Maybe some of you misunderstood my thread. I'm not complaining as these guys always come thru with first rate work. I was just curious about the going rate around the country?
IMO, the big problem is that there are damn few "Onesy-Twosey" shops around any more. Most of the shops have gone to CNC machining. I am fortunate that I found a one-man shop about 20 minutes from me. Steve does quality work at a reasonable price. Everything that I have brought to him, he found a way to do what I needed done. If any of you are in the Shippensburg, Chambersburg Pa. area and need some excellent work done, contact me for Steve's info.
My shop is now a business-to-business CNC shop, with a little extra on the side. Our rates are set at what the business market will pay. Could we charge less? Sure, but why? The money is on the table. Could we survive on what individual customers think is too much to pay for work, probably, but why? The car stuff that I do now is more-or-less a break-even, plus coffee money. I already tried doing that as a business, and lost my shirt, and about a decade of savings. Charging what people think is reasonable, and not what you need to cover overhead, is how you go out of business. And no, it is not a California thing. Our commercial PSF lease rate is similar to numerous other US cities.
I re-read my reply, sounded like I was making a dig at @krylon32 , I should have re-read it before posting. My intent was really to say labor cost have risen over the years. ***uming the bushings were given to the shop along with the spindles, that would be 100% labor charge. How I should have worded was I ***ume your labor charge to build a ch***is has kept up with the times over the years. I apologize for it seeming like “a dig” at you.
Budget36 My labor charge changed very little in the last 30 years I built ch***is. The Stg III 32 ch***is I was selling for 5995.00 in about 1995 had risen to a selling price of about 10,995 by the time I retired. 95 percent of the price increase was the increase in the cost of the parts needed to build a ch***is plus the cost of business insurance and the cost of promoting my products in ads and doing trade shows. If my shop wouldn't have been located in rural Nebraska in a remodeled 100 year old barn on a farm that has been in the family since 1945 I would not have been able to offer my products at the price I did. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the ch***is business as there was always a feeling of satisfaction in seeing the finished product and a happy customer many who returned several times for another ch***is.
Glad for you. I was just making sure to clarify I wasn’t taking a shot at you, that wasn’t my intention.
It is a good time to be a mechanic for sure. On a different thread we were talking about valve grinding and cost. What used to cost 40 dollars now runs around 280-300. Everything is higher than a cats back any more.
Cost increase wise for having the king pins done, I'd have to think you pretty well have given the answer right there. Everyone's costs have gone up a bunch in the past couple of years. External costs usually control your profit (wages to yourself) when you are in business. Having your shop in that barn kept one big cost down and let you charge a lower rate but make the same in the pocket pay as the guy with the flashy shop on the main drag with the big paymemt, higher insurance and higher utility costs who charged a far higher shop rate. Just about every shop around has had wage increases in the last couple of years, Simply because every time minimum wage takes a jump other wages also go up somewhat or you loose employees to places that pay more. Everyone you deal with has had price increases to boot. Still I'd rather pay the price for work that I know is going to be the quality that I expect every time. That is worth something in it's self.
I took a 289 Ford block to a shop in the summer of 1970 to have it hot tanked, cam bearings installed, and bored and honed for 30 over pistons. Boring and honing at that time was $5 per hole. Today, the local price for boring and honing is $40 per hole, or 8X the 1970 rate. If you look at the general inflation from then until now, a dollar then had the same buying power as $7.75 has today. So, the $40 price is right in line with the average price increase of everything else. Re the spindles, I have a general machine shop and have rebushed a few sets of spindles for myself and others over the years. To bead blast, chase threads, and fit the kingpins using a Sunnen pin hone, I'd be at the $100 price too. To do 3 sets at the same time I'd drop the price to $270 total since there would be some time savings in doing 3 sets at once.
The Jalopy Journal
