Tom Geiger

And they're all really relieved that they fit in!

Little bit of trivia... maybe someone can elaborate. There was an era when Ford went on a housekeeping binge and ordered all the old concept cars destroyed. Someone internal wanted to save the Mustang I so they hid it in plain sight.. made it a front lobby display. And it survived!

I think Bill pretty much summed it up. And within a manufacturer, it depends on what era a kit was developed in. For instance, there was a young guy who was buying AMT kits. He bought some kits that the tooling was developed in the modern era, like the 1955 Chevy Pickup, 1966 Nova, 1957 Chrysler... then he went and bought the 1962 Buick Electra kit. He came screaming to the board like he had been tricked! While the other kits he bought had a lot of detail and full detail chassis, the Buick is a very simple kit with a one piece chassis. We had to explain to him that the Buick kit was developed back in 1962 and was created as a promotional model, thus the one piece chassis. The simpleness of the kit also had to do with the state of injection molding 50 years ago! So if you are not familiar with any kit that you'd like to buy, it's always a safe bet to come to the board and ask! Guys here will give you a straight answer about the kit, it's origin and the challenges of building it!

The one thing that keeps guys from trying scratch building is that math thing! I've done a seminar at club meetings showing how to measure off something in 1:1 and how to draw it in 1/25 scale using one of those rulers, and only using inches to avoid the 12:1 inch to feet conversions. Once you eliminate the math, it's so easy that it's easier to scale things than to approximate. And why make anything any more complicated than it needs to be!

I was trained as a draftsman and prior to CAD we drew everything to scale using scale rulers. So it was only natural that I bought a 1/25 scale ruler to use in the hobby. There is no math. Use your regular ruler or measuring tape on the full size item, say it's 34 inches long. Then pick up your 1/25 scale ruler and measure off 34 inches on it. And if you forget about feet and measure everything in inches, your measurements are decimal. So you can just add, subtract or divide them. So if you have something that's 3 foot 2 inches long, and you want to divide it into two to find the mid point, simply say it's 38 inches long and half of that is 19 inches. No dealing with feet and inches. No reason to!

It all depends on where you are driving. Many years ago I got a job that was 50 miles one way on the New Jersey Garden State Parkway.... that's an hour and a half driving in the morning and usually two hours driving home! The world's biggest parking lot. After a week of driving my 5 speed Geo Tracker in that stop and go nightmare, my hip started to hurt. So I switched off and I put the second 100,000 miles on my Crown Vic instead. There are times like these when you just need an automatic!

Hmmm, maybe I can get one of those Big Boys for my train set!

Yes you are right. It was sold as the Mercury Capri II here in the USA. I believe this one was an MPC kit. I'll have to dig, but I believe there was a Monogram Capri also. The name Capri lived on past the European versions sold in the USA. In 1979 a US built Mercury Capri was the twin to the new Mustang body style. I bought one with a V8. The quality of US cars wasn't good then, and this one wasn't! Later the Capri name was used on an Australian built sports convertible based on the Escort.

Great Work John. Can't wait to see it in person! I pin together much of my model, a technique that Joe Cavorley taught me to do back in the day. Like you, I pin on all the surface mounted items. I use straight pins. I cut the tip off and use the full pin that goes into the part. Then I can use the pin as a handle to work on the part. Here's a mirror that's going on my Chevette project. And the pin allowed me to mount it for painting. I drill my holes in the body to be tight with the pin. Once I'm ready to mount something, I cut the pin to the desired length and place it onto the body. There are times my fit is tight enough that I don't even need to glue. But most of the time, I glue the pin on the INSIDE of the body. So there's never any danger of the glue showing on the finished side.

And then I have this version that I bought the way you see it here. US version complete with the substantial bumpers!

I've had this version a long time. From the "Nostalgic Heroes" series 1/24 scale, overall the body wasn't bad... But there was no mention of this interior on the box!

NNL East is usually the 3rd Saturday in April NNL East 28 - April 26, 2014 (1 week later due to Easter) NNL East 29 - April 18, 2015 NNL East 30 - April 16, 2016

I've had three Chrysler mini vans. All were good soldiers. The one we have now is a 1996 that we bought new and now have 186,000 on it. So yours is barely broken in.

It's all relative... are they cheaper than a tank of gas... a case of good beer... carton of butts, dinner out with the wife? Life has gotten so expensive that a $50 kit is only twice what a new one costs today.

And to think I was out mowing leaves this afternoon here in PA and it was 80 degrees. I hear that we could be getting your snow in the next day or so. Time will tell. Strange since I can hear a lot of forest life that thinks it's spring, in the woods behind me. But my amusing lawn mower story. I didn't have a lawn mower here in PA because the HOA recommended lawn guy does most of the lawns on my block super cheap. Cheap as in not worth owning a riding mower, and I'm on an acre. Last fall we were emptying out my in-laws house to sell it. Everyone took some stuff, we sold a lot at a garage sale and in the end there was this fairly new looking high end Honda lawn mower. My bro-in-law told me it was garbage. He said it was running rough so he took it to a mower shop for repair. He said the following spring it wouldn't even start. He wanted to throw it away. So I put it in my van figuring I could fix it and use it here in PA. I pull it out today figuring I have time to go through it and see what's up. I open the gas cap... empty. I fill it and it starts on the first pull. Yea, it was out of gas! And I think that all three of my wife's brothers were in on that one! My theory is that the shop winterized it, emptying the tank. It has a new spark plug, new air filter etc. And my wife's family brain trust never checked the gas tank that spring!

Back when I was a kid our neighbor worked for the American Red Cross and his company car was a blue 1967 Malibu. I remember thinking that the dashboard looked odd with the controls across the top. As far as making dash knobs, check around for different size pin heads. I found a bunch of different sizes at JoAnne's Fabric store. And check for ship building supplies at the hobby shop. I have brass ones with some detail on them, can be painted silver too. And of course one pack is a life time supply. Those are the brass ship nails on the dash.

Yup! One time I drove my '65 Barracuda (3 on the tree - heavy duty clutch) to a restaurant. After about 15 minutes a valet sheepishly came into the restaurant to find me. None of their guys could move it. Our first family car was a 1981 Nissan Stanza with a five speed. My wife had learned to drive on a stick and we agreed we wanted one. She got lots of looks from people that she was driving a clutch. Even when I took her 17 year old sister out looking for a car, we just assumed everyone could drive a clutch so we bought a Chevette with a 4 speed. I had her driving it by nightfall. And she bought a bunch of stick cars after that! The funniest one was a couple that my wife and I are friends with. Back in the day, I got a call early on a Saturday morning. They had bought a new Mercury Topaz at a mall sales event. They got to the dealer to pick it up and discovered it was a clutch car... and neither of them could drive a clutch. So I had to go fetch them, and then spent the day teaching them how to drive it. The funny part was that the wife took better to the clutch than the husband, which led to some stress... but since then they've owned a string of clutch cars too.

If you saw the nose of a junk '65 glue kit, the radiator support is part of that.

Oh Kwap, here we go again! Just kidding... file photo above from the Blizzard of 2010 at my old house in New Jersey! Here in Eastern Pa it's 78 degrees, sunny and windy. Fortunately the wind is blowing the leaves towards the back of the property where I want them. So I'll wait a bit and let Mother Nature move them for me! I think the warm weather is here to stay. The frogs have all come out of hibernation and I am hearing their mating call all day and night!

It was the AM pop station from New York City in the 1970s at least. One of those stations where the DJ was in an echo chamber!

Amen! Fujimi tool kit, a set of 1:1 garage plans to build from (or an actual garage to measure!) and a 1/25 scale ruler to measure it all out!

Did you say warp? My own understanding is that these warped within a short time after being made as the plastic off-gassed. I've been told that they won't warp any more. That's not to say that when guys try to straighten them out, that they won't go back. This '57 Plymouth body is so warped that all 4 roof posts broke and the roof is a separate piece now. And both of these Chevys are pretty warped. Note the roof on both, and the trunk lid on the '59 actually warped upward. I have a bunch of these that were acquired as part of a collection. I'm not a promo collector and it actually bothers me to look at these! I'd much rather have more modern kits to represent these cars in my collection.

Thanks for the photos Paul! I really like the Olsen Painting truck in the lot, and the corresponding model! I'd hire them just on principle! I find it interesting that no matter where the contest is, I always recognize models from folks on the boards!

The radiator wall in this kit is molded into the body. It's nothing special and has two huge screw posts on the inside of it that will be visible on your finished model. The radiator itself is just the rear face of it, that glues to this wall. Honestly, you'd be better off replacing the entire old school chassis on this one. The newer Revell 1966 Wagon chassis would be a first choice since it's a modern full detail kit. But if you just want a radiator wall and radiator, I'd go through the parts box to find something a bit more realistic. There are a lot of GM midsize cars that may have better ones. In researching this answer I went and pulled out my '65 Wagon build in progress and saw that I had changed out the chassis for the Revell 1966 Chevelle chassis way back before that wagon kit existed. I need to pull that one out and finish it.

I know I answered this thread a long time ago... I let my parents pick my user name. I also use it in other forums and on my tax returns! My avatar changes whenever I get the whim. The last one was a 1960 Valiant buried in snow which reflected my feelings this past winter. My current avatar is the old WABC Radio NYC music note from the early 1970s. They had dancing notes on their TV commercials and these stickers were available everywhere, so they were also stuck everywhere. I still have my sister's old 45rpm record box that has one on the front of it. I came across this on the Internet, so I saved the image. It will show up on a model someday!