Tom Geiger

Not even going there! I have maybe 30 builds of my own. I am not counting how many kits I have in the hoard. I don't wanna know. I have more in progress / stalled kits than many people have kits. I also have a ton of parts kits, those I've stolen parts from. It becomes a complex thing. And I don't need complex in the hobby. Calculating it all out is an attempt to make sense of it. I'd rather not.

For awhile I was buying that kit as well as the Revell 1950 Ford pickup and the AMT 55-57 Chevy pickups. I just love 50s pickups. Every time I'd see one cheap at a show, I'd grab it. Then I did inventory and realized that I had a case or so of each of these. So I stopped buying. I was at a show yesterday and found myself reaching for my wallet when I saw a 41 Plymouth kit for $15... then I remembered the 6 of them I already had. I'm getting better.

Welcome Tom! You'll see a lot of familiar names on this board. It's like having a model meeting every day. Is there a brass plaque on your garage as the Birthplace of NNL?? There should be! Enjoy Tom Geiger NNL East

Guitars or spyder bikes! I had TWO Raleigh Choppers (the euro version of a Schwinn Orange Krate) carefully stored in the back of my father's garage. Where'd they go? HE gave them away! For a guy who never got rid of nothing, he had to give away my bikes... Value today? $500 to $1000 each. I recently saw a frame sell for $500 on eBay.

It's actually a pretty good problem to have! I'd much rather have this problem than the opposite! I pretty much ignore rereleases since I have most of them from previous releases. With new releases, I buy what I can when I can. If it's a new tool, they're not gonna run it just once. It'll be back, or I'll see it at a swap meet when I have the change.

Nice build Al. It was good seeing you yesterday! Guys, Al really has this quick paint job thing down pat. You need to see it in person to get the full effect. He gets a nice shiny finish in 24 hrs that doesn't look like Earl Sheib worked here!

Cool build of an old mainstreamer! History has gotten a bit foggy, but there were a lot of 6 cylinder Mustangs and Camaros back in the day. Guys who couldn't afford a V8 would buy them and still do the visible hop ups like adding nice wheels, blacking out the hood, adding a hood scoop and jacking up the rear. Hey, we ran what we could, but tried to do it in style. My buddy Mark had a white 1966 Mustang coupe with a six and three speed manual on the floor back in 1976. It was the most basic Mustang of that year, with manual everything and the four lug wheels. We drove the wheels off of that one, and had some great adventures / mis-adventures only as 17 year olds could, in that car. I do have a Ford six resin copy (I believe from MCW) that I built complete for another build, then went another way with that model... do I feel a model coming on??

Even as far back as 1991 when I was out shopping for a Geo Tracker GSI model (the higher level model) I couldn't find one with a clutch. It took me months to find a GSI 4x4 convertible with a clutch, in an acceptable color, that the dealer would actually deal on. I love tooling around in my Tracker with the clutch. Yup, still have it. The only downside was the 8 years I had to commute to work on the Garden State Parkway. Think of it as a 2 hour slog of stop and go traffic each way. I had to stop driving the Tracker to work because my hip was hurting due to all that clutching.

Just wanted to say, don't use baking soda for anything! It's main ingredient is SALT. And salt will absorb any humidity in the air and cause reactions. Early on in my building, I followed instructions to use baking soda for rust. Later I noticed wet spots on the models during the summer / high humidity times. I've heard of other guys using spice powders for weathering. Don't do that. They'll change over time too.

I think it's funny how many people today have never driven a clutch! Most of us just take it for granted that everyone can. But some of the comments in this thread could be from any era regarding progress. I'm sure there was a group of old guys in the 1960s snickering that the mechanics then couldn't fix a Model T.

Those were cool old van kits. The interesting part is that MPC updated that body every single year, and I don't believe they had a promo contract of any type. I once had a box that had a bunch of junker vans in it and I noticed that every one had a different body! You can see it in Casey's photos of his shortening. See the roof ribs are completely different on the two bodies. In real life the 'shorty' was the standard van, and the one you'd see everywhere. I had an extended length Sportsman 300 window van that had lead an easy life as a Locksmith's van. One time I had a garage dent my driveshaft with their lift. They couldn't find a used one in a junkyard and it even took a few weeks for Chrysler to locate a new one. These were also the van of choice for the Van Pool companies, which were very popular in the mid 1980s. The Garden State Parkway in NJ was completely covered with white Dodge 12 passenger vans. I was one of the van pool drivers so I got my share of wheel time in one of these. I intend to build the long wheelbase / extended rear length van one of these days. I want to build it in the colors and decals a buddy-0-mine ran his entertainment business out of. These were quite coveted by carpet installers since you could get full rolls inside and shut the doors. I'd also like to do a school bus with scratch built upper body one of these days. As far as the chassis, a few things I noticed when I built my shortie pickup version is that the rear doesn't have shocks. I added a pair. The engine is only viewable from the bottom, giving the model a curbside look. So there's no sense in even putting the air cleaner on it, never mind wiring it. It would be cool to open the doors on the van and make the interior engine cover removable. I remember sitting inside mine, doing a full tune up completely inside while the weather was crummy outside. As far as the front end lump of coal, all I did was cut out the torsion bars and added a pair made from wire. I left the rest of it alone and since the van is essentially a curbside, I left well enough alone.

The led different lives! The nice one probably was in a nice warm house it's whole life while the funky one may have been stored incorrectly... in an attic, too cold / too hot or someone tried to clean it with some chemical sometime in it's life. We'll never know for sure. I believe the acetate plastic was chosen for promos because of it's shine. I don't think they realized what would happen to it in time. Then again, these were promos with an expected life of one year, so as long as it didn't happen during the model year. I did read that the warping was the oils in the plastic drying out. I've been told that it happened within a few years of manufacture and they won't warp anymore today since the plastic is long dried out. I agree about your assessment, I cannot collect old promos since I so want to fix them!

The part I hate most is getting rid of my leaves first! Think billions and billions of leaves that are already everywhere even though there are still mostly in the trees!

Correct! But those only sort posts that have been added to in the last 24 hrs. It won't give me those that were STARTED within that time frame. Sometimes looking at the ones that had been updated in the last 24 hrs isn't so great when it's just a post that says "Nice Model".

The Chevette was GMs original world car, manufactured and sold all over the world. Based in the Isuzu Impulse (the one that Testors had a 1/24 kit of), it was sold as an Opel in Germany, Imported back to the USA as the Opel Cadett by Isuzu, and among others as the Vauxhall Chevette in England. The Chevette name has been since used by GM in South America. And while we're on it, a later version of the Isuzu Impulse was the Geo Storm in the US. Another much loved, tough little bugger!

If you need to make those 25 or so milk jugs, how are they positioned in the car? As in how much of the jug actually shows? Are they in cases or randomly loose in the car? If in cases, you may just need to make tops.

A few thoughts... the Beverley Hillbillies truck had a bunch of moonshine jugs with it. The old '27 Lincoln came with a bunch of clear liquor bottles.

Aha! What irks me are stupid state laws.... For instance I now live in Pennsylvania, a state whose laws often defy description... My favorite. At all the state borders there are huge fireworks stores. Fireworks are illegal in Pennsylvania, so these stores are not allowed to sell them to PA state residents, only out of staters... never mind that fireworks are illegal in all the states that border PA! And don't even get me going on the motor vehicle and alcohol laws here!

I never find model kits at garage sales, flea markets or the Goodwill Store. Just not that lucky. In 3 years of haunting my local Goodwill stores my best score was the 13" TV/DVD combo that's in my model room for $10. I found a diecast Pontiac Vibe for $3 and a bag of misc new diecast small vehicles that looked like the left overs from a store. In that bag were a few school busses that I changed the side decal to match the school system where my daughter teaches and gave them to her. My last trip in I thought I was scoring. I saw familiar AMT boxes from across the store. Up close, they were just AMT 1/25 scale '53 Corvette and some Ferarri, both brush painted and partly assembled by some kid. And they wanted $6 each for that. No thanks. I didn't leave empty handed though. On the t-shirt rack I found a new Rock & Roll Hall of Fame shirt for $3.50.

Nice build. The magic of model cars, no actual Duesenbergs were harmed during this production!

I will view the board two ways. First the "View New Content" button is the best way to see what's happened since you last read the board. The other good search is to click on your name in the upper right hand and a pull down menu will appear. You can click on "My Content". Everything that you've commented on will appear. To take it a step further, once at this page, look at the left column. "See This Members.." and you will see that "Topics and Posts" is the default that you are looking at. To see threads you started just click on "Topics". I use this to find my build threads when I want to update and add to them. I'll bet some folks don't realize that when you are looking at the list of threads, those you've commented are have a star rather than a dot. I'd like to see that go a bit further and differentiate between those I've read and ones that are all new to me. Maybe another style dot? I'd even like a "New Today" box so I could see any thread started in the last 24 hrs. The big problem with this board is that there is no good tutorial, and the software isn't all that intuitive. I'm pretty good with computers and the internet and I spent some time fishing around before I figured out the best ways to view the board. At first, especially if you didn't come to the board every day, I found it daunting to go from category to category and clicking on threads. I'd find myself reading posts I had already read. I'll bet people just give up.

I wouldn't call them loser cars, they were simply the vehicles that were available in that era. They sold in good numbers and provided transportation to all of us. I can say that I've rode in or driven all the cars that have been mentioned in this thread. Some of them were troublesome and others were good little soldiers that were almost fun to drive and did what they were supposed to do. We all have fond memories of things we did in them. Lets just say the era wasn't a total loss. I have good memories of several of these little buggers. I have stories about my friend Mark's Vega, bro-in-law Don's Pinto wagon, helping my other bro-in-law Rich buy an early Honda Civic and my first company car (as well as my first new car) a 1978 Toyota Corolla wagon with a five speed. Since we're talking Chevettes here, I'll tell that story. My wife's youngest sister needed to buy her first car to go to college. I was the designated car person for the family at that point, my wife coming from a long line of non-car folk. So Mary and I went out looking at cars for sale in the spring of 1980. I don't remember all the cars we evaluated, except that she liked a Buick Skyhawk hatchback we saw. I passed on it because there was just something that wasn't right with the car and the way the owners reacted. A few cars later we came across a lime green 1977 Chevette. We dealt with a father who had bought the car new for his daughter who was now going to school on the west coast and didn't need a car. It was a low mile basic car with a 4 speed. And it was lime green! The owner took a liking to young Mary buying her own car and gave her a deal on it $1200. We took it home and I taught her to drive a clutch that day. She took to it quick and liked it enough that she's bought manual cars most of her life. The Chevette fell into the category of good little soldier. No major incidents, just routine maintenance. I became it's caretaker, as my in laws assume that I give a 100 year warranty on all the cars I helped them buy. The only time it stopped running was when the timing belt went, conveniently parked outside the house. The only major thing I did with it was fixing rust holes in the floor by riveting in some sheet metal. She kept the Chevette for a dozen years and passed it on to her brother when she had the opportunity to buy a one year old NIssan from a friend of hers in the early 1990s. She still speaks fondly of it. And that's the car I'm going to build from my Chevette kit.

They're around! Many years ago I was headed to the hobby shop in New Jersey. Like most of us I scan car lots as I drive by and this time I did a double take. Right up front was a Chaika, the first time I had ever seen one in person! So I headed home for my camera and got full photo documentation. More photos:http://public.fotki.com/modelcitizen/11_car_reference_library/chaika/

I'd be building the Chevette! Actually I have one that's been circling my bench, just waiting for an opening. Whenever we see an old car, there's a certain one that we remember from way back when that comes to mind. I'll be building mine.

Rusty! Rusty!