Bruzilla , do you have a shop or do you work on cars for compensation and have you " name" on that car? Doin it right is not BS but a lot of shops take different avenues to achieve this , some right some wrong but ultimately that is the car owners job to get second opinions and make solid decision on. We are talking about old cars 40+ year old cars , not too many don't have rust hiding in creases or have old shitty bodywork previously done on them . Doin a job RIGHT is ensuring that next year or two the owner isn't comming back complaining about paint bubbling or old bodywork comming back to bite ya in the ***. Bondo isn't all bad , it's nessessary but not to be used to patch rust holes ,,,,ever! I'm not trying to get in a pissing match but I believe there IS a RIGHT way to do things and there is a cheap way to do things. but really , communication is key , us as body shops MUST say if you don't take care of this or that , this or that will happen and make low budget owners understand . Ultimately it's the shops name on that car,,,, what do you want to be known for ?
No, I don't own a shop, nor do I need to as I am the equal partner of the shop owner... the customer.
The 73 Roadrunner I had when I got back from Bermuda in 1988 was a perfect example of this. The body had seven layers of paint on it that had to be stripped off, which I did. Then I needed it painted black. I took it to one shop and they primed it, then the owner came back from a trip, saw the car, called me, and started going into the "Hey, if this if gonna be black, we need to also do this, and that, and this other thing, and all this other stuff to make it look right. And, oh by the way, this is gonna quadruple the cost. So we'll get started" crap, and I said just paint it like it is. He said he wouldn't paint it unless all this other stuff was done, so I said I'll take the car elsewhere. I took it to another shop and the owner said he wouldn't paint any car unless he had done the bodywork, which was fair, but I wasn't going to pay for him to do that. Like I said, I just wanted it painted. This car was going to be a daily driver and not a show car, which was a fact I made perfectly clear to every shop owner I talked to, and every one of them wanted to make the car perfect when it didn't need to be, and I had to walk away from every one of them.
I finally called the Earl Scheib shop in Clearwater, FL, and talked to the manager there. I told him what I wanted, and he said "bring it in". I said the body was rough, and he said "if you want the car painted, I'll paint it". When I told him I wanted it painted black, he said "I'll paint it any color you like." I was a little worried given all the problems I had heard about from Scheib shops, but I took the car there, ordered their deluxe paint with clear coat, and three days later I came back to find my car just as I wanted it. It wasn't a yard-deep shine, it wasn't like a mirror, but it was damn shiny and black, which was all I needed. And it was $129 plus tax, which was also what I needed. I drove that car for close to five years as a daily driver and never had a problem with the paint either.
This is what managing expectations is all about. All the shop owners wanted to talk about was making the car perfect, even after I told them repeatedly that I didn't want the car to be perfect - I just needed it to meet my needs. It was their needs they were concerned about, not mine, and had I agreed to what they wanted I would have quickly run out of funds to get the car done. I can fully understand the shop owner's concerns about a customer coming back a year later and whining about issues, but that's where I see some responsibility on the shop owners to properly explain to customers what they should expect, in writing, before starting work or refusing to do the work, instead of upselling the customer into paying for a lot of work they didn't need done to meet their needs.
As for Bondo, it's been used to patch rust holes for decades. We just had a thread on here where someone said they had found an old Bondo repair that had been backed with duct tape while they were doing some other work to the car. Sounds horrible and stupid, but hey... that repair apparently held up for 10-30 years just fine. Again, going back to managing expectations, in your view, Bondo should never be used to repair a rust hole, but in my view, as a customer, I would rather pay $$ for a good Bondo repair than pay $$$$$ for new sheet metal work. I need a car that looks nice to drive around in, not impress judges, purists, or snoots at the car shows. This is where your needs as a shop owner are in conflict with my needs as a consumer. You want the higher-cost repair because it's right for your needs, and I want the lower-cost repair because it's what's right for my needs.
This is why when we started our current car, I didn't want to use a shop. I wanted to go the independent contractor route and it works much, much, better. Find a guy who knows his stuff, works on his own, and handles clients as they come in. You get the same work as a shop, but much lower cost, and much, much, quicker turnaround even if he's only doing this stuff part time. Most importantly, I found it much easier to establish exactly what you want done and how you want it done.
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By the way on full project build I will always start with the body and never the engine.
My experience has been the exact opposite. For most owners, especially newer ones, the most important part of a project, hands down, is getting the car to where you can sit in it and start the engine. Even if you can't drive it anywhere, doing at least that gives you the motivation to keep moving forward and it gives your spouse some idea that this "project" isn't going to be going nowhere forever, which is very important if you're married.
I've seen way too many guys try to start a project car by doing the body first, get in way over their heads financially and level of effort wise, and lose interest, financial ability, and spouse support, and the next thing you know the car is up for sale. The quicker you can get the car to act like a car, and less like a pile of parts, the more motivated you'll be to keep doing more. My cars may look like crap when I take them around the block the first time, but they do make it around the block, which gets me even more motivated to make them look awesome.
