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Confessions of a body shop owner.

Bruzilla , do you have a shop or do you work on cars for compensation and have you " name" on that car? Doin it right is not BS but a lot of shops take different avenues to achieve this , some right some wrong but ultimately that is the car owners job to get second opinions and make solid decision on. We are talking about old cars 40+ year old cars , not too many don't have rust hiding in creases or have old shitty bodywork previously done on them . Doin a job RIGHT is ensuring that next year or two the owner isn't comming back complaining about paint bubbling or old bodywork comming back to bite ya in the ***. Bondo isn't all bad , it's nessessary but not to be used to patch rust holes ,,,,ever! I'm not trying to get in a pissing match but I believe there IS a RIGHT way to do things and there is a cheap way to do things. but really , communication is key , us as body shops MUST say if you don't take care of this or that , this or that will happen and make low budget owners understand . Ultimately it's the shops name on that car,,,, what do you want to be known for ?
 
Shelly's Auto Body in Danielsville, Pennsylvania. Mountain Road. Scum-sucking paint shop from hell. Liar and thief too. Held my Coronet hostage for a year, then made a mess of the paint. Moral? Don't go to Chevy shops.
OK, it's not about the money. This *** got runs in the paint and re-shot the top and back and it is glossier by a mile. 1988. Car is two-toned IF he head called me, I would have understood and authorized additional cost if necessary. Instead, he re-assembled the car with all the new gaskets etc. Moron. If I ever get my old wreck sprayed it will be at Earl Scheib or Maaco. I stopped the last check, he sued and one. Judge agreed with me but said I had to give the moron a chance to repaint it and make good. Right.
 
One of the real problems I have with maaco is they are a production body shop , I just don't see as good of quality as a independent but one of the trade offs is production . Am I way off base?
 
One of the real problems I have with maaco is they are a production body shop , I just don't see as good of quality as a independent but one of the trade offs is production . Am I way off base?
No, you're not off base, I've always said the Maaco is probably the best of the big chain production shops. I've had them shoot cars and trucks for me before that were just used for drivers and they turned out ok. You aren't going to get a show quality paint job from Maaco because that's not what they do.
 
a use for hi volume cheap production shops like macco

Places that shoot 30 cars a day....if You need a gun, it's where i would look....do EVERYTHING else another way, but You can get a nice layout and the big volume joints usually have decent booths and ovens...so a clean, nicely flowed, baked finish can be a winner, the bake will get the job more chip resistant...the better the flow and cleaner is that much less block color sanding neccessary for the cut & polish that You shouldn't do for at least a month...graze it open w/ 800 and let it expand, contract, vent....if you do it prematurely, it'll look good for about 3 mos, then You'll see it start to shrivel up 9 times out of ten.
Said it before and i will keep saying it...if You are going w/ solid, opaque, NON-metallic....then don't clear the bastard...look around You...how long are factory jobs lasting now on the top surfaces before they turn white and start peeling & flaking....about 7 years..that's every OEM that's using two & three stage systems....even the german **** doesn't last ten years. Clear was only introduced to protect metallics and then in the 80's they started clearing everything...ees stooopid, stooopid. Not to mention way more expensive...more work and more **** to go WRONG.
 
I'd like to get the entire Y2 painted as driver quality. So you recommend taking stuff off like door handles etc. Leave enough on to drive it to the shop. Maaco. Don't know how close to Y2 straight enamel can be purchased in California with water-based **** that is good for the Otters. It is over-waxed. Best to wash with what or try to de-wax prior or just inform the shop. 2014SprFlVegasCC 157.jpg
 
"Like a woman forgets the pain of giving birth" My X never forgot the pain and never had another baby either!

By the way on full project build I will always start with the body and never the engine.
Well, for some that might can work but I've sold off more than a few cars that were in various states of body work completion. One even went out the door as a shell only. It left with absolutely no running gear or suspension parts whatsoever. Got big bucks for it too though. On the build I'm trying to work on now already has the complete drive line ready and waiting.

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I'd like to get the entire Y2 painted as driver quality. So you recommend taking stuff off like door handles etc. Leave enough on to drive it to the shop. Maaco. Don't know how close to Y2 straight enamel can be purchased in California with water-based **** that is good for the Otters. It is over-waxed. Best to wash with what or try to de-wax prior or just inform the shop. View attachment 254331
Had a couple of cars done by Maaco but only after ALL of the body work was done and no chrome parts added. Delivered it on a trailer and they did a decent job. You can ask for a higher quality job too.....and pay more which is fine by me. Ask around your area to see if you can find anyone that has done that. 90% of the paint job is prep and if you do that yourself, you will usually get a pretty decent job.
 
Dennis,. if You want to decontaminate cheap as possibl...pep boyz BLUE towels and acetone.....Your paint should be well cured so acetone is not going to bite in & melt....i'd work top down. keep your areas isolated to 4 sq ft....don't saturate the towel but get it wet. wipe your area down constantly turning towel to new surface, once wiped, clean dry towel to wipe up residue BEFORE it evaporates..that area done move on to next..the rythym, wax on wax off and be liberal with new toweling.....the acetone will cut contaminents far better than pre kleeno...getting residues wiped up before evaporation is key.

another method of painting that werx best for me....priming too. shoot from the rockers up, this way as you advance up, the overspray that falls will melt into the hot paint below it......if you start on the top, you have a mass of oversray that is settling on your fresh prep surface, often times it's loose and not sticking, and you have to stop and tack all that **** off before covering it, it can cause lifting,painting from bottom up can eliminate this headache
 
Bruzilla , do you have a shop or do you work on cars for compensation and have you " name" on that car? Doin it right is not BS but a lot of shops take different avenues to achieve this , some right some wrong but ultimately that is the car owners job to get second opinions and make solid decision on. We are talking about old cars 40+ year old cars , not too many don't have rust hiding in creases or have old shitty bodywork previously done on them . Doin a job RIGHT is ensuring that next year or two the owner isn't comming back complaining about paint bubbling or old bodywork comming back to bite ya in the ***. Bondo isn't all bad , it's nessessary but not to be used to patch rust holes ,,,,ever! I'm not trying to get in a pissing match but I believe there IS a RIGHT way to do things and there is a cheap way to do things. but really , communication is key , us as body shops MUST say if you don't take care of this or that , this or that will happen and make low budget owners understand . Ultimately it's the shops name on that car,,,, what do you want to be known for ?

No, I don't own a shop, nor do I need to as I am the equal partner of the shop owner... the customer. :) The 73 Roadrunner I had when I got back from Bermuda in 1988 was a perfect example of this. The body had seven layers of paint on it that had to be stripped off, which I did. Then I needed it painted black. I took it to one shop and they primed it, then the owner came back from a trip, saw the car, called me, and started going into the "Hey, if this if gonna be black, we need to also do this, and that, and this other thing, and all this other stuff to make it look right. And, oh by the way, this is gonna quadruple the cost. So we'll get started" crap, and I said just paint it like it is. He said he wouldn't paint it unless all this other stuff was done, so I said I'll take the car elsewhere. I took it to another shop and the owner said he wouldn't paint any car unless he had done the bodywork, which was fair, but I wasn't going to pay for him to do that. Like I said, I just wanted it painted. This car was going to be a daily driver and not a show car, which was a fact I made perfectly clear to every shop owner I talked to, and every one of them wanted to make the car perfect when it didn't need to be, and I had to walk away from every one of them.

I finally called the Earl Scheib shop in Clearwater, FL, and talked to the manager there. I told him what I wanted, and he said "bring it in". I said the body was rough, and he said "if you want the car painted, I'll paint it". When I told him I wanted it painted black, he said "I'll paint it any color you like." I was a little worried given all the problems I had heard about from Scheib shops, but I took the car there, ordered their deluxe paint with clear coat, and three days later I came back to find my car just as I wanted it. It wasn't a yard-deep shine, it wasn't like a mirror, but it was damn shiny and black, which was all I needed. And it was $129 plus tax, which was also what I needed. I drove that car for close to five years as a daily driver and never had a problem with the paint either.

This is what managing expectations is all about. All the shop owners wanted to talk about was making the car perfect, even after I told them repeatedly that I didn't want the car to be perfect - I just needed it to meet my needs. It was their needs they were concerned about, not mine, and had I agreed to what they wanted I would have quickly run out of funds to get the car done. I can fully understand the shop owner's concerns about a customer coming back a year later and whining about issues, but that's where I see some responsibility on the shop owners to properly explain to customers what they should expect, in writing, before starting work or refusing to do the work, instead of upselling the customer into paying for a lot of work they didn't need done to meet their needs.

As for Bondo, it's been used to patch rust holes for decades. We just had a thread on here where someone said they had found an old Bondo repair that had been backed with duct tape while they were doing some other work to the car. Sounds horrible and stupid, but hey... that repair apparently held up for 10-30 years just fine. Again, going back to managing expectations, in your view, Bondo should never be used to repair a rust hole, but in my view, as a customer, I would rather pay $$ for a good Bondo repair than pay $$$$$ for new sheet metal work. I need a car that looks nice to drive around in, not impress judges, purists, or snoots at the car shows. This is where your needs as a shop owner are in conflict with my needs as a consumer. You want the higher-cost repair because it's right for your needs, and I want the lower-cost repair because it's what's right for my needs.

This is why when we started our current car, I didn't want to use a shop. I wanted to go the independent contractor route and it works much, much, better. Find a guy who knows his stuff, works on his own, and handles clients as they come in. You get the same work as a shop, but much lower cost, and much, much, quicker turnaround even if he's only doing this stuff part time. Most importantly, I found it much easier to establish exactly what you want done and how you want it done. :)

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By the way on full project build I will always start with the body and never the engine.

My experience has been the exact opposite. For most owners, especially newer ones, the most important part of a project, hands down, is getting the car to where you can sit in it and start the engine. Even if you can't drive it anywhere, doing at least that gives you the motivation to keep moving forward and it gives your spouse some idea that this "project" isn't going to be going nowhere forever, which is very important if you're married. :)

I've seen way too many guys try to start a project car by doing the body first, get in way over their heads financially and level of effort wise, and lose interest, financial ability, and spouse support, and the next thing you know the car is up for sale. The quicker you can get the car to act like a car, and less like a pile of parts, the more motivated you'll be to keep doing more. My cars may look like crap when I take them around the block the first time, but they do make it around the block, which gets me even more motivated to make them look awesome. :)
 
Bruzilla, that was a good post and speaking for myself , if I have a guy that comes in here and wants inferior work , unless I am really slow and need cash flow, I would turn them away because more often then not when someone sees a "driver" with new paint and crappy bodywork , then That's the message that gets sent out about your shop and that's not the persona I want. But I understand your point. Around here you'll find that guy doin body work under the oak tree and painting in the barn. ( sorry if anyone on this site does that lol)
 
I have a slightly different view. Most established shops that put out good work will not paint a car to what in there view is inferior quality,and i couldn't blame them. Why should they do lousy work over a improperly prepared car. I restored one car before my Mopar,i took it to a shop with a good reputation and told him my budget and what i wanted. He looked the car over and although he was very polite he told me flat out no. He told me go to Macco which i did and the results were ok. The problem is you do sub standard work it always comes back to bite you on the ***. People ask who painted your car and if the results were not good thats the worst word of mouth advertising the shop can ever get.
My situation is different but still relevant. Guys tell me all the time what they want. If what they want is what I'm not happy with,i tell them this is the correct way and the only way id do a particular job. If they don't agree they can get someone else. 99% of the time i get the job.
 
Thanks steve, that is Exactly what I was trying to say !
 
This is a good thread! As a customer/owner I can say I've been thru the drill for the last 4 years on a resto for my GTX. It's cost me way more than I expected. Both body and mechanical. But the guy doing it is honest and a perfectionist. I didn't manage my own expectations while in many respects this guy tried to. We're both perfectionists so ........ What. Are you going to do. I won't bore you with the on and on but I will post pics this June when I pick up the car - yes we're at the end of the line I hope. He's been slow but meticulous. But that's how I like my women too.

Managing expectations on both parties part is essential! Pics of my "Tired Warrior" thread will be coming soon. He's a stallion again......!
 
Most established shops that put out good work will not paint a car to what in there view is inferior quality,and i couldn't blame them. Why should they do lousy work over a improperly prepared car.

Why? Because they are working for me, not the other way around. I'm the one paying the bill, and if I want them to paint a body that I covered in cement, I want them to paint it. It's not their car, and it's not their money. If they want to be known for only doing the high-end work that's fine, but don't ask me to pay for it, which is the real problem here.

Shops generally don't want to let a paying customer go, so instead of being honest and saying "hey, we only want to do top-shelf cars here, and you obviously just want a driver car, so you should take your car to a shop that specializes in that work" they instead upsell the owner into thinking they need to break their budget making their car perfect. By your example you're doing the same thing. You're implying to these customers that what you're doing is perfect and what other shops do isn't. Of course you get the job 99% of the time, and hopefully those guys are able to pay you. The issue here is if shop owners upsell a customer by tens of thousands of dollars the customer can't pay, the shop owner ends up sucking the owner's bank account dry, and then telling the customer to come get their halfway completed car out of the shop or come up with more more money. Who wins in these cases? Damn sure isn't the customer who just wanted a nice driver.
 
An excellent story and great information. I agree with just about everything you wrote, and that's from experience. I suspect that I supported a heavy marijuana habit approx 20 years ago when my GTX was restored. The guy did great work, but sometimes it felt like I was getting fingered a bit too much. I took the car away from him when he opened up the bondo tin when it wasn't needed. Luckily it only took 3 months to fix what he screwed up in the space of one week. :angry1:
I have been asked in the past why I never mentioned the main panel-beater in any of the magazine articles my car has featured in....simple - and when I ran into him a few years after the car was done....he shied away from me. He knows where he screwed up. Doesn't matter now...the car is done and I enjoy it for what it is (expensive) :icon_winkle:

 
It would have been nice to put my name on this.

"Confessions of a body shop owner"
By Brian Martin

Just saying. :D
 
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