for bringing Moebius to NNL East. The very first post I saw after the show was about your news so you were a big hit. It was nice having dinner with you and Art afterwards as well and learning about your long distinguished career in the hobby business! We do hope you return every year!

There are some tools on the web that allow you to search multiple editions of Craigs List. I did sell some small Celica parts to a guy that I mailed them to. He had been looking for a right side headlight and couldn't get through inspection without one. So I was happy to help him out. I did sell my '63 Studebaker fiberglass fenders to a guy from the Niagara Falls area. He had rusty steel ones on his drag car so I really wanted him to have them. Turned out that he had a cousin who lived near my work. So he came to my office parking lot to pick them up. And a few months later I got a photo of the car with the fenders on it, so it was worth it!

As long as nobody was hurt. Be glad it missed the house. Many years ago in NJ I was watching Saturday Night Live and there was a huge sound that shook the whole house. I went outside to see that a huge oak had split and one half of it had hit the house behind me. It literally went through the roof, pushing rafters through their living room ceiling. Lucky that they had gone to bed. I'm a bit concerned after this past winter. In this region 1000s of trees came down, many perfectly good huge ones like the ones in my back yard. And I'm amazed at how little the root ball was. Nothing was holding them up!

Craigs List is no different than the old newspaper ads, only it's faster and free. I've always bought and sold cars and those same flaky guys would answer my newspaper ads. I bought my 95 Celica convertible and 2000 Jaguar on Craigs List. I sold my classic cars there too. The "free" part allowed me to keep to my price and keep posting until I got it. It's a great place to sell local, those large items that you don't want to sell on eBay and ship. No packing, someone comes right to your house. And I've met some nice folks too. Those news stories about crazies and robbers make the news because they're one in ten million happy transactions. And you cut your chance of problems down about 50% if you avoid the personals section Try reading that for entertainment!

Brad, the thing I like about your models is that you always tell a story without going overboard. You are one of the rare guys in this hobby who know just when to stop and have everything in perfect position. Your circus truck interior was the inspiration for my Dodge van camper. Keep up the good fight!

Very, very cool! It was one of the few vehicles I actually saw at NNL East as I was running around. It stopped me cold... "Hey! I know that car!" Sorry I didn't bump into you!

Whew! What a ride! This was a great year! I had a feeling when ALL the vendors responded that they were coming... full house completely. Usually I have one or two major dealers call out, which gives me a bit of wiggle room but not this year! Moebius was in the house and I had the pleasure of having dinner with Dave Metzner after the show. It was great to hear about his long and distinguished career in the hobby business. Let's just say the future is in good hands. Many thanks to the Tri-State Scale Model Car Club who tirelessly plan and execute the show flawlessly each and every year! For they know it's more fun to run the show than to merely attend it! And thanks to everyone who came to make it a great day! Until next year!