Tom Geiger

Eating French fries

It is looking great!

And neighborhood walks

Or anytime soon

Thanks guys! I’ve gotten past my body paint issues. I had to drive to a hobby shop for another squirtum of Tamiya Semi-Gloss. I kept sanding down the crinkles and shooting the areas until they went away. Chassis is done, interior is done. I made visors and am fiddling with the winding gaskets and painting little details. Onward!

We were rudely awakened at 5am by our fire alarm system sounding off! Loud in all rooms! No way could you sleep through it. It blasted for a few minutes then shut itself off. I went through the entire house, peeked in the attic and walked around the outside to be sure. Nothing! With adrenaline pumping there was no way we could go back to sleep so we made coffee. And now we are both dragging! Will certainly sleep tonight!

Easy enough! I found them all on eBay!

At 400 degrees

Tuesday I needed to get out of the house so I took a ride to Boyertown, PA to a hobby shop called Modelbahn Ot. Interesting old time shop with junk everywhere! Slant was towards trains and RC but a good representation of models and supplies. I bought the Nova wagon. And got the Tamiya tape and Semi-gloss clear I actually went there for.. want to finish my Father’s Beetle and squirted my last clear before I was done! Had to chuckle… this stack of shopworn and faded boxes! Still marked at $20 each!

Yes I have fond childhood memories of Matchbox cars from the early 1960s. When my family went shopping at the PX there was a Matchbox car carousel display on the camera department counter. The promise / bribe of a shiny new car each visit “if I was good” insured my parents a pleasant shopping trip! In 1967 I participated in the Pinewood Derby. I remember thinking how great it would be if I had a track like that for my Matchbox cars. Then in 1968, there it was! Hot Wheels with the famous orange track! Like Alan, I was totally taken and spent untold money collecting the cars and track! Today I try not to collect 1/64 scale vehicles since I could go way overboard!

Love ❤️ it! Great job mate!

We also have Nextdoor in our town and it’s the same whining.

I was there from 1969-72 as a dependent. If I stayed for 10th grade, I would have been bussed to the high school at Zweibrucken. A friend of mine now, who is ten years older than me was stationed at K-Town the same time I was there!

Ya know, it’s always something! I live in a tight knit development with an HOA. And most people walking dogs visibly carry a poo ? bag with them. I cannot remember the last time I found any on our lawn. But a few years ago our mailbox got poo bombed! Little felons smeared it all over the box! A good thing about the HOA is that we have a neighborhood email chain. Your message immediately goes out to all 109 homes instantly. So I sent my rant about my mailbox.. instantly there were a couple more responses that theirs got pooed too.. then the reports of a couple kids out late at night.. description of the kids.. another neighbor going to review his camera and confirms one of the boys has long blonde hair. So you just know these kids parents are reading these posts too. Next thing ya know, my door bell rings! I open it and there’s a father with a kid with long blonde hair! He looks like he is going to cry! He stumbles through an apology, looking down at the ground as his father holds onto his shoulder. I was gracious and accepted the apology and said I believed he learned his lesson. My wife was listening from behind the door.. she confronts me, “You accepted his apology??!” I responded, “What was I supposed to do? Smear poop on him?!” ?

Normally those wind up on the clearance shelf for $10 or so.

His preference certainly was influenced by the army! Growing up, all our cars had seat belts and us kids were made to wear them. It became a life long habit, have always worn my seat belt.

Its Testors #31929 Gloss Gull Gray FS 16440. Years ago I bought a bunch of grays to match the Trabant postal vehicle. Now I use them for different interior tones etc.

Neat! I have an original Ute / pickup that someone built back in the day if you wish to see one.

Often as desired

Back in the day, 1969-72 to be exact, we lived on the US Army Post at Pirmasens, Germany. It was going to take some time for the 66 Valiant we shipped from New Jersey, so my father purchased a red VW Beetle to get around, and eventually be the second family car. It was an early 1960s car, I don't know exactly what year. Funny thing, buying it in Germany, it was a US spec car that a military person bought in the USA and then got orders for Germany. Thus, we had the only car with the US over rider bumpers in town. I haven't found any photos of it other than this picture of my father's work location with cars out front. It's the dark color Beetle on the right of the entrance. I got prodded into participating in a 48 Hour Build this past weekend on Facebook. I was going to be home for the weekend, so why not? It being summer I wasn't going to marathon build, nor stay up overnight. I was just going to build at a fair pace and just maybe get done... I decided to use the Polar Lights VW Beetle kit. The first issue of this was Herbie the Love Bug, but the designers hinted that there was more to come. Then Polar Lights got sold to Tomy and nothing occurred. Then Tom Lowe bought it all back! The second issue of the kit had some Cal Bug options and such. Two extra sets of wheels, an interesting steering wheel and custom exhaust as some of those. And since Herbie had no VW emblems, this was the appearance of correctly branded VW hub caps! The only thing left out, which I had liked was the soft top in Herbie. I hope they bring that back again. I figured with this being a Snap It kit, a neat technology they invented to create a full detail kit with engine but as a snap kit, I could spend a lot of time playing with paint and details. I was right! I painted my Beetle with Duplicolor paints. First red primer and then Cherry Red. It came out bright and wonderful! The issue for me became that my father's Beetle never looked that good! So after looking at it all weekend, I decided to give it a shot of Tamiya Semi-Gloss Clear. That was the pox! Right after I finished I noticed the clear curdling on the surface. At first I thought the red had reacted, but upon sanding I learned that it held fast and all the mess was the clear coat! Argh. And that was all she wrote for the weekend! The hood was the worst. The body only had a little wrinkle in odd corners and the trunk lid... aka engine cover, had some where the license plate would be. So I sanded it all carefully and gave it another shot of the same Tamiya... pretty much okay this time. And the good part, it looks a lot more like my dad's car! I have since sanded out the shifter mold mark and put the seats on the right sides! The benefit of taking pix! I did have a blast with my own detailing exercise. Since I didn't know a lot about the car, I used photos from three Beetles on eBay Motors. And of course now eBay is hounding me to buy them! ☺️ I did the interior in a light gray and added Model Car Garage seat belts (my father always had belts in his cars) and I made floor mats from 400 grit sandpaper. The headliner was a minefield of ejector pin marks. I sanded and filled the divots, I masked it all off and gave it a shot of the same interior gray. I have since painted the black gaskets around the windows. I still am going to make some visors. I found the correct era American Forces Germany plates, where else? eBay. I swiped the image and made myself a half dozen. And I needed the USA oval so I made up a batch on white decal paper. Figure I will screw up at least one or two, and I can always use extras. Might as well once I'm printing! So I'm building an old family friend. It will be nice to have it on my shelf!

I’m pretty sure you can still buy these!

I pulled that kit out to look over this week. It’s still on the kitchen table. Pretty much a simple kit aimed at kids back in the day, and the last hurrah for the kit tooling (of all the cars in the series). I was surprised at how nice the tires are!

That is really cool. Great work!

Quantities of nuggets

There is an eBay phenomena that when a rare kit sells for a record price, several others get listed the following week. People see the high price and want that too!