Quote: Hello again! I'm very sorry for staying away so long.
In short, as the customer wrote above, the car was virtually finished months ago when we agreed to redo the bottom in the darker primer.
What we didn't fully realize at the time was that the car would have to come all the way back apart in order to do it properly.
As some of you already know, it takes about 10x longer when you are pulling off all new or reconditioned/refinished parts and don't want to mess them up. Well guess what? They get messed up anyway and most have to be refinished again. Ever try to remove NOS, dated exhaust after it's been freshly clamped into place? Hint - it has to come off in one piece.
Then you have to cut the primer in every crevace before recoating in the darker color. Finally you get to put everything back together.
Well, no matter that we took every precaution, we still dinged up a few pieces.
As of today, Mike found a scratch on the fender while doing the final, final hand glazing.
No big deal, just mask the entire car and take it back to the paint booth for another fun week.
One thing is for sure, we'll never do this again. The customer has been great and we really don't mind swapping parts until we get the right ones. But it has taken us longer to "redo the primer on the bottom" than it did to do the full restoration on the car.
Yes, we now have more work than we can handle but part of that is because Hubert snuck off and got married to a woman 30 yrs his junior. He used to run Mike and I around in circles with his high energy but now that energy is spent on something else.
For the most part, our Moparts customers have been Moparlicious. This one is almost done. The RR is coming along and the R/T is going home unfinished due to a change in priorities by the customer.
On the other hand, our recent experiences tell us that Chevy and Ford guys tend to run out of money mid-stream, even though we are working on a fixed bid with scheduled payments that we are almost always late requesting. Also, in our experience, 100% of Pontiac customers get thrown in jail for a year right in the middle of a resto.
We've been fortunate enough to enter into contracts with some guys from Brazil. These guys know how to make decisions, commit the total investment in advance - no, that doesn't mean they pay in advance but it does mean that they have all of the money up front and agree not to spend it on someting else like vacations and parts that cost more than the car.
Between the good customers we now have and the cars that I have to be restored and ultimately sold, we are not taking any new customers at this time or in the forseeable future.
I'm way off the subject now but we'll continue to post Mopar restos here AND I'll offer the cars I'm selling first to our established customers, then on Moparts before finally taking them to Mecum auctions, from which, they will not return.
These are the only places my cars will be sold and we're doing Hemi cars first.
Thanks to all for your understanding and support.
Interesting post. To me it sounds like you are having issues with customers stiffing you for work and then you keeping the cars for the lost payments. Is that true? If so you talk about a contract. Is that part of the contract in they don't pay you get the car? Kind of like a mechanics lien? I know what you are talking about having people taking awhile to pay. Thankfully we have never gotten stiffed on a bill and hope to never be. As far as the feelings on the furd,cheby and potyake owners sorry that has happened to you. In our area the only ones we ever have had problems with has been menanites that have left the farm or are still on the farm but still have that mind set of they set the prices on everything. Thankfully they are just been small fender benders and we set tha price just the same as other street jobs. If they want the work done by us then great if not we are better to let them go take it to someone else who will cut thier living to make a few bucks. Not us. I don't do this work for the health of it. If any of us did then there would be hardly any bodymen left in the world!
Good luck in the future on where the road leads your business.
