thanks guys for the kind wishes, and the pms with suggestions. i am going in to see the car again tomorrow first thing and will have current photos up update you with after that. its kind of on hold at the moment, i am not quite sure what was said to the guy, so i have some things to straighten out myself. i do not want to put the shops name up, i fear i said too much telling its general location as it is. like i said the works looks great, but we just cant place the prices that are suddenly hitting us, and the extreme lack of progress for over a month, and the fact its over budget and over due on schedule. i feel like when i left the meeting, when the guy was looking at the car and gave an estimate, i feel like we gave ever fact and detail of what we wanted, this was not a huge huge deal, the car ran for christ sakes. we had nearly ever freaking part for the finished project, where did this turn sour and escape the budget in a matter of two or three weeks? maybe i am biased. i mean everyone said the car was not in that bad of shape, and all i have ever seen when i looked at it was a beautiful gem, but maybe she was a piece of crap. i just dont see it. i mean am i just stupid with numbers?
some key words in the estimate meeting:
we are not looking to build a hot rod, we are not looking for perfection, we want the car to run reliably, to install the parts we already have, fix up the body, give it a decent paint job, nothing spectacularly ornate, get it tuned to run as a reliable parade vehicle, get it completed by thanksgiving so we can attend the x-mas parades in it, we have a budget of close to 20k, we want the a/c put back in and brought up to working condition.
there was no skepticism about this job being a problem. and yet here we are a couple days form thanksgiving, its still in pieces, and before the base coat of paint is even purchased to be mixed up and applied, we are over budget by a few grand, with 10s or more to go? i mean, am i weird, or is that not a substantial leap in price from the budget?
and all the while while they are working on it, "its actually im great shape", "should not be too big a deal".
i realize the body work is the biggest part of a restore job, but we had replacement finder, valance, rear panel, we ended up buying new oem doors, because it was decided that was cheaper and faster. i just do not see the damn near 13k in body work existing, the most expensive part of the bodywork we had assumed from the beginning was to cut out the old rear panel and weld in our new replacement panel. and when that was done the price was not substantial for that week, and we were more concerned about the fact that she had been untouched for two weeks before and after that operation.
what was said is correct, the parts for this era mustang is actually really good, you can get good parts usa made, oem spec, for good price, and we already had them. here is the link to the photo album i threw the pictures of all the parts we had waiting to be used to finish the car. we still have some of them, we gave them a lot of the parts and most of them are still piled some where on their facility i hope.
http://s1109.photobucket.com/albums/h428/okwrk871/mustang and parts/
and here is the car the day we turned it over to them. i took all these photos in case she turned up missing or some even more horribly terrifying drama. the mis matched colored hose and the dash in shambles is actually from us working on it, nothing is broken or missing, just apart from where we were in the process before we decided to turned it over to a professional.
http://s1109.photobucket.com/albums/h428/okwrk871/mustang itself/
looking at the work thats been done, and the car in those photos, she does look to have problems, but i still hold that it was never in terrible shape. and most of the bad spots are all things we already had the parts for to replace, so they are not the distressing issue. and the most intensive part of the car to replace was the cutting and rewelding the new rear panel, where the lights and fuel cap are, and like i said, the price was negligble when they did that. somewhere between finishing the hood and the dent in the rear driver wheel well, we skyrocketed 10grand..... see picture 22 for that dent.
some key words in the estimate meeting:
we are not looking to build a hot rod, we are not looking for perfection, we want the car to run reliably, to install the parts we already have, fix up the body, give it a decent paint job, nothing spectacularly ornate, get it tuned to run as a reliable parade vehicle, get it completed by thanksgiving so we can attend the x-mas parades in it, we have a budget of close to 20k, we want the a/c put back in and brought up to working condition.
there was no skepticism about this job being a problem. and yet here we are a couple days form thanksgiving, its still in pieces, and before the base coat of paint is even purchased to be mixed up and applied, we are over budget by a few grand, with 10s or more to go? i mean, am i weird, or is that not a substantial leap in price from the budget?
and all the while while they are working on it, "its actually im great shape", "should not be too big a deal".
i realize the body work is the biggest part of a restore job, but we had replacement finder, valance, rear panel, we ended up buying new oem doors, because it was decided that was cheaper and faster. i just do not see the damn near 13k in body work existing, the most expensive part of the bodywork we had assumed from the beginning was to cut out the old rear panel and weld in our new replacement panel. and when that was done the price was not substantial for that week, and we were more concerned about the fact that she had been untouched for two weeks before and after that operation.
what was said is correct, the parts for this era mustang is actually really good, you can get good parts usa made, oem spec, for good price, and we already had them. here is the link to the photo album i threw the pictures of all the parts we had waiting to be used to finish the car. we still have some of them, we gave them a lot of the parts and most of them are still piled some where on their facility i hope.
http://s1109.photobucket.com/albums/h428/okwrk871/mustang and parts/
and here is the car the day we turned it over to them. i took all these photos in case she turned up missing or some even more horribly terrifying drama. the mis matched colored hose and the dash in shambles is actually from us working on it, nothing is broken or missing, just apart from where we were in the process before we decided to turned it over to a professional.
http://s1109.photobucket.com/albums/h428/okwrk871/mustang itself/
looking at the work thats been done, and the car in those photos, she does look to have problems, but i still hold that it was never in terrible shape. and most of the bad spots are all things we already had the parts for to replace, so they are not the distressing issue. and the most intensive part of the car to replace was the cutting and rewelding the new rear panel, where the lights and fuel cap are, and like i said, the price was negligble when they did that. somewhere between finishing the hood and the dent in the rear driver wheel well, we skyrocketed 10grand..... see picture 22 for that dent.
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