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I can't believe after all this time my car is at the body shop

bigmanjbmopar

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It seems like it's been so long since I bought the car that I would actually be sending it off for body and paint. the shop doing the work is a custom hot rod shop up north of me, went and gave them a visit yesterday and all I can say is wow! they are building some cars and repairs / modding some cars that are / will be bad ***. they also have a line of 10-15 car in the back lot getting ready for work.

The owner was nice enough to squeeze me in between two major builds so hopefully he won't hold my car for 2 years. My car was at the media blasters, because once his guys got the car to his shop they were like hey man we don't have time to hand strip this thing send it to the blaster. and Hey Donny they are using media like fine glass beads or something not sand! lol thanks for the advice by the way.

I was amazed to see this shop had multiple rooms / areas within the same building and he has somewhere in the neighborhood of 20+ guys working? one side was all metal fab and suspension, another side was all body work I got to see in person and up close what it looks like to guide coat and block sand a car. there were 4-5 guys all sanding on a car that had guid coat on it was cool.

One of the deals this shop made with me is he would disassemble the car, do all the bodywork and paint it, ( it's going back to it's original T5 color) and then give it back to me to re assemble, this helps me with costs since I am on the low end of the scale for customers and have a small budget to work within.

When I first meet the owner he came to my house a year ago to give me an estimate and talk about what I was looking to do. at the time I was kind of tire kicking not really knowing if I would have the money to do it. A year goes by and I get a hair up my ***, start looking around for a shop again, or at least getting the car stripped even asked Donny for advice and opinion on this, just to find out here locally they one shop close to me wanted to blast my car with sand after listening to Donny's advice I ran fast from that place. then remembered Chris and gave him a call. He remember our little visit last year and was like hey yeah I'll give you the same deal no problems.

We arranged to have the car picked up by his own big rig hauler and off it went.

I have to say this and it may seem bias since the shop is doing my car but I see a lot of similarities to the Kindig shop in Utah. I mean the builds they are doing are just as badass as Kindigs I got to see up close some of the pro touring cars they are working on and all I can say is holy ****! they are even taking a 2013 porsche and doing a LS motor swap total custom.

Anyway, I took the wife and kids to his shop and he was nice enough to give us all the tour and talk to me about some of his builds and what is done in which part of the shop lol oh and he has a wood shop too for making mock up body panels and such for the metal fab guys.

Here are a few pics, most my 12 year old son took and he is not the best at the pics and I will get more another day.

A 40's custom car getting new suspension, he said this car gets a flathead 6 in it. this is also part of his metal fab shop which also holds his paint booths, which by the way had a FC7 green 70 cuda' inside getting final coat :)




Here's that porche well the front of it at least


A 69 maro pro tour a ton of carbon fiber work on it through out twin turbo car




In this pic on the lift is a custom pro tour 65 mustang the suspension on this was outrageous. in the background is a custom rod called the steampunk a huge ton of copper parts, this was an older build that got a lot of awards but they blew the engine! lmao and it was back getting redone, oh a ford 427 side oiler motor by the way, I kind of looked at him funny when he said side oiler because those motors were not the most prefered ones lol but hey it sounds good.



An all fiberglass old school rod that he said this customer never driver, he only works on it now because of the customer being a returning one. he said he won't ever make a fiber body again.


Just some of the cars in the back lot lined up waiting for work or parts or whatever.







Sign above one of the paint booths in the front of his shop




A few random pics, in the background of this first pic you can see those big bins, when they disassemble the cars they catalog everything and place it in a bin with you car info and name on it so nothing gets lost, he has 2 full time guys that just deal with that and parts and material handling.



This one is a nova pro tour drag car that he built for a guy 2 years ago, and the guy got it on the street and in less than an hour of getting it rammed it into a building totaling it, its back now getting redone lmao ******* chevy guys learn how to drive for fucks sake!








Getting hauled off a couple of weeks ago













Here is their facebook and web site links if you want to check them out. I also went on yelp and saw a few negative reviews but I always wonder who is making the review competitors? or just customers who really had a problem? Hopefully my experience as little as it is will be positive, anyway. They also built a custom mustang for Arnold Schwarzenegger it's on one of the pages.
https://www.facebook.com/West-Coast-Auto-Craft-176252292420761/timeline/

http://www.westcoastautocraft.com/restoration/restoration.html


YouTube Channel

https://youtu.be/NuVV286Vho4
 
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Very cool, looks like these guys a the real deal. Your car will be awesome.
 
It's really cool that your son/kids are there experiencing all of the cool Mopar and car stuff. The car hobby is a great thing to teach our kids.

My son just started college this fall and he is "out of the house" now, he sends me pictures of cool cars he is seeing around his college town and dorm room.

I was talking on the phone with him a while back and he says, "wholly ****, a 67 Coronet hardtop just pulled into the dorm room parking lot!", I said, " send me a picture", he sends me a picture of an awesome 67 Coronet fully restored. Really neat to have that connection with my son when he is 9 hrs away in another state. I miss him and the car stuff we did together.
 
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