Hot Rods Salt Flats Speed Shop Orum Utah

Wow, you are an amazing craftsman!

 

As always, there are 2 sides to every story. If the body had been unbolted from the frame and blasted clean before it arrived at the shop , a lot of money would not have been wasted on general labor and could have produced more hours of Chris’s fabrication skills.


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I believe Chris moved his shop location upstate a couple of years ago. Nice to see him back on the HAMB with more work. His fabrication skills are phenomenal. Really top notch work is expensive for sure. What's that saying - "if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it."

 

Sure looks like he got his money's worth to me!

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Yep! I know which side I believe. Chris great work, I guess Vic was expecting you to work on shop rates from 1990 not 2020.

 

As you well know, there are two kinds of customers, happy and not happy! I'm not going to push my opinion to either side of this story, but rather remain in the neutral zone. What I will say though, in reviewing the pictures of the work completed, it is evident that the work done is of a very high caliber. The old saying, "pictures or it didn't happen" applies here!

 

All of it is tough to call. 8k to get a car blasted and 2 doors seems steep to me.

Hard part of shop work, gotta keep a running tally of everything, and keep everyone's expectations out in the clear and usually in writing

 

I won't second guess what the arrangement was between Vic and SFSS but more often than not there is more energy put into the narrative after the fact than what should have been included in the line of communication before and during the process.
Taking no sides but I'm guessing Chris doesn't cut corners, and as it was stated by most the work appears to be very high quality.
In this day and age the norm seems to be to hide a lot of questionable work with a little window dressing, so to speak, doesn't seem to be the case here.

 

I tried to put myself in both parties shoes on this one... I have no horse in this race...
So after blasting and disassembly we are left with about $6k. When you say six thousand dollars it sounds like a lot of money without any reference...
So for reference: At $50 an hour that is only 120 hours of work... the pics I saw show every bit of 120 hours of work (looked like a lot of massaging went into that roof)
and still not counting any material/shop fees, etc....
I know if I tried to do that type of work myself I would have spent 1000's of hours and only got it half as good, if I managed not to muck it up beyond repair...
Chappy

 

For that much money you'd be lucky to get just the doors done at Bobby Waldens shop.

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For me the money may not be an issue but it was over 3 years ago when Vic posted that the door skins were ready to go but not installed. There does not seem to be a lot of progress in 3+ years. That would be a sign to me that the project is not a priority. While the work done seems worth the dollars spent the time frame does not.

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Reread post # 52.


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Somebody needs a dose of reality here, and I'll give you a hint : It ain't Chris.

 

I'm no rookie at this car building business and from what I can see Chris gave this guy his moneys worth? In today's world 7500 buys an average of about 70 hrs of work. Just tearing the car apart for blasting had to eat some of this plus the blasting which in this part of the country would have been a couple grand. From what I can see in the pictures he's done a fair amount of work on the doors which included fabricating the inner braces. The work on the roof looks to be extensive? I've built a lot of cars my self and in the last 15 years hired some cars finished. I'm never prepared for the bill but the dollars don't go as far as they used to. In my business I still have to give the customer a firm bid but the chassis business is a different game.

 

Having someone else work on your car is not cheap.

We can only speculate on the timeline and speculation is not fair to either man in this situation.

But, I will say this, from experience. If you want your car to be a top priority, be the best client they have. If you're the one who pays first and fast, you'll get work done.

 

If you got all of that work done for $7500 you got a smokin deal. 32-34 Fords are not cheap to begin with and all of the hours add up.

 

A friend of mine in the hot-rod building business gave me some great advice in that he never gives out an estimate, what he does is meet with the customer to decide a course of action then he gets to work, at the end of two weeks the customer comes in and pays the bill, if he's happy, they keep going, if not, the customer takes his vehicle home. Documenting what you do by taking pictures of every part of the process is an outstanding way to protect yourself.

 

For 6K, is that 3 weeks worth of work? In my opinion, yes…..

 

That is how I run my business. Do some work. Meet with clients. Receive payment for that work then move on to the next stage. Many here who have red this posting , are not reading my comments . There was no body work done to the roof or anywhere else on the car except the doors and door jambs , besides the sand blasting . I did have some credit left on that account and the owner decided to just keep the balance . At this point , I have pushed the car into the back corner of my shop like many other horror car stories . Chalk this up to experience . Now I am working on a 33 Vicky and a 33 3 window coupe besides the 32 3 window pictured on my avitar which I have done all the metal work myself. So I do know what it takes to build cars and one off fabricated metal , aluminum proto type projects .
Vic