Around Christmas I dropped off customer's car to get blasted, today the owner calls me and says it's finally done after every excuse in the book from family member death to his son's injury to his sick wife to compressor going bad,to electric issues,to him getting sick to bondo and undercoating is too thick, the bill came to $6100 and the bolt-on parts like hood,doors,deck lid and bumpers aren't even touched yet
More in-depth details of this whole ordeal:
The said car belongs to a friend/customer that I have known and done business with,he owns a company here in Jacksonville that produces and sells aftermarket parts,
About a year ago he called me asking to take a look at this car and give him an estimate to get this car back in top shape,at that time the car wasn't driveable since the drivetrain was taken out,so I told him to get it on a trailer and bring it by, he thought that I wasn't interested in doing the work.Few months later I ask him about the Porsche,he said that he ended up taking it to another shop,which turns out to be a butcher shop that quoted him $6000 to restore the body,fix all rust,prep and paint,keep in mind that the car came in already fully disasssembled,no glass,interior,drivetrain,suspension all bolt-on body parts were removed.Remember, the original quote to restore the body was $6000,he signed the work order/estimate,but failed to get a copy, few months into it he started not liking the way the work was getting done,so he mentioneed to the shop's owner that he wants to stop the process and pull the car out,the crook puts a 1 in front of the 6 and says that he ows the shop $3500 for the work that has already been done( I'll post a few pics of their work so you all can see metal work you have never seen before ),after few weeks of negotiating he finally paid the bill, I'm not sure what the number was,but atleast he got the car back.
Few days later he trailered the shell to my shop,we got it on rotissery and I cut out all the major rust to get better access to hidden and hard to reach areas before we took it to the blaster,we came to a rough quote and agreed to finalize it once we get it blasted and find as much of the replacement sheetmetal as possible to cut down on time to fabricate rusted out parts.
I have known the blaster for atleast 5-7 years,have sent alot of customers his way and he has done alot of small projects for me and my friends. So once I had all the major rust cut out, I called the blaster to stop by and give me an estimate to blast it. After a week or so of me bugging him, he showed up, we talked for a good while,he convinced me that he can blast a soda can without warping it, I showed him my Cuda,and asked him what he would charge to blast my Cuda inside and out , he said $500-600 and if I wanted a primer coat it'll be another couple hundred bucks, so I figured to blast little Speedster shouldn't be much more, since it's alot smaller car and it's a cabriolet, he told me to blast the Speedster will take about 8-10hours since it had a skim coat of filler all over and undercoating ,which by the way I offered to grind off and scrape off,but he said not to worry,he'll just balst it off and he will cut us a deal since we've known each other for a while,instead of $150 an hour he will charge $100,we chit chatted a bit more, shook hands and I told him to call me when he's ready,I relayed my conversation with the blaster to my friend,the owner of the Porsche and he was relieved that we can get it done localy ,as I have searched for chemical stripping facility in the area and just didn't feel the need to trailer the shell back and forth especially in bare metal. I told the owner that it was his responsibility to deal with the blaster and I'm just going to introduce them to each other,but somehow I still ended up coordinating the flatbed and towing the shell on rotisserie to the blaster.
There was NO paperwork, period,
After a week I called the blaster to see what was the status, he replied that he was very busy and his guy is trying to remove the undercoating,but in few days it should be ready,after about a week I decided to drop by and check out the progress, to my surprize the shell wasn't even touched sitting in the open ,who knows how long it has sat there in the rain and weather.That was a sign for us to get it out.But I kinda felt for him knowing how hard it can be to deal with all theese problems while trying to run a business.So I called the owner and filled him in on the situation, next day the owner came by and the blaster had put a tarp over it,he asked him to put the car out of the weather,I'm not sure ,but sometime later the owner came to check on the car and it still wasn't blasted, but atleast it was inside a building,so that was somewhat of a relief for him, in all this time the blaster is coming up with all sorts of excuses,bondo and undercoating is thick, he never seen filler like that, his wife is sick,his son that works with him has injured his leg or something,then his compressor went out, then he had some electrical issues that burned up some of the wiring, then he got sick and couldn't work for a week, then someone in his family died. Days turned into weeks,weeks turned into months. Yesterday the owner of the car called me and asked if I could go with him and check out the car as it was finally getting close to beeing finished, I agreed. When we arrived at blasters yesterday morning,to my surprize the shell was finally in bare metal, I pointed out a few spots that needed to be touched , the blaster said it'll be ready in few hours,and he will try to arrange with his buddy that owes him a tow to bring the shell back to my shop,later that day blaster's son Gary Jr. called the owner and said the car is ready and the bill came to $6100,owner called me and asked me to go with him again to help and talk some sense into theese clown's heads, we decided to go this afternoon,we show up and just to make sure, they both say yes, the bill is $6100, but if the owner pays in cash, he will take 10% off,LMAO! what a bargain!! After I explained to blaster Gary Sr. that I wasn't born yesterday and it doesn't take alot of brains to figure out alternative way to remove undercoating and thick bondo instead of blasting ,especially when I offered atleast twice to grind down the bondo and scrape off the undercoating, he needs to come up with realistic number , so we can pick the car up and be on our way, so he says $5000,meanwhile his ***** Jr. makes a call to get his buddy cop to show up, so the owner of the car calls cops and one shows up as well, the blaster's buddy cop tells us to ether take up on his offer or in five minutes he will arrest both of us for trespassing, How do you like them beans? So our spineless cop tells us this is civil case and owner needs to go downtown and file some papers at the court house,and to be out of trouble, step outside and back to the car we came on, and this is where we are.Owner called a good attorney ,but it was after 5:30 pm,so he left voicemail. We'll see on Monday what can we do
here are some of the pic of the car right before blasting and the fine craftsmanship of metal fabricator of the butcher shop
underside of the custom bolted patch
Topic: Our $6100 media-blasting bill from Jacksonville Powder Coatings (Read 5789 times)
