Tom Geiger

Tamiya and other Japanese kits are usually high quality and practically fall together. And you save a lot of modeling time that you'd spend cleaning up mold lines, ejector pin marks and other imperfections on the US kits, especially the older ones. Price wise, you get what you paid for, but note that the pricing reflects a few things. The strength of the Yen, and the fact that the kits go through multiple hands in the importation to the USA. Some guys order from sources like Hobby Link Japan where the kits are quite a bit cheaper, but you pay International postage (and possibly customs duty) on the order.

I make mine from Evergreen plastic rod. I cut the ends off a kit driveshaft. Then I drill a small hole in both the ends and the rod. I use a small length of straight pin to pull them together. Add a bit of glue after you've done your fiddling, and you're done. The Evergreen rod is easier to cut than metal tubing and if you cut too short, it's cheap enough to cut another piece! I even do this when building box stock since many kit drive shafts aren't exactly round or have a bad seam to sand down that makes them not exactly round. It's just easier to cut a fresh piece.

Yours are later trucks. The '64 era had a yellow engine. Anyone know the year cut off?

Oops! Off by a year. And as far as you getting addicted... you're goose is cooked There ain't no turning back now! Kinda like when I saw a little ad in the back of Scale Auto advertising the Tri-State Scale Model Car Club. I sent in my SASE for info... what could it hurt?

I had a buyer die on me once. He paid with a check and I shipped the item quickly. I got it back a week later with 'deceased' written on the box. I remember my first purchase like it was yesterday. I searched for the book since I had wanted a new copy since my childhood copy had disappeared. I was very excited to get it. And it was very exciting back then to have 'bought something through the computer'. I don't remember what I bought next, but I've bought and sold thousands of items since!

Rich Manson's post on his finally joining eBay got me thinking this would make a cool thread... My very first purchase was back in 1997. I bought the book "Cars Of The Stars" by George Barris. I had it as a kid, it was one of those Scholastic Book Club books you could buy through school. I bought every book that was automotive related back then! So I got a replacement book from an eBay seller and I was hooked for life on eBay!

Congrats Rich! I've been on eBay before it was called eBay! And I made a bundle on their stock in the early years. You will like it. You can find everything and anything you can think of. The very first thing I bought on eBay was a book, "Cars Of The Stars" by George Barris. It was a Scholastic book that I got from the school book club back when I was a kid. I just had to have it! And I was hooked right then and there! And I know why you bought the '59... really cool!

The Avalanche is pretty much a Tahoe that's been sawzalled!

And be sure to keep this truck in your collection. As you hone your skills it's always nice to go back to your first models and see how your skills have grown! I still have all the models I've built since I got back to the hobby as an adult.

Who knows what went on back then! As said, the company was run by non-modelers and they could have misjudged what tools they had, or relied on something that was mismarked. We know we did get reruns of the 1961 Falcon Ranchero. I'm not sure what they needed to do to reissue it, but it did come with brand new funky wheels in those issues. We'll be seeing it again shortly with a new 1960 grill. As far as the '68 Coronet and the Cyclone, it's likely that the tool or parts of it existed back in that 2004 era. Back then the current owners weren't likely to invest a whole lot in repairing or supplementing broken or incomplete tools. Now the new owners, under Round Two are a completely different story. If indeed these tools exist, they're more likely to invest the funds needed to get them in shape. They understand our market and how well both of these will do.

I love this build. Tamiya kits go together really well, so this should be a superb build. I love that they gave you paint masks for the glass. I remember having that on a Fujimi Samurai to mask off the glass on a clear convertible top. They worked very well. And now I'm working on a Lindberg Dodge Caravan that doesn't come with masks, so I'm struggling with making my own. A bit more work than I signed up for on a snap kit! As far as the shine on your paint job, take the body outside and compare to your 1:1 car. Many modelers are looking for a shine that's way beyond what a real car reflects. If it matches your 1:1's shine, it's perfect.

what color pony?

Yes, but the world has gotten way too complicated. First, each manufacturer has an entire department devoted to licensing products. Somebody has to pay the salaries of that department. Their first interest is protecting that trademark. The first thing in keeping a trademark from going into public domain is to display to courts that you are indeed protecting it. So when a manufacturer of say Geo Trackers refers to it's product as a cool Jeep, Chrysler comes down on them that they can't do that since Jeep is their trademark for a specific vehicle. A term like Jeep or Xerox or Coke has become part of our vocabulary and repeated uses of it to describe something generic such as Jeep being used to describe any four wheel drive, Xerox to describe making a copy or Coke being any other makers soda, starts to erode on the manufacturers hold over that trademark. Their second concern is the quality of the items bearing their trademark. Making sure it's on well made goods, that reflect their brand well. They want to make sure it's not on goods outside of good taste. It all must fall within their corporate image they perceive for that trademark./ And third, litigation raises it's ugly head. When little Johnny swallows his Hot Wheels Mustang, his parents sue all the deep pockets. They sue Mattel as the manufacturer of the toy, Walmart as the seller of the item and Ford because it was a Mustang. So there is a certain aspect of liability with every product they license.

Very nice work on an old classic model! I have this original 1960 that I hope to redo one of these days!

Nice chassis work. I always weather mine, some a little and some a lot, depending on the story of the car I've modeled. Note that every car, other than a polished show car, has some degree of wear on the underside. Even cars being unloaded from the truck at the dealership have toning on exhaust, some rust on bolt heads and some dirt from rain. A little bit of toning and wear on the average running car.... To trashed rust bucket.

Very nice work on both the truck and trailer. Now you need to build some cars to fill the trailer!

I believe the 1/18 collectors market is over. It was an issue of how many of these any one person could own and display. You ran out of room real quick. And the folks who bought them as an 'investment' realized that it didn't happen. Very recently a buddy-o-mine had a few thousand 1/18 cars that his father had collected. Multiples of some, variety of manufacturers, no GMP though. He wanted to sell the entire lot for the equivalent of $5 a car. So I checked eBay and saw that every one of these vehicles had multiple listings. For every eBay Store listing wanting $50-100 for them, there was an auction in the $10-15 range sitting there without any bids. It's a shame since his father bought these over time for full retail. The stickers are still on the unopened boxes. So I passed on buying the collection for resale. My advise to him was to take them to a flea market and put them out for $10-20 each and see what happens.

Welcome! This board needs all the Toms it can get!

John- I just sprayed it over the existing chrome on a few bumpers and it worked fine. The chrome under it acted as if I was just adding a second coat.

As a kid I learned the names for all the components and where they went on the engine, chassis etc from reading those old Revell instruction sheets. Wanting to build better models when I was 12-13 peaked my interest in 1:1 cars and I had my father explain just what a master cylinder was and how it functioned.

I've had people doubt me, so I took a picture! It works great for me. Just like the airbrush product, you still need to do the gloss black paint coat prior to using it. I had good results spraying it over existing kit chrome as well. I've also sprayed a bit in a small cup to use to touch up sprue connection points on bumpers and even painted scripts and molded in door handles on models.

Add to that project planning, learning automotive terms and how they are assembled, patience, perseverance, eye to hand coordination, familiarity and skill with hand tools, developing artistic abilities, honing reading skills, follow through and the satisfaction of completion! I'm sure there are many more. Back when I was in high school, I was a big stamp collector. A teacher in a local school asked me to help her start a stamp program for 4th and 5th graders. She found that the reading abilities of the group had grown greatly that year since we motivated them to research and write about the stamp subjects.

And what's the first thing we do with those kits today? We throw away those useless plastic tires!

My daughters are also in their 20s. Back when they were kids, both of them built a model or two with Dad. I think it was more the craft aspect and spending time with Dad in his workshop and getting to touch all the neat tools and paints. Neither is into cars or car models today, but both still enjoy crafts and like to make personalized gifts. And building a model didn't alter their gender identification at all! It is interesting to see what adults today think about the fact that we still build models. Off the top of my head I can think of four lawyers who build models. And I'm always amazed at the variety of professions in the hobby. With the public, a bit of education clears up any misperception of us drooling as we hammer on a snap kit. I recently brought my 1965 Chevy pickup to a meeting of a professional networking group I belong to, and passed it around the table. This group is for business leaders at Director to VP levels. Once they saw the quality and attention to detail they instantly got it that this is my art and a great stress reliever.