Customs brake line advice

Holy shit!...How many vacations has he been on while your car was undriveable?... Wish I could afford a vacation! Hopefully his employees can also...

 

So it was $7704.08 He gave me a $704.08 deal because they over charged by almost $2500 haha damn! The brake parts totalled $338 bones from NAPA. 52hrs of labor @ $95 an HR made out to $4940 for labor only . No break down of just the brake hours. I paid $7000 cash for it all.

 

I agree about getting too fancy. Just get good OEM quality steel lines, the correct fittings, and do the way the factory did millions of them and you will be ok. I can't think what advantage people expect to get, by buying all kinds of fancy stuff. I suppose if you were driving through corrosive salt water spray and never hosed off your car, the copper brake lines might save a replacement 10 years down the line but come on. Do you really treat your car that way, and how long do you plan on keeping it?

 

There's 50+ hours of work there, seems like you changed from manual to auto

I'm not sure you were really over charged in labor $2500, that would just leave 26 hours to do all the rest of the work you have listed, I can't see one person completing a tranny swap from manual to auto, doing the brakes (regardless of quality) in 3 days, maybe two people working on it...I think maybe just not a good first estimate...

How long should the whole job take?

I dunno, but think a 26 hour estimate would be pretty aggressive.

 

When TE="Budget36, post: 11123934, member: 257791"]There's 50+ hours of work there, seems like you changed from manual to auto


I'm not sure you were really over charged in labor $2500, that would just leave 26 hours to do all the rest of the work you have listed, I can't see one person completing a tranny swap from manual to auto, doing the brakes (regardless of quality) in 3 days, maybe two people working on it...I think maybe just not a good first estimate...

How long should the whole job take?

I dunno, but think a 26 hour estimate would be pretty aggressive.[/QUOTE]
when he and I first spoke he said Iit was a simple job. About $5000/6000 . I said ok and gave $1500 in cash. He left for vacation and when he got back 2 weeks later it had jupmed up and was now $7704.08 He said Kerry was supposed to call. That never happened and Kerry told him he hadn't. It was a 3 speed to auto swap. Car was there for 3 weeks. They didn't work on it every day

 

Four as of now haha

 

I think the 6K was probably a more reasonable estimate, he did settle it out for 7 K - but agree you should have been called well ahead of time, long before you got to 6K worth of parts and labor.

I've read so many threads here on the HAMB about getting written estimates and such, having a plan with the shop on progress checks etc, so no surprises like this would come up.

Again, I'm not going to comment on too many hours, etc, I've never done that swap (assume your AV pic car?) in a car like yours.
Just seems like this whole deal didn't work out for you 2 years ago, and never really got better so I can see how you'd be bitter on things for sure.

 

The payment is not the issue with me. He dropped it and I agreed. Someone asked about the hours and price so I put it up. Just now I'm still having issues and now I have to pay again. That's the bummer. The car is a 1953 ford. The green 51 is my other car. Here is a pic

 

Just out of curiosity how big is the shop? How many mechanics does he employ? I have worked for several successful garages but none of the owners took 3 vacations a year. He must make quite the profit.

 

He canned all of them. It wants to stick to parts and some auto work. When I had the work done he had maybe 4 or 5. He has family across the pond and a home in Hawaii. So maybe cheap for vacation.

 

A second home in Hawaii is not cheap.

 

One would have to do lots of brake jobs

 

Here's the deal on the seepage/leak/whatever

It was on a Tee...Wornshoes called about it, was told it was "residual fluid".

Now think about that for a minute...who has ever bled brakes at the Tee fitting?
Why should there be residual fluid there?

And Limeworks reply about the PTFE-or was it the JB Weld?, doesn't play out "was put there to see if that was where the leak was"...(or similar)...I don't understand that way of reasoning....I'd hoped he would explain that.

Now I don't run a shop, I', not a professional, but I've made hundreds of double/inverted flares (never in SS tho). ran too many brake lines to remember the count, but never once have I had "residual fluid" on a tee...if I had fluid on a tee or connection, it was because of a leak...plain and simple.

Again, why would there be residual fluid left anywhere on any connection. other that at the MC or wheel cylinders?[/QUOTE]

I could see a fitting being wet from the mess of disassembling the fitting with fluid in the lines. Maybe wet enough for a single drop to form. But that's stretching pretty far. I recently replaced several brake lines on my DD after one rusted and burst, and there was quite a bit of brake fluid all over the place.

I can also maybe see using ptfe tape to try to isolate which joint is leaking. That's not something I'd leave in place. But looking at a T that the OP says is leaking at home when Steve says it wasn't leaking at his shop, ok, maybe I could see doing that as a diagnostic. Not a fix.

I agree, though. Simple steel lines and ordinary fittings from NAPA are good. They work. They're relatively easy to do. And if they need to be replaced, you can always find a NAPA.

I'm not a professional either, just a guy working on his own cars in the garage. Tomorrow I get to stop at the local NAPA for brake parts...

 

I could see a fitting being wet from the mess of disassembling the fitting with fluid in the lines. Maybe wet enough for a single drop to form. But that's stretching pretty far. I recently replaced several brake lines on my DD after one rusted and burst, and there was quite a bit of brake fluid all over the place.

I can also maybe see using ptfe tape to try to isolate which joint is leaking. That's not something I'd leave in place. But looking at a T that the OP says is leaking at home when Steve says it wasn't leaking at his shop, ok, maybe I could see doing that as a diagnostic. Not a fix.

I agree, though. Simple steel lines and ordinary fittings from NAPA are good. They work. They're relatively easy to do. And if they need to be replaced, you can always find a NAPA.

I'm not a professional either, just a guy working on his own cars in the garage. Tomorrow I get to stop at the local NAPA for brake parts...[/QUOTE]
The dude at my NAPA gave me one of his catalogs from the people he orders from to stock his store and told me to call him and he'd get whatever I needed. Stand up guy!

 

Yeah, that's just plain wrong. Two weeks would be way too damn long.

 

the napa's near us use weatherhead fittings........all good stuff.

 

Been following this from the start, kinda shocked that a big name guy in the hot rod business could turn out work this shoddy whether he did it himself or paid a guy to do the work. If I were him, I'd make this right at no cost to you immediately just to salvage my reputation. 20 satisfied customers provide less p.r. than one really pissed off customer, a guy who's clearly been fucked over in my opinion, maybe the real problem here is Limey Steve is a victim of his own success, believing the hot rod game will last forever, forgetting that you can go down in flames pretty quick.
What I have the hardest time with is....these are brake lines we are talking about here, something most of us can do in our sleep, a pro shop screws this up and can't make it right? One wonders about the quality of any workmanship coming from this shop.

 

I like my local NAPA. But yesterday, for some reason, they were out of stock on the brake shoe retaining springs. Had everything else I needed, just not those. They'll be in tomorrow.

If you were closer I'd offer to drop by and give you a hand with you brakes. It shouldn't take all that long to run a few hard lines on that car.

 

If you look back I gave him and the shop some love after the work when I was stoked. I know that people always talk about the bad so I wanted to talk about the good. But this is just too much. He really caught me off guard.

 

Well said.

 

Thanks man. Some good people here

 

You don't turn out a brake job with leaking lines or fittings. You just don't. You check over everything after you finish the job and if there is a leak, you fix it. You DO NOT send a customer out with defective brakes hoping they will fix themselves. I can't believe this is even up for discussion.

 

When I first took it to him it was leaking from the fittings at the wheel cylinders. It had dumped out all the fluid from the front reservoir. The pedal was like 2" from the floor board. I was going to my local show at Ruby's. It never leaked from the brass T until the day I got back the car from his shop. It was coming out enough to leave a 3" diameter spot on the concrete just minutes after pulling in. I called ASAP and he said just residual. He called back a day or two later. He even thought that maybe his workers hadn't put fluid in the front reservoir from the first time at his shop WTH? It's been a real pain!

 

Residual bullshit. You clean off any fluid with a rag or a squirt of brake kleen. Then you recheck after bleeding and pumping the brakes. You DO NOT send a car out unless you KNOW none of the lines are leaking. There is no guesswork about it.

 

On another note when this does get fixed make sure you know type of fluid to use... Don't mix silicone fluid with the other stuff, just incase you didn't know that already

 

10.4 on the info! Not my first rodeo just ended up wanting to have someone else handle it. Lesson learned haha thanks again for the info.

 

I have done lots of brake jobs and there is usually at least one joint that seeps a little. You tighten it up and it stops. In only one case, did this not work. I took off the brake line and the metal was split in the flare. Cut the end off, double flared it, and it was fine.

It's not that difficult to do the job properly.

 

$7K for a stick to auto swap...add R&R mast/shift link, do a complete Bendix brake job.
On a '53 Ford? Logic escapes me.

 

For $7K I would have done the work on the '53 and had it picked up and delivered..........from here in Tennessee.
And there wouldn't be any leaks.

No wonder he can afford to go to Hawaii on vacation.

 

It was a hard pill to swallow with money and my pride. I just couldn't do the job with the trans swap because of my wheelchair. The brakes I could, but the car was there and it seemed simple. I knew his rate of $95 an hour. He did quote me way lower when I dropped the $1500 deposit. Live and learn!