Tom Geiger

Congrats Wayne! With my luck, homicides would stop immediately, and I'd get laid off! It's an interesting line of work. You have to have that dark sense of humor, it's a way of coping. My wife's youngest brother is the fatality investigator for a railroad. So every time I hear on the news about a rail fatality, I know where he's going that day. His main role is to capture all the data, knowing that someone is going to sue! And some of the stories are amazing.

Wow Adam! It's been 100 years since the start of WW I?? I remember it like it was yesterday! Actually being a wee bit older than you, I remember when the original 1964-66 Mustangs were the big thing. The frenzy even got down to us first graders. For the Christmas gift exchange I bought a large plastic Mustang. I had begged my mother to buy one for me too, but I was unsuccessful. So I hoped that the recipient of mine would be excited and let me play with it too! And that didn't happen. I remember the boy being less than enthusiastic and the Mustang disappeared quickly into a bag, never to be seen again. In real life, around 1975, my buddy Mark T (known as such since "T" was his middle initial and he always signed things with the top of the "T" going across the entire top of his signature) bought a well used 1966 coupe for a few hundred dollars. It was white, base interior, six cylinder with a three speed on the floor. Manual everything! A car after your own heart. After redoing the head, it was ready for the road and we spent the next year tear assing around town in it. The big improvement he made was the installation of an 8 track player, in which we'd play Billy Joel and Yes. I still can hear the track clicks when I hear those albums today! Anyway, my next involvement with Mustangs came when I met my wife in 1979. Her car was a 1974 Mustang II coupe in this yellow color called "Goldenrod". It had a black vinyl top, V6, auto and air. Again, a nice low profile car! It actually was a fun little car to drive around. She had bought it in 1975 from a friend who had it less than a year, but was getting married and moving away with her military husband. It had less than 60,000 on it when my then girlfriend decided she needed a new car and it should also be a Mustang. That was when the 1979 Fox Mustangs first came out. So we hit the dealers. I had a connection with a Lincoln Mercury dealer that I had bought some cars for my company from, so we got our best deal there on a Capri RS Ghia with a V8, auto, TRX package... pretty much a loaded car. But this one was a dog. Nothing but trouble and we quickly traded it off once we got through the 3 years of payments. So that's my involvement with Mustangs... unless there are more in my future. Time will tell!

Welcome. Even once you leave the country, you can participate on this board. Note that we have a slew of International friends here!

Okay, household item tip. My wife uses these Swiffer mop pads extensively. They come in a plastic box with a clear lid. Since she's using them anyway, the boxes are free to me. They come in two heights. I believe the lower box comes with 15 pads in it and the taller one 25... or something like that. They are perfect for modelers. The taller box can hold a project, while the shorter one is great for parts collections. Here's some of my parts boxes. Here's my bench at my old house. Notice that I keep all my unfinished projects on the shelves above the bench so they stay in my mind. Many of these have gone into these project boxes since they stack nicely and have a clear top.

There was / is a guy in California named Doug Dutra who cast a split manifold for slant sixes. It kept one pipe in the stock position and the other one lined up right next to it. He included bending instructions for a exhaust shop to complete the dual exhaust. I always wanted one of those, but only was offered one right after I sold my Barracuda!

I agree. There are both good and bad with an HOA. It would have been tough to find a nice newer neighborhood in my area of PA without one. They are set up by the builders, and then turned over to the residents once the development is done. So everywhere we looked we found an HOA. When we bought this house we were assured that ours wasn't a bad one. My neighborhood is homes on wooded acres and because of the HOA it's nicely kept. On the town road leading to my development some guy has a collection of old 1990s Rivs and Toronados and VW Rabbits. There must be at least a dozen of these cars, all covered with leave debris and growing green moss. None of them have moved in the four years I've lived here. The 'collection' has long gone into the realm of eyesore, even to a car guy like me. The town hasn't done anything, but that wouldn't have gotten to that point in my neighborhood. As far as my HOA, my bill is $200 a year and they use that to maintain all the common areas. We have some large grassy areas that run through the center of the development and around the two entrances. Those areas all get mowed weekly and are always nicely planted. They maintain a list of preferred vendors who do work nice and cheap. I use their lawn service that mows my acre. And when my mail box got knocked down this winter, I called their mailbox guy who replaced it cheaply. They throw a big holiday party at a hall with food, beer and wine. It's a nice event. We get a quarterly newsletter, and an annual neighborhood directory. We have an email chain that they broadcast information on, as well as messages to/from people in the neighborhood. I got my grill for free off that. It's more of a social committee thing than the gestapo. The ladies have a monthly Bunko game. As a result the neighborhood is pretty friendly and people wave when you drive by, and say hello when we are out on our walk. The first year we moved here and I hadn't had a chance to get a snow blower, someone came and did my driveway and sidewalk. So this year I went out and plowed a few in return.

I see you want to improve your skills. You came to the right place. When I first got involved with building as an adult, I joined a club and my models got better by leaps and bounds. I think you will find that a lot of what we do are just things you wouldn't have thought of on your own, but simple things anyone with desire can accomplish.... A tip - You said you sanded the old paint off the body. That's not a good idea because you are sanding off body detail at the same time. I know from experience, I accidentally sanded the detail off trim on a 1960 Desoto when I was new. To remove old paint, we use different types of stripper. The easiest is either brake fluid or Walmart's Purple Power cleaner. If you set up a small tub of either, and place your parts in it, it will clean the old paint off the body for you. You will need to gauge progress and maybe coax it a bit with some scrubbing with an old toothbrush. Some paints come off really quick, others take some time. I hope this helps. You have done well with your engine, keep us informed and don't hesitate to ask for advise. That's what we do here!

Gee, from the title I expected to see some hard to find model part!

Thanks Harry! I thought someone was gonna say I photo shopped it and it was really a model!

Ask your realtor! If you've been qualified for $100,000, mortgage companies allow you to include 80% of the rental as income. So you may just be able to buy a $120,000 duplex due to the rental income.

My model room is a spare bedroom and has a hardwood floor. It's good because when I drop something I can take a card and sweep across the floor and sweep up everything that's there, and often the missing part. The downside of hardwood is that when stuff bounces, it really bounces far!

Man, who pulled up an ancient thread again? I read a bunch of posts before realizing I had travelled back to 2012?? It's friggin television! Of course it's scripted, it's a TV show. In reality these guys could not make a living driving around aimlessly buying a few hundred worth of stuff at every stop. And no real dealer buys things for $50 to sell for $60. In real life, to maintain two stores they'd be buying entire estates for pennies on the dollar. You have to be able to mark stuff up to double / triple / quadruple to make any money after store rent etc, never mind all the diesel fuel they burn driving everywhere. The show is for the general public who get into the romance of being on the road, and being free to buy what they see. My wife's relatives who have no knowledge of collectibles at all watch the show and tell me they think of me! I watch the show. I like Mike and Frank, they might be good guys to have a beer with. And in reality? Mike pitched the show. Mike owns the business. Frank actually does something else.

Create an eBay Search Agent for it. Then eBay will email you everytime one is listed. You might just search for the 1965 Ford Fairlane kit, then if old built ups etc that may have a clean interior is listed you'll be notified. There are a couple guys breaking kits down and selling the parts. One is outrageous in price, but others are fair. I had the same problem you're having, nobody cast a 1972 Chevy interior bucket.. but Modelhaus cast nearly everything else! One eventually showed up on eBay for $11 postpaid (complete with front bench seat and dashboard) and I was the only bidder.

We have 12 rooms left... just saying! And that's because I asked the hotel to release their hold back... book now!

Hi Jurgen- I love that old Jag! Great work, you really made the kit come alive... I saw that episode and that car made me hold my breath! Because... I own this one in Carnival Red. The minute I saw this car I had to have it!

Bob, it seems they engineered this kit to save plastic real well! You wouldn't get a linear scale foot of blank wall out of the entire kit! The left wall is 70% open for glass in the front office. Then there are the two bathroom doors. So it wouldn't look right on the right side at all. Also, this piece has an unfinished back side that even looks wrong for inside the rest rooms. Note that the front pieces of the building really don't have much architectural detail either. No bricks or cinder blocks, no real definition of door frames or window surrounds. Gas stations of this design and era are most likely cinder block construction. The front could be interpreted as finished cement / flat stucco. A lot of them were metal clad panels or even real brick depending on where they were built. I would suggest using a product like this: http://www.jttmicroscale.com/viewcategory.asp?DirID=166. A local hobby shop near me is stocking it so I couldn't resist getting a few packs at this price. That's two 7.5" x 12" panels per pack... like $3 a panel! It is thin and appears to be vacuformed, but is pretty cool. Remember G Scale is 1/24 or so... I bought the Brick and Corrugated Siding (which will work for sheet roofing). I will go back and get the concrete block (cinder block) and dressed stone (used a lot in older buildings). The Concrete Block pattern would probably be appropriate for this project, for the unfinished sides of the building. That's how it would have been done in real life. My brick pattern is actually thin enough to be applied to the kit's walls for dress up. I may just do that with mine. I was planning on not doing mine as a gas station, but more of a station converted into a used car lot. I also don't like the base for the station either. No station has a thin sloping edge all the way around. It would have more like sidewalk on the side of the restrooms and office. The a curb would drop down to lot level for the bay door area. On the back and right side, you'd have ground contact. So I'd want to make my entire base myself too.

Per emails... most email programs have a "Save Draft" button. In fact even my crummy AOL email will save your email in Draft if it's interrupted. Now today I was typing a thoughtful post on another board when the whole page suddenly went blank. No more post, and I wasn't typing it again! One of the things you can do (either with an email or a message board posting form) is to write your post in Word, then copy and paste it into the email once you have word smithed it and are ready to send. I have also copied and pasted to Word when I got the feeling I could lose an in progress post.

Yea! I like that a whole lot as a slant six guy! Honestly I never gave that trailer kit a second look because of the clear aspect. Now I want one! Your build up is so convincing as a 1950s trailer. Do hitch up that Plymouth wagon for the total package! The only sad part is that it's not a Galaxie trailer! If so, that would be a sure contender in the Model Cars Magazine / Galaxie contest!

Decals shouldn't stop anyone these days! There are abundant logos and signs on the Internet. Try Google Images and put in "Texaco" or any other gas company and tons of stuff should come right up. You just need to save them, and resize them to fit your needs. Even if you don't have experience with decals on your printer, you don't need to print gas station signs on decal stock, it's more appropriate to use paper stock and glue them on. Some folks will use standard 20 lb printer paper, some like photo paper. I prefer printing signs / license plates on 60-80 lb stock. It's a bit more rigid and may even be scale thickness for 1/25 scale metal signs. You can get a lifetime supply in one pack at Staples. Same aisle as printer paper, but it comes 250 sheets to a pack rather than 500. I have the Texaco version and there were a few shortcomings. It's already been mentioned that it's a one bay, no doubt to save on table space. Honestly I don't think I've seen a one bay station. More like 2-4 bays. My family Getty station was 3 bays. Someone mentioned getting a second kit to add a bay, I think I'd build it as if it was added on, so it can be added with other materials. Also you may want to add those back walls if you want to do interior. You could also leave it one bay and put an outdoor lift next to it. I've seen that before. Not only does the kit not have a back wall, there is no right end wall either. Nor are there any interior partitions, doors etc. There are two bathroom doors on the exterior, but again no interior partitioning or restroom fixtures. This is all on you. To add the interior partitioning, it's easy to see where the bay should separate from the office. For the depth of the front office, you'd take the area that's the rest room doors, and create two equal areas for the rooms. Only take the depth you need for the rest rooms, they could be as small as 3' x 6' in size each. The remaining area in our family owned station was a room behind the main office, which was a combination office / storage room and utility area. The heating system /. hot water heater for the building were mounted up high, above what would have been a ceiling, but was left open to the roof deck. I believe I heard in the past that the gas pumps are out of scale. For my two cents, I think I'd use it more as a scale pattern to build my own building.

It's amazing how close they put these stores apart. We have two Targets that can't be three miles apart. And three Taco Bells within that same circle.

Take a look at http://www.valiant.org/ausval.html. You are correct that they started local production of Valiants in Australia in 1962, but they produced them all the way through 1980. In fact, Chrysler sold it's factory to Mitsubishi that year, so the last Valiants were technically produced by Mitsubishi!

You are right. I was thinking about that after I posted. In 1929 first class letter mail was two cents! An airmail letter went for five cents. The official rate for a post card to go from Lakehurst to Friedrichshafen was 35 cents, the rest must have been the postage to take it from there to England. Here's an interesting article... http://www.wingnet.org/rtw/RTW001J.HTM

Very cool! There's nothing like the peace of mind of owning your own home. No landlord, nobody can ever tell you the lease is up. And if you're a home builder, you can find a home that needs some work and put some sweat equity into it!

Oh them's fightin' words ! Just happen to have a few...

Hey Rich! This looks super so far. Pulling up my chair, cracking open a Yuengling...