Non- Buick. Restoration shop under investigation

[NC-car-guy]

Here in NC. I don't know anyone personally involved,  just sharing a story for awareness.  I'm sure this is not the first resto shop to be investigated. 

http://abc11.com/amp/automotive/aberdeen-car-restoration-shop-under-investigation-by-dmv/2464546/

[trimacar]

I've seen a restoration shop get sued, but I've never seen what appears to have happened there....scams right and left, it would appear, and operating as a chop shop and possibly selling parts to boot....the fellow even incriminates himself, saying he sold raffle tickets for a car give-away, but no car ever given away....

 

What a shame....always check references on a restoration shop (unless you are sure it has a good reputation), and make frequent visits to see progress and how your money is being spent...

[60FlatTop]

Always a cynic, " The vehicle had PVINs from two different vehicles, and with the observations made by Inspectors, it was evident that Mr. Fredericks had used two different PVINs that were removed from other vehicles."

 

Sounds like the old story, if a cop pulls you over and wants to give you a ticket he will be sure to find SOMETHING.

 

Do people really leave their cars in a shop for a couple of years or visit frequently providing parts and assistance without recognizing no progress is taking place?

 

I see the mention soldiers. I didn't see a battle ready one in the pictures. Remember, bad news sells. If someone got a car done two weeks early the news won't give a hoot, who cares. Interesting story when you consider the vehicles, work requested, and prices quoted.

Bernie

[dei]

A friend of mine went to a shop who had cars out there that were really nicely done so there was a track record verifying quality. The original quote was for body and paint to be 7800. He decided to pull the motor which was done by my friend (not the shop) and rebuild it thereby adding the detailing of the engine compartment.

Then the padded roof had to come off to access the belt line (which was not showing any signs of rusting) and then it was decided to take off all four doors to facilitate the jams properly.

The shell was finally painted about 14 months later and needed to be buffed out but the doors, hood and trunk were not even painted, just primed. 

Obviously with the extra work there was going to more money involved and when questioned about how much more it would take to complete the unpainted work, suddenly the total price was going to be 38,000.

The rust work on this car was minimal! I saw it when it was totally stripped down and even the roof under the padding was not the usual unpainted area.

The shop owner had another '40 Continental there sitting this whole time not even painted and apart not getting any work done on it and when asking about it, the shop owner said the money had stalled coming in and his words, he was holding it for money owed. Should have been a clue how this was going to work.

Finally we heard somewhat similar stories from a few of the other car owners that were done there so one day 8 of us with trailers and trucks showed up to get the car out which surprised the shop owner but when he started to resist my friend said, Call the police and he backed right off!

Sadly, he is not sure where all the small parts are to get the car back together now that the remaining parts are painted and everything is buffed out... 

This is a 1966 Lehmann-Peterson 36 inch factory stretch Limo which was driven into the guys shop after a 240 mile trip needing a paint job.. 

 

Meaning no disrespect to any stand up quality professional Restoration Shop, just not a good experience in this case.

 

 

[old-tank]

2 hours ago, 60FlatTop said:

Do people really leave their cars in a shop for a couple of years or visit frequently providing parts and assistance without recognizing no progress is taking place?

Makes you wonder where the blame is....

After the second month it would be "shame on me".

[Beemon]

Seems to be a re-occurring issue in the hobby. Having dealt with many upstanding companies in the industry thus far who have left me bent over and wet, I am already jaded. When I got my tires mounted, I stood in the shop and watched them. When I had my tires rotated (because it's free), I stood in the shop and watched them. Any time my girlfriend had gotten an oil change at a Jiffy Lube, I stood in the shop and watched them. About the only times I didn't get to stand in the shop and watch them were when I sent all of my stuff out to be rebuilt by companies on the other side of the country, to which I have received faulty work... being young and dumb in the beginning, I have also gotten shoddy work done. When I get my car painted, I feel like it will be an every other day type of visit. Will it be annoying? Sure, but it's my money. I haven't been refused entry into a shop that had been working on any of the vehilces I've driven, though one time a local Jiffy Lube said I couldn't stand in the shop due to safety reasons, so I left and went to another that did. If anything gets replaced, I also always ask for the original components. I waited 30 minutes at a Jiffy Lube once after my mom's car was finished just to see the original oil filter they threw in a garbage pail. After I confirmed it was the original I said "thanks, you can go put that back now." A wise man on this board told me once "trust, but verify."

[KongaMan]

Not to defend these guys (or anyone in particular), but my experience is that the explanation lies with incompetence far often than malice.  It doesn't make you feel any better when you spend a bunch of money to get your car back in parts, but...

 

Granted, there are lots of shady operators out there who will do what they can to make a buck, but a lot of these guys may have technical or mechanical skills that far exceed their business acumen.  And of course, some of them are neither savvy nor competent.

[Beemon]

Incompetence is malice. They take your money knowing they can't do the work, hiding behind a screen of "experience".

[KongaMan]

No.  Incompetence and malice are not presumptively synonymous.  And -- let's get real here -- sometimes even the competent make mistakes.  Perfection is a laudable goal but a foolish standard.

 

IMHO, the test in those cases is how they deal with the consequences of those mistakes. 

[60FlatTop]

I have worked in a whole different field all my life. Still, it was based on services for hire and payment for the same. Here is the one statement that covers every problem I have seen:

"Someone didn't know what they were buying from someone who didn't know what they were selling." A couple of decades ago I took firm control over my 50%. And, in general, the resistance has been amazing in all endeavors.

 

By the way, two weeks ago I got a good deal on a new Hobart Handler 140 MIG. I parked it on a two shelf cart and slid it in by the 80 gallon Devilbiss compressor and the body tool cabinet. I can buy pretty good tools for about a third the cost of farming the job out. That leaves me with a little slush fund to buy materials 3 or 4 times if that's what it takes for me to learn.

 

I have coffee with a few car guys on Saturday mornings. I'm tempted to print out that part about old BJ and his '77 Mustang

 

I have time, here's one. In the 1990's I did a lot of collector car repairs. One guy had an original 1941 Cadillac 62 series. I was driving it up to Syracuse when it turned 50,000 miles. The door weatherstripping and the hood bumpers were all dried and shot. New parts, installed, I figured something like $650-700. He thought that was a lot. So I told him he could help and I would deduct $15 per hour for his help. He arrived with the car in the morning, expecting it would be done "with a wave of the hand" and he would drive it home in the afternoon. We each took a side and started removing the old, glued on rubber. About 45 minutes later the sweat was rolling off him and he was having trouble in the cowl area. He came around to my side, "would you please give me a ride home, this is a lot more work than I thought,: "Sure, Ed!" I deduced a full hour. An educated customer is valuable.

 

Recently, in a professional situation, I was asserting the terms and conditions of a job. A vendor called me a difficult customer. Without a faltering I said "and you better remember that second word you just used."

 

These car guys were paying. They are in charge, soldiers, even, maybe it is my Navy attitude.

 

Bernie

[60FlatTop]

Just to keep on the light side:

 

Standing in the rain, with his head hung low
Couldn't get it running, paint not quite for show
Heard the roar of the engines, he could picture the scene
Put his head on the dashboard, then like a distant scream
He heard one big brain fart, just blew him away
He saw stars in his eyes, and the very next day

He rented a three bay, and got secondhand tools
Didn't know how to spray it, but he knew for sure
That one little shop, looked good to his friends, didn't take long, to understand
Just one cool shop, arms across his chest
Was a one way ticket, only one way to go
So he started wrenchin', ain't never gonna stop
Gotta keep on wrenchin', someday gonna make it to the top

And be a car show hero, (got stars in his eyes) he's a car show hero
He took one restoration (car show hero stars in his eyes)
 

Edited September 29, 2017 by 60FlatTop (see edit history)

[NC-car-guy]

5 hours ago, KongaMan said:

Not to defend these guys (or anyone in particular), but my experience is that the explanation lies with incompetence far often than malice.  It doesn't make you feel any better when you spend a bunch of money to get your car back in parts, but...

 

Granted, there are lots of shady operators out there who will do what they can to make a buck, but a lot of these guys may have technical or mechanical skills that far exceed their business acumen.  And of course, some of them are neither savvy nor competent.

This is true. And to Beemon's point.  Ignorance isn't malice,  it CAN be negligence if one continues to operate under the guise of good intent,  knowing they are ignorant..... and boy oh boy the list of people that this applies to.......   but anyway. Buyer beware. Do your research,  know what questions to ask,  recognize knowledge vs B.S. 

 

P.s. given beemon's circumstances i do still believe his shop was more malice than ignorance

Edited September 30, 2017 by wndsofchng06 (see edit history)

[Thriller]

When I've had significant work done, I checked in regularly. There was no payment up front (an estimate and a schedule of instalments with payments upon milestones if I remember correctly). I don't quite understand the mentality in this case. I've also gotten opinions from other car guys before working with someone new. 

 

There's  a a lot of buyer beware when dealing with thousands of dollars of work. 

 

[Beemon]

On 9/29/2017 at 2:01 PM, KongaMan said:

No.  Incompetence and malice are not presumptively synonymous.  And -- let's get real here -- sometimes even the competent make mistakes.  Perfection is a laudable goal but a foolish standard.

 

IMHO, the test in those cases is how they deal with the consequences of those mistakes. 

 

If they say they can do it because they're looking for $$$ when they've never done it before, it is malice. Now I agree, honest mistakes happen, but it's usually followed up with "this is what happened, here's what we're doing to fix it" and also followed by "at no extra cost" if they're an honest shop. A lot of places by observation will say they can accommodate you when they have no idea and just want your business. I'm sure I'm not alone in this regard. I would much rather get "Well I'm not sure about doing this because I've never seen one before, but I'll try" vs "yeah we can handle that, no problem."

[KongaMan]

Misplaced confidence is not malice.  Malice requires a degree of premeditation; he knows he can't do it before he starts.  That is different making an incorrect assessment of his capabilities, and it's different from not owning up to a mistake.  I realize that your still-raw wounds lead you to look for the worst in folks, but that isn't usually the way it works.

 

BTW, most of the success I've had in life was the result of doing stuff I've never done before.  The way I figure, the question is if I can suss it out before the customer realizes that.  And of course, if he could do it himself, he wouldn't have hired me -- so I've got that working for me right off the bat.  It is a philosophy that has served both me and those who paid me very well.

[NCReatta]

Just another story of middle aged guys who love watching all the big car restoration shows on TV, think they can do it themselves and get way in over their head. It happens all too often and too many people get taken advantage of. The flash and glamour of those TV shows is attractive, but it's not real. 

 

When it comes down to the day to day operations, they don't know a single thing about managing people, finding good body, upholstery and mechanical guys. And at the end they go belly up with tens of thousands of dollars owed, tons of incomplete projects and DMV breathing down their neck. Not a position I ever want to be in. 

[KongaMan]

1 hour ago, NCReatta said:

Just another story of middle aged guys who love watching all the big car restoration shows on TV, think they can do it themselves and get way in over their head.

 

I haven't watched many of those shows (or Orange County Choppers, Jesse James, etc.), but the impression that I come away with is that these guys are hacks.  They may fit some TV exec's notion of a hip mechanic, but NFW would ever let them touch my car.  Big money, bad work, idiot customers.  It's a brutal stew.

[60FlatTop]

1 hour ago, KongaMan said:

 

I haven't watched many of those shows (or Orange County Choppers, Jesse James, etc.), but the impression that I come away with is that these guys are hacks.

 

I pretty much figure if they didn't have a day job being a TV actor they would be SOL.

 

Now the current victims, I spend enough time around "old guys" to have heard the line "I'm XX years old and I should have....." I listen, pay attention, comprehend, and remember most of what goes on. If I seem to have little compassion for victims its because I listen, pay attention, comprehend, and remember most of what goes on.

 

This afternoon I am measuring up to put a 6' high door in the rear side of my garage. My Son has a degree in movie production but he won't accept the stigma of one little video of me doing a parody of those gemokes on TV. Just imagine one of those shows putting a door in the side of a garage. Yeah, of course the "dumb" one would manage to collapse the corner of the garage and the "smart angry one" would break his hand punching the rubble left standing. Then the wife would jiggle in with a code violation. Ad nauseam.

 

I think the funny went out of it all when the first American Pickers title came across the screen and they were driving a Mercedes-Benz truck. What kind of pickers? Woody Guthrie would have been shaking his head. There's that memory and paying attention again.

Bernie

[smithbrother]

I have a very hard time feeling sorry for anyone that doesn't do the homework that would prevent MOST of these shops from NOT living up to their promises.   Why would you leave your piece with a shop when you didn't know the REST OF THE STORY.

 

Dale in Indy

[NTX5467]

Back in the later '70s, we had a customer who did his own work. Paint, body, installed upholstery, and some mechanical stuff.  He was a "car guy" from his earlier days, when you did your own stuff as you couldn't afford to pay somebody to do it.  So these things didn't really surprise me.  He had a very good day job in the helicopter plant, so there was funding for his projects.  NONE happened in weeks, as he worked in his spare time.

 

One afternoon, another "collector" came by.  They got to talking and it seems the other guy had just painted a car he had.  After he left, I asked "Why?"  Seems he'd paid two different guys to paint it.  Neither one did a good job and wanted high prices.  So, he bought the spray equipment and learned to do his own painting.  That was a different time why nobody worried about if you had a shop or not, although that might affect discounts and such.  And, they were shooting acrylic lacquer with no spray booth, per se.

 

The problem with running a "restoration shop" is cash flow and having sufficient financing of the enterprise to be able to do turn-key jobs at reasonable prices.  It's far too easy for a shop to get a lot of time and money tied-up in a customer's car to find out that the spouse is divorcing him, or similar.  So the payments necessarily stop, as does any remaining work.  Time progresses, no matter what.

 

It seems that many of the shops with "longevity" are near metro areas, but not IN the metro area.  That translates into lower operating overhead and probably more of a "buy-in" to do the right thing and have a very good outcome in the work, by observation.  The problem can be in getting into the network to find out about these shops!

 

By observation, it seems that "horror stories" of years of sequential payments with little to show for it tend to surface every so often.  It seems that somebody purchases an "old car" as it would be neat to have one.  Then they seek to "get it restored".  Not having any real expertise about cars (other than they know they need gas, oil, and air in the tires) they look in the phone book for "restoration".  They find a reputable shop, get the estimate, pick themselves up off the pavement, and look elsewhere.  It's that "elsewhere" that gets them in trouble, by observation.  Problem is that they don't know how to judge a good one from a bad one.  It's hard to dig out from the hole they've gotten themselves into, also.  Disassembled car, partial work done, missing parts, etc.  NOT the desired outcome they'd been wanting.

 

Or the reputable shop that bills "straight labor by the hour", which is always hard to confirm if one isn't there to watch it happening.  Sky-high bills result.  Lots of "words", but the bill has to be paid if the owner wants the car back.  To me, it appears that when "restoration" is undertaken, if it's being done by a "restoration shop", the price increases significantly.  In comparison, similar work at a normal body shop, upholstery shop, mechanical shop can result in similar quality work at more reasonable prices.  IF the restoration shop owner sublets the work, prices increase significantly, too, as all they are doing is brokering the work to other shops.  BUT if the car owner wants a broker/contractor to manage the job, rather than a hands-on shop owner, there is a price to be paid for such.

 

Everything has a price on it, period.  The more that "others" and "others working for others" are involved, the ultimate price to get the car done increases a good bit.  EACH "finger in the pie" is a "profit center" for them.  That's just "business".  And in many cases, it can take years to get things done, even if you are financially-independent, work for yourself, are networked to find where to get things done, and there are no real issues to deal with.  Not 5 years, but sometimes more like 1.5 years.

 

Be an informed shopper!

NTX5467