"Choosing
a Shop"
By David Grainger
Each year I have the opportunity to work on dozens
of Classic and Antique cars and they range in condition from very
good to absolute basket cases when they come in. I have literally
had cars brought to me in boxes and stacked on flatbed trailers,
and I have had others driven in which at first glance looked nicely
restored but actually needed to be stripped right down and started
over again. The owners who bring them in have many personal reasons
for having the work done and these reasons are often as varied
as the cars themselves. The love of the car is difficult to explain,
and love affairs range from the adoration of cantankerous single
cylinder 1900’s wheezers to the blatting and snarling tin
monsters of the late sixties. Every car has its admirers and there
is no logical reason why one fellow will be madly in love with
an Austin A 40 while another can’t take his eyes off of
a 36 Buick Sedan. In the world of the car the three wheeled Messerschmitt
has as much right at the show as the 16 cylinder Cadillac.
So when you finally find that one special car how should you go
about restoring it? How do you find someone to entrust your project
to who will treat your dream car with the respect and care that
you would if you could do the work? How do you pick a shop or
shops to restore your car? So let's explore your options and perhaps
some of your motivations.
Money is important to all of us and money, or
the spending of large amounts of it, is what is always required
to restore a car. So we have immediately set up a conflict here,
because although you may want the car restored, you may never
be able to escape the feeling that you are paying too much money
to have it done. The restorer on the other hand knows how hard
it is to even ball park a restoration’s costs and will live
all the way through the restoration with a fair amount of pressure
from the owner to explain and justify every expenditure. So what
can you do to ensure that you are getting your money’s worth
and what can the restorer do to put your mind at ease? I’ll
lay out a few things that I have learned over the years, both
from a restorer's standpoint and from an owner's.
First, when you first approach a restorer of
any kind there are a few things that you should expect to hear
and see.
You should of course be given a tour of the shop
as a matter of course. Don’t be so excited about your own
project that you fail to take a really good look at other people's
projects which are under way. Walk through with a very critical
eye. See how things are being done and how the cars are being
treated. So what exactly are you looking for? What you are looking
for first is organization. Restoration is the most difficult and
complex task that can be performed on a car. If a shop appears
disorganized with piles of parts strewn about in haphazard fashion
and with the cars being used to store parts on then you should
hear faint warning bells. Even a small and busy shop can keep
organized and in fact has to if it is to do its job properly.
There are bound to be small messes around any shop as work is
done but you can tell when it is standard operating procedure
to live in the mess or whether it is just because of tasks being
performed at that moment. One thing I always try to impress on
my staff, and it is difficult to police without appearing as a
nag, is that cars are not tables and when working on a car you
should not use it as a work bench. Leaving tools all over a car
is, in my opinion, something that should be taboo in any shop.
It not only shows a certain disrespect for the car and by extension
its owner, but it can cause small dents, scrapes or other damage
which has to be fixed and costs money. Once again, common sense
should be used. If a mechanic is twisted over a fender and into
the depths of an engine compartment, he should perhaps be allowed
to put a couple of tools within reach on an inner fender as long
as he has taken precautions to ensure that they will cause no
damage. A nice chrome air cleaner should not be used as a convenient
table on which to pile wrenches and vice grips.
You should look to see if the shop uses fender covers and blankets
to protect the cars when they are being worked on and check to
see if the cars are kept fairly clean when they are in the shop.
Cars covered in inches of dust and dirt are not a good sign.
Being critical of the work itself is almost impossible because
you don’t know what exactly the shop has done or what it
hasn’t or at what stage the project is in. I recently heard
two car club members who were on a tour through our shop discussing
what a lousy paint job had been put on car that was in the shop.
What they thought they were seeing was a finished paint job with
drips on it. What they were seeing was a Concours project which
was purposely shot very wet so that the paint would flow and set
up glasslike. This avoids the need to cut orange peel off the
car, a thing that happens when paint is shot either too dry or
with fast dry catalysts. Your new car is covered in it and it
is standard. It is not permissible on a show car though. By shooting
the car very wet and with slower acting catalysts we get runs
occasionally but these take very little time to sand off and polish
compared to having to color sand and polish a car with orange
peel. So their judgment was incorrect, but easily explained.
Now if you see something that you don’t
like the looks of, ask. There should be an explanation, but not
an excuse.
Now after your tour of the shop you should then
sit down to discuss your project with the restorer. The first
thing that you should hear from any restorer is that the job will
be expensive, there is no getting around it, and if you are not
hearing that message then you may have a problem. I would be a
little suspicious of any professional restorer who avoids telling
you that restoration is expensive or goes on about how much money
he can save you. In restoration, if the restorer is experienced
and honest, then the car will end up determining how much money
will need to be spent on it and both you and the restorer will
be in for the long haul. This is why it is critical to have a
restorer who explains all of this to you before you start the
project so that you can make an informed decision about whether
you really want to restore that car.
I have a rather negative selling technique which
I use. People come in and say perhaps, " I have a 1966 Chevrolet
Sedan which I would like to restore". My reply to this is
invariably, "No you don’t." I then spend the next
half hour trying to talk the owner out of restoring the car by
explaining that he or she can probably find a nice driver which
needs no work for about one fifth the cost of restoring the same
car. I also explain how much things like interiors and chrome
plating cost, which when combined with nothing else, can eclipse
the value of the finished car. If after that the owner still wants
to go ahead then it is my duty to find the least expensive way
to do the job properly.
If after a good talk about procedures, costs,
billing and parts acquisition you feel comfortable with the restorer,
then you may be able to get started.
Another thing that you should find out is how
much work the restorer does on site and how much he farms out
to others. You should know up front if your car is going to go
out on a major tour while it is being restored, and if that will
end up incurring more costs than you feel comfortable with.
Another thing to look for is equipment. It is
all right to say that a car is all hand crafted, but if the shop
is hand crafting something in a day which could be done in an
hour with the right equipment then you are not getting your money's
worth.
In order to save money, many owners will opt
for what I call "the Restoration Tour". This is a process
where the owner takes the car all over the countryside having
small shops here and there do individual tasks. In the next column
I will cover how this can work for you, and how it can backfire
and blow up in your face.
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