Tom Geiger

Your second photo is a Palmer brand 1969 Chevy Impala kit. Palmer kits were simple kits, many with the multipiece body and bad body proportions. Something to avoid for a nice build, but some of us collect them for the nostalgia. Their box art was usually pretty nice. If you wish to have a nice model of a '69 Chevy, keep your eye out for an original MPC model. You may also find one cast in resin.

Cool build. One of my favorite old kits. Hoping to see you at the Liars Show on Saturday!

Richard, go to Google Images and type in "Old Gas Stations". A mother lode of pictures comes up! At first I thought your roof looked too high, but after looking at the Google Images, roof heights vary greatly on old stations. The height you have now looks fine.

Valiants... I have more than I'll ever use, and every cabinet I open I find more. Some of which I swear I never saw before. I have several to many of every year mint in box, loads of builders, tons of old built ups and of course a bunch of neat ole customs! I even once bought a full case of the '62 customizing kit. I still have the empty case, I've tried to stop buying them, but at every show people come up to me to tell me about a Valiant for sale in the next aisle. So I have many enablers!

Is that the key to the old tooling warehouse they've been looking for years? Now maybe they can get the door open and issue all our favorite old kits!

My other peeve is blacked out windows all around. In states like NJ it's illegal to darken the windshield and front windows. I see them on cars from NY and PA though. I think that the numbnutz are more aggressive in cars when you can't see them. And downright dangerous for cops pulling over cars. Shouldn't be allowed nationally.

Tell the kids that if they're bad he'll pop out of that box like a genie!

There lies the problem Reminds me that back many years ago on another board a guy who built pretty well pops on the board to announce that he went to his local hobby shop show that day and won ALL the awards! He was pretty darn proud of himself. All I could think was that he probably set the hobby back a few years stealing all the gold from the kiddies and casual modelers the contest was intended for.

Ok, I've read this one from the beginning and here's a few thoughts. While we all love our old cars with less than 20/20 hindsight, we must remember that cars of the 1950s-80s were designed and built to last through the warranty period. The cars we fondly remember were easy to work on, because we had to do so often. Rayco built a coast to coast empire of replacing shredded 5 year old car seat covers. Cars pretty much rusted out before the payments ended. I came of age in the mid 1970s and spent a lot of time with my buddies cutting out rust and slapping bondo on cars that were less than 10 years old. And 100,000 miles on a car was a badge of endurance and honor! Safety? Go look up the video done by the insurance institute of a full size '59 Chevy doing a head on crash with a '99 Malibu. Guess who wins? Back in the old days we thought heavier was mightier. Today we do computerized simulations to develop smart crunch zones and place the air bags correctly to save lives. I love my '65 Barracuda dearly but would I put my daughter out there in today's traffic in it? Nope, she's really much safer in her smaller Fiat 500. Today we have cars on the market that literally won't allow you to rear end another car. It won't be long before these systems are standard. Emissions? No contest. I learned the difference when we ran an older car in my garage and nearly killed ourselves, versus being able to warm up my Nissan Stanza without ill effects. And it's truly important if we expect to continue on this planet. We need to make up for 200 years of pollution stupidity. The truth is that today's cars are 30 years ahead of our favorite cars in advancements. Better everything. The average car that goes over 200,000 miles isn't a big deal, but we're seeing 300,000 miles out of some rather mundane cars like Dodge Caravans and Toyota Corollas. Today's cars do cost more than the old cars, but they live 2-3 times longer. Guys will whine that they're harder to service, but the truth is we don't need to service them all that often. My Caravan has 183,000 and we got rid of a Plymouth Breeze with 190,000 on it last year. My remaining Breeze has 140,000 on it and still rides and looks like a 5 year old car. Nothing wrong with it, no rattles, nothing major ever replaced. No visible rust, not a tear in the interior or carpet. And that's what today's cars do. Reliable transportation for the masses. Oh, we've had putz mechanics since the beginning of time so no fair plcking on the young 'uns. They still need to pay their dues. It's cool to live in the romance of old cars, own one and build models of them. But nothing we say will change the fact that today's cars are better and safer. I do own a very cool old 1950s black and white tube TV, but I'm watching a 55" high def flat screen as I watch this. And nobody will argue that the 1950s tube is better.

Kinda hard to watch TV!

The house my daughters live in NJ is on a corner, and close to the street in an older neighborhood. When I sleep there over a weekend you can count on a couple Harleys to come thundering through the sleeping neighborhood about the times the bars have closed. They're having a revving competition as they drive through. No other reason than to tick people off. Jackasses!

Gene, here's a few bits of advise learned the hard way, broken models, scars and all.... Always prime everything. It's the only way I can see imperfections and if I've sanded off all the mold lines etc. I exclusively use Duplicolor automotive primers for everything. Costs a bit more, but worth every cent. The auto primer sucks down tight, leaving every detail of your model part, dries almost instantly and protects the plastic from any hot paint you may use. Second, I don't brush paint anything. Once you've got your parts off the trees and cleaned up, mount them on toothpicks, masking tape etc, and poke that into Styrofoam blocks that you can move in and out of your paint area. Spray the auto primer. Once that's done, it's usually okay to spray small parts without any more prep. I do use Testors Metalizers and have all the different tones. But I use the spray cans, not the bottles. It sprays well and dries very quickly. If you need a little bit to brush paint a detail, spray some in the corner of a small paper bathroom cup. That paint will be thin enough to brush on quick and it will dry fast too. Some of the sprays etc will cost a few dollars, but remember once you own them you will amortize that cost across many models. Other Testors sprays I use are Dullcote and Flat Black. Most everything else I use is from the Duplicolor auto paint line.

Silver Sharpie pen! Just grab the high part of the spokes with the silver tip. If any gets on the clear part, just wait until it dries and it pretty much rubs away with a toothpick. I did that on a 1/25 scale bicycle.

Sorry for your loss, but a touching story. My wife lost a 13 year old sister about 35 years ago. The family always assumed that the parents would join her in the cemetery but hadn't made any provisions, thinking that they'd all be in the same grave. Upon my father in law's death this past year, they learned that her grave was a single, and the rest of the cemetery is all sold out. Just when things didn't look good, the cemetery man made a suggestion that we could cremate my father in law and place the urn in the same grave. That worked for the family and my mother in law will eventually join them the same way.

Very nice work!

A funny story comes to mind.. Many years ago at NNL East, we had a very nice Munsters house in the junior category, along with builds of both vehicles. It had electric lighting inside it. It was voted "Best Junior" by the show participants. Then I noticed a middle age guy holding it, on line to have pictures taken by one of the magazines. Feeling something was off, I approached him and asked if this was his son's work. He replied no it was his model. I asked why it was sitting in the junior category, he replied that was because there was an electrical outlet there! He was oblivious and wasn't trying to win the junior plaque. So we went back and gave the junior award to the second highest vote getter, a kid who built a great model and really deserved it. That could've really been bad if we got to the awards ceremony!

Good for you guys. Many shows would have fallen victim to that father not to cause a scene! When I was a kid my big dream was to get to a model car show. It didn't happen until I was an adult. As I've attended shows as an adult and looked over the junior class, it's evident that we get those 'daddy built' models as well as models built well by kids who have the advantage of a skilled modeler father and his fully stocked inventory / workshop. I feel sorry for any kid who has gone it alone, having learned about the show locally and begged a parent to take him there. His models, no matter how hard he tried, don't show well next to those with parental involvement. And that kid would've been me! At one show I remember many years ago there was a kid, maybe 4-5 with a very nicely built model. As you said, the kid wasn't interested at all, running around the hall doing things that bored kids do. When you looked at his model, and then the models his dad built, there wasn't any difference in quality. Not good enough to place in adult class, but the best in the under 12 class. The show staff didn't notice and the kid won first place. As everyone packed up, the kid went to hand the winning model (that he supposedly built) to the father to pack. The father yelled, "Don't you touch that model!" at the kid. Way to go dad! Some really bad lessons and childhood memories for that poor kid.

Help officer ! They stole my car with the stolen sound system I installed in it!

That's why I posted photos of real life equipment above. I think it's a bit cliché to put an airplane on a trailer. And a bit too easy! It's not all that hard to build up equipment since it's all basic shapes. And it doesn't matter if it's new from the factory or junk headed for the scrapper! Probably more interesting as junk!once I once visited a small company that made large heat exchangers for industry. It was pretty neat. They had a slot in their shop floor the exact size of a flat bed trailer. They built the unit right on the trailer. The first time it got moved as a unit was upon delivery to the client. Plastruct used to make (maybe they still do) a lot of vessel shapes, valving, hatches, piping etc. Back in the old days design companies had a model shop where they actually built this stuff to scale to design the 1:1 from. Of course that's all done in CAD today!

It is a bit tricky to get the avatar photo to work. I had tried a photo that was too big a file and it wouldn't load. Even the one I had now, the crop tool wouldn't work until I downsized it on my own computer. What exactly is the error message you are getting? And BTW, welcome to the board. It's well worth the computer grief!

I like that a whole lot!

Nice job. The Heller kits are pretty nice pieces. The roof looks better on your model than it does on the box art drawings!

Yup! I was in Baltimore last week in a parking garage. A dude in an old beat to heck Blazer had his million dollar stereo blasting out the garage. He was in and out of the car looking around to see who noticed. He was enjoying hearing all his noise echoing in the garage. Just one bullet through his battery!

Keep an eye out on eBay Motors. That kinda stuff shows up on a regular basis... old Valiant builds, 4 doors etc. Great place to steal photos!

I've always disliked where they have classes where a participant needs to declare his level of competence, well because people are less than honest. I remember one show where a seasoned modeler entered the novice class because the description was "for novices - builders who haven't placed at our show before". This guy attended this show for the first time and saw a loop hole. Yea, he won first place and was quite proud of himself. Never mind that he made a total joke out of the intent of the class and probably discouraged some budding modelers. My other peeve is when a six year old shows up with a polished model, engine wired, using photo etched parts. You just know that young puppy didn't build that himself!