OK, let me rant here - and Craig, you tell me if any of this rings true..... I've worked in many shops, managed several and owned one and rust work is 'filler-work' (no pun intended!), or apprentice-work, hence it goes last. If there's one thing I know, but hate to hear now, is how long peoples projects languish in shops. My neighbour died, while a shop SAT on his '41 truck body for 5 YEARS! They are there so friggin' long - but that's par for the course with MOST shops. Ask anyone on here how long it REALLY takes to do a quarter, plus inners and it's more than 12+6+4 hours!! More like 5+ days to get it finished and perfect. As well, 5K really doesn't go far. At 75 bucks an hour, you run though 600 bucks a day. 5K is gone in 8 days! Again, how long are poeple here spending to redo a whole car - YEARS! Of course that's part-time, but that was my original comment - they only work on rustees part-time. So they get into it, then collision works comes in (which pays the bills), then they forget where they were and you come in and they feel guilty, so they put the apprentice on it, who screws soemthing up and the journeyman has to fix it, but he hates rust....then parts come in that need work...then the gaps take two 8 hours days to align, grind, weld, mud and sand....and on and on.
How to avoid this? Try to go to a shop that you know, through SEVERAL referrals does good work with a resonable turnaround. Pay a small depost, but that's it. Demand pics of what they find under the paint and rust and cut-off panels and an hourly break down for billing. It'll still be DAMN EXPENSIVE (think 20K+!) but at least you'll keep 'em honest and know what they did for the cash!
