Folks Of Interest Build quality , budgets , what’s expected, ramblings of a wandering mind .

Had a thread here in the Hamb bashing a builder , then bashing the owner of the car .

this thread is not about that , but along the same lines .

story time . Up here we have a T.V personality “ Mike Holmes” he goes in a house and repairs bad renovations .
My uncle and a couple cousins are in the construction trade and most folks hate this guy .

what he does go in and finds sub standard work wether it’s framing, electrical or whatever . What I don’t like and most don’t is he bashes every contractor who ever set foot in the house for doing and/or allowing this “ shoddy” work . He also bashes building code and builds his stuff 3-4 times better than code .
So obviously when he’s done whatever he did looks leaps and bounds better then what was there .

my point ? Not everyone has a $100,000 budget for a 20,000 job.


I go through it at work forklift comes in needs a transmission rebuild , I find lights out , maybe a bad seat or other minor things that have been broken for a while . Bring it up to the customers attention , some will say “ just fix the trans don’t worry about the other stuff “ so I do as I’m told , more often then not unit goes back and we get a call from a pissed off customer saying “ I just spent 5k on a ****** and you couldn’t fix the lights or seat blah blah blah “

what ? I’m gonna do it for free ?

I would love a brand new corvette on a chevette budget , but it ain’t gonna happen .


Expectations , and what is possible on a budget need to be understood . Wish I could paint my merc . I don’t have 10 grand , might try painting it myself or trying to vinyl wrap it . Will it look as good as a quality paint job …… no , will I be happy ? For what I spend I’ll be happy .


Not sure what I’m trying to get to here , but yeah .
What do you think of expectation vs budget and how this has been ? Can be ? Should be communicated?

or should shops simply say “ no I ain’t Doing1/2 the job ?
The way I see it when I simply “ get a unit running “ I’m still bringing money in for the company , keeping the cash flow cycle going and hopefully have a happy customer and they come back to the well for more .
The ones that complain are few , but man do they **** the life outta you .

 

That’s why I don’t do work for others, and try not to have work done for me by others. Everyone has their own idea of what is right, or what will get by. Can someone else paint better than me? You betcha. Can someone else do better bodywork? Yep. Can somebody else be better on the mechanics, suspension and running gear. No doubt!

Main question is, can and will I be satisfied with my work? Most of the time. I’m my own worse critic, I see things I could do better but for whatever reason , didn’t. Am I happy with how things turn out? If not, I’ll do them again until I am!

 

Most people I see at shows think it has to be perfect . It doesn't matter what it cost.
My friends think you can build a nice car for less than $20,000.
Me I spend what I need to get what I want. I try to keep budget around $25,000.
My stuff is not perfect and never will be. I do my own work because I don't trust other people and hate the wait.
No shop should take 5 to 10 years to build a car.

 

What can I say, I'm a Virgo and retired machinist...........It has to be right!
In reality, I blame the magazines that I followed for near fifty years, the possibility of being featured in a hot rod magazine was always the "dangling carrot" so to speak.

 

After I first retired, I went to work in a local ch***is shop. One of our restorations ended up at Pebble Beach , so yeah, we did good work. I saw the owner turn down several jobs that without doing the entire job ( ie: back half ) we would not accept the work. Probably shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times financially but if you are not doing it right, don’t do it.

 

There's ***hole customers and there's ***hole shops. You would think with written contracts it would be simple, but as Bill Clinton once said, " It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is". Some people are tickled you found something and took care of it. Other people, the more you give'em, the more they chisel.
I only do work for other people if I am just helping them out or if I find it interesting. Rarely charge for it because I can't afford to work by the job and they can't afford to pay me by the hour.
With the availability and affordability tools and equipment I think the expected build quality has risen. Plus we, as a group, have a lot more knowledge and a greater skill set.
I've done most of my own work because I've been the best I can afford. Still that way on the hot rod, it's MY toy. But for the 40 year old "new" house I built, I'm hiring a good portion of the renovations out. Either I don't want to do the job or my body says no.

 

I simply do the best I can with what I have or have the means to get. I am not trying to impress anyone, just me.

 

It really depends on the job- i'm fixing the front steps on a 1913 rental property right now. The existing treads are mushy and loose, so I was hoping to just replace them and get another 5 years before I tear everything the stairs off and rebuild from scratch. Once I got in there I had to fix some dry rot and replace more than I'd intended... it's not pretty underneath (out of sight) but the job is solid, safe, and I didn't have to pull a permit since I was just fixing what's there. I also didn't have to disrupt the lives of the tenants for a week or two. Given the possibilities, this was the best option.

On the other hand, I'm slowly starting to rebuild a 1951 Crosley roadster... have spent years collecting NOS parts, and even more time scheming about what kind of upgrades and style I want to go for. There's no time schedule, it's not in anyone's way (except mine) and I'm sure I'll have at least twice as much into it as it will be worth. But you can be sure that car will be as nice as I can make it - NO shortcuts.

 

I have done metal work for my grocery money since getting the big oil patch layoff about 14 years ago. It's really hard to get people to pay for nice metal work, cause they know it's just gonna get a layer of other stuff over the top of it anyway.
I actually heard back through the g****vine that one painter was pissed cause I use 36 grit sanding discs to finish off my welds. I told the guy that pretty much tells me you didn't need any filler, so what's the problem?
Yet most of them have no problem paying the painter or upholstery shop huge money.
I always feel out people I don't know, as I have found out some folks can't bear to part with their money even if they have a big stockpile of it.
That's my ***** for the day.

 

Just in case you want to stuff a V8-60 engine in it, I know a guy that has one he'll let go of, and it's already a midget set up engine. Just saying...

But to the subject, I appreciate mechanics that point out potential problem areas and areas that could use some fettling. Sometimes I go for the extra work, sometimes I don't. And I don't expect them to do free work for me. They are trying to make a living. And if we all recognized that, and maybe if it's more than an oil change, get a written statement of work and estimates of cost, both sides would be a little bit happier.

It's like having a house built. There's a contract, and anything else that comes up requires a change order. I worked at a research firm that did lots of government contracting, and we only did the work specified in the statement of work, as that was what was expected of us by the government. Either side could request changes, but no work beyond the scope of work was ever performed until contractual changes were made.

I don't know if the above has been worth reading. Just my random neurons firing, and they are getting old and dusty...

 

Hey @VANDENPLAS , sounds like you have run across some of those hard-to-deal-with people lately. Aren't they a bundle of fun.

If you are confident in what you can do, be truthful to the client about the outcome they can expect for the dollar value they want to contribute.......... but always do this in written form so you have the details recorded.
Trust everyone.... but brand your cattle.

 

But the engine is the best part of a Crosley!

 

Yeah, but every Crosley has that engine! How many have a V8-60? I'm just saying...

 

yeah....same here

 

I did a lot of work for other people at my welding shop for 25 years. The first year was a real lessen in how people think.

Most people have no idea what is involved with doing welding on their car. When you came into my shop, I would explain what had to be done, how it had to be done, what was in the way of doing what needed to be done, and what possible problems could come up that we wouldn't know about until we got started. I would explain what their money was going to buy at my shop and that every repair had a life expectancy. I explained that I was the expert there, not them, so it was going to be done the way I wanted to do it, or they could go elsewhere. I believe what helped me a lot was often when people came into my shop, I made sure they understood their vehicle was no longer useful it its current condition, they brought it to me because it was broken. Once they admitted that, often their at***ude changed. If it didn't, I would not be doing any work for them.

Since I was the expert, I was expected to know what was coming. Before I took on the job, there was a careful inspection, and I determined about how many hours was going to be involved in the repair, based on everything going wrong. Then there was the material costs, also based on if everything went wrong. With that in mind, if I didn't think I could make it work well enough that I would consider it safe, I would not take the job at all. I have condemned a lot of vehicles over the years. I would only take on jobs I thought I could safely repair an area, with it remaining safe for a specific time frame. The reason for the specific time frame was because the parts on their vehicle were still deteriorating, the problem was not going to be what I did, but what I attached my stuff to.

With that understanding, I stuck my neck out and would give them a price based on a worst case expectation that was going to last for a specific time frame, subjected only to a very early discovery of if a bigger unseen hidden problem existed (remember, I was already expecting the worst). The few times that happened, as soon as the discovery was made, I would contact the customer and we would have a new conversation, often one involving there is no hope of fixing the vehicle. My customers knew that the repairs I was making on their vehicle was going to have a specific life span, and then I would need to look at the vehicle and reevaluate the vehicle's condition (after you do this a while, you get pretty good at determining about how long its going to last.)

The customer were also told that if things went better then expected, the price would be reduced. If I blew it and underestimated the time or material, but could still make the vehicle safe, I would eat the extra costs.

A customer for life is one where they agree on a price for a repair, and when its completed, you tel them it went a little better then you expected and hand them a bill for $50 less then what was agreed upon, or that it took longer to get the job done safely, but the bill was still what was agreed upon.

As a side note, all the work I did was paid for in full upon completion, no credit nor did I take any credit cards. If the job involved a steel purchase, it was paid for before the steel was ordered. The job would start when the material was in the shop, and would be completed as quickly as possible.

Most of the work I did was by referral, other businesses, or repeats of the same customers with different projects.