This month I am going to touch on a subject that I have previously talked about; that is, the high cost of restorations. However, I am going to broaden the subject to include old cars generally. Of course, at the highest level, shops don’t want to do old cars because a shop can make more money doing new cars. Additionally, the owners are generally more picky about their project car than they are about their ’05 Escort that is in for collision work. If a shop does an old car, generally they want the same margins as a new car.

A friend of mine summarized it pretty well. He said, “From the customer perspective, it’s a lot of money for someone to pay you to do their old car. But from your perspective it’s not a lot of money given the amount of work you have to do to make it look good.” That’s a pretty good summary. Yes it’s a lot of money, but not really.

However, there are ways where the shop doing the work and your pocket book can be happy too. Buy the right car. Don’t buy a car that still won’t have a lot of value when you are done spending a lot of money on it, unless you don’t care. It’s actually not a relevant metric about the cars worth from the shop’s perspective; it’s the amount of labor you need to put into it. The best example of a car that won’t have value when you are done, but you don’t care, is a car that has been in the family for years. The car has sentimental value, not monetary value.

Buy the right car. You don’t want to buy a car with “issues”. We have seen cars that are rotting from the inside out and have even suggested that the owner give up on that particular car and get another one. A good car may be a “solid” car, which looks lousy, but is still structurally sound. If you have not bought a car on your own yet, then get help from somebody who knows what they are doing.

Buy the right car. If you don’t have a lot of money, buy a car that you can get parts for inexpensively and easily. For example, in my opinion, one of the easiest cars to redo is a 64-66 Mustang. Lots of parts and competition to sell the parts. This is a lot different than say a Packard.

Buy the right car. If you buy a car that is not over your head, you can do a little, or sometimes, a lot on the car yourself. Do-it-yourself can be a great way to go, if you have the time and the patience. We did a truck where the owner did all the work himself (over and over) in an eight-year period (see photo above). We only did body work on a couple of spots that he could not do. We painted the truck in pieces and just yesterday, a year+ after we completed it, he has the motor in it and running. This truck will be spectacular. I know this because he sent me a video.

So after you get the car, you need to find somebody to do it. For me as a shop, I need to do that too. Not only does the shop owner want to do these cars, but the body man working on them must want to do them. I just hired a guy that is about 40-45 who loves the old stuff and hot rods. We are going to put him exclusively on the old iron. (Who knows, maybe somebody will want to do some custom work. What a trip!) Some guys only want to do collision on new cars; other guys only want to spread bondo; other guys want to do a lot of cars and not work on one car for two, three or four weeks. It takes a special guy.

However, can you imagine the cost if my new guy works on a car for 3 weeks straight? So buy the right car.

Truck Restoration

Hudson

The following aritcle was written for the Roamin’ Angels Monthly Newsletter.

You thought you had seen the last of these articles? No such luck. It’s been a while but I’m still around doing cars and a start-up in the Silicon Valley. Yep, that’s true. Maybe when I am finished talking about cars, I will discuss the startup. But there is lots more car stuff to talk about.

On the old school front, we just completed a 34 Hudson. We are completing a 57 Chevy Bel Air station wagon (yes, I wish it was a Nomad) that will head out to Australia when done. We also have not one but two 57 Thunderbirds. One car is a restoration and the other, which we painted previously, is a collision job. The owner, a retired physician, got the car as a gift from her dad when she graduated from medical school. It’s her daily driver, at least when she does not need air conditioning. She was hit in a parking lot while she was shopping. It’s lousy that the person did not leave his/her name. Anyway, it will be good as new when we are done with it.

Of course, we have a nice assortment of new, less interesting cars too. I have to confess Hondas and Chevy Malibus just don’t float my boat.

We also had three Corvairs in the shop at one time. We have had only three Corvairs in the entire history of the shop since I owned it. And they were all there at the same time. Two sedans and a Rampside pickup. Go figure. It’s weird, but similar things have happened before. All of a sudden you have two, three or four of a certain model in one week. Then you don’t see any of that model for six months to a year.

So, it’s one particular Corvair that I want to talk about. It belongs to Don and Lynne Forster. The car got to our shop because Dick Teague won a free paint job certificate at the Show a year or two ago. He obviously had no use for it and gave it to Don.

We painted it. And that’s where the problem started. Simply put, the job was not good. There were several problems with this single state job.

I have talked about single stage jobs in several of these articles. It’s designed for complete, not spot, paint jobs on cars that need to look better, but are not going to Autorama, unless its in the parking lot outside the displays. (That said, the 34 Hudson was single stage and it looked terrific. The reason is that it was a solid color and we buffed it.) Single stage paint serves a particular purpose and generally looks pretty good, but not as good as two stage. Single stage colors are real close to the original. And, usually, since the whole car is being painted color match is not a problem. Notice I said “generally”. Sometimes there are certain colors that are simply not so good. As it turns out, Don picked one of those very few colors that do not come out good. Previously, we had another customer’s car with the same color and it was a problem. When Don and Lynne came in, we did not “connect the dots” with the color. Shame on us.

The color aside, the job had a lot of dirt in it. Not acceptable. We had a new painter, who has since been replaced, that could not seem to keep dirt out of his jobs.

I know many of you own or have owned your own business. You try to make sure that your product or service goes out correctly, but if you are not there when a customer comes in or goes out, you depend on your employees to make sure everything is right. That works most of the time. This car came out while I was not in the shop for a few days and was delivered with all the problems. Of course, if you are the owner, it does not make a difference. If something goes out that is not right it’s still your responsibility and problem.

So, after Don called me and said the job was not right, I told him to bring it back and we would fix it. The car was not up to our standard. I was less than pleased that the car was delivered that way and I “shared” it with my employees. Even though it’s not great that the job was done wrong in the first place, we made good on it. I believe that is one of the key differences between us and other shops. We back up the work. If work does not come out right in the first place, we usually catch it. If that fails and there is a slip up, we make good on it.

Eliminating mess-ups is sort of like playing “Whack- a-Mole”; you fix one problem and another comes up. I guess it’s just like life; do the best you can, clean up your mess when you don’t.

When a potential customer comes into the shop and wants his car painted, he or she generally wants the dents or dings to be removed. By the way, some customers have told me about “dings” and when I look at the car all I see is a car that is “crushed”. Sometimes they do not want them fixed and we do remind the customer that dents will be more obvious after the car is painted and shiny.

So then we look at the car and we have five choices, most of the time, to repair the car

1. New parts from the dealer
2. New parts from an “aftermarket” source
3. Used parts from a salvage yard
4. Remanufactured parts
5. Fix it and not buy a part

New parts from the dealer is pretty obvious: you get a “real” Ford, GM, etc part from a new car dealer. The advantage is they always fit correctly. They come well packaged so it’s less likely they are damaged in shipment. They are sturdier too. This particularly applies to bumpers; they are thicker. So what’s the problem? They are the most expensive type of part you can buy. If your car is in the older range or it’s a “soft” part, like interior trim, you may not be able to get a dealer part at all and therefore a dealer part is not an option.

New Aftermarket parts are parts that are not made by Ford, GM, etc. Judging by the packaging, they are made some guys in Taiwanor China. I do not think any of the aftermarket parts I see are made elsewhere. In any event, aftermarket parts are also named “Almost Fits” because they do not fit quite as well as the dealer parts and occasionally they do not fit at all. Most of the time, consumers can’t tell the difference once the part is on the car. Sometimes we spend extra time to get a part to fit or the difference would be very noticeable. Of course sometimes we just can’t make it happen at all and we use another type of part. OK, so they don’t fit as well. Since they are not packaged well, we tend to reject quite a few parts. They are not as sturdy. So why use them? Because they are cheap. Aftermarket parts cost 40% to 70% less than the manufactures part. If your F250 Super Duty is a 2001, does it make sense to put on a $300 fender from the dealer when you can get one for $60? No. If the car was a 2009, it would be a different story. Finally, why is the savings range 40% to 70% so big? If your car is a Honda, they can make zillions of fenders and the price goes down. If you have a Mitsubishi Eclipse, there is less volume and the price increases. Got a Mercedes? Forget it. Nothing available for low volume cars. Finally, aftermarket parts are available only for the likely areas to get damaged (remember, think volume). So you can get hoods, bumper covers, fenders, etc. No doors, deck lids or sometimes the rear bumper cover, even if the front is available.

Used parts from the salvage yard. I have seen lot of people buy really bad parts from a salvage yard at high prices. In fact, many times I can get a new aftermarket part for less than one from the salvage yard. There is also a hidden cost of a salvage part as well. A consumer will bring in a part from the salvage yard, thinking they have saved money, and ask us to put it one the car. We say “yes” and then ask if they want us to fix it before we put it on. This is a difficult moment when the consumer understands they bought a part to avoid body work but bought a part that needed body work. With that said, salvage parts, if purchased correctly, with allowance made for any damage, are perfectly OK. It was a used part on your car that was damaged and we are replacing it with another used part. These parts are factory parts, fit well and cost less than new. Sometimes a salvage part is your only real choice regardless of condition.

This is a tangent but a good one. Be careful if you are buying parts over the internet. One customer had a new, less than three years old, Corvette. He wanted to put a different, racier, hood on it. So he purchased one over the internet and had it delivered to us. In this case the hood was a new aftermarket part. He spent pretty close to $1000. We called him and said his hood was at the shop. When he dropped of the car, we asked him if he wanted us to fix it. “What?” he said. This new aftermarket hood needed about 7 hours of body work to look OK on his car. He told us to do the work. And don’t even ask me about body kits.

Remanufactured parts are damaged dealer parts but made to look like “new”. Typically remanufactured parts are bumper covers, wheels and headlights. Availability of these parts is “iffy” because the need a “core” to repair. However we have had excellent results with these parts. Insurance companies used them frequently.

OK, the cost of the parts from most expensive to least expansive is

1. dealer parts

2. remanufactured parts

3. salvage parts, as long as they don’t need rework

4. aftermarket parts, after you finally get a good one

Note the above is a generalization.

In terms of availability, dealer parts are available for all newish cars and then gets spotty as cars get older. Remanufactured parts are available for newish cars if there is a core to repair. Salvage parts speak for themselves. Aftermarket parts are available for popular models of cars and trucks, but only for areas that are more likely to get damaged.

Finally, how do we decide what to recommend to a consumer when they bring in their car? Here are the factors we think about

1. How old is the car?
2. What is the condition of the car
3. What is the value of the car?
4. What is the desired quality of the repair?
5. What type of parts are available for the type of damage the car has
6. Budget

Looks like I am out of room. I will finish up on parts next time and get into body work. As always, send mail if you have questions or want to suggest topics. Actually I hope you will because I will know someone is actually reading this stuff.

I have the solution for you: single stage paint.

Single stage paint is our “value” offering. Unlike two stage paint where there is a color coat and a separate clear over the top, single stage paint is all mixed together. The paint is significantly less expensive than the paint we use to spot (paint part of) cars. It can be applied to the car more quickly than two stage because generally two coats of the thicker single stage paint gets the job done. With 2 stage paint you need at least 4 coats. Because single stage paint is thicker, it will fill scratches more than two stage paint, so the preparation can be a bit rougher.

So, with all that said is single stage paint look as good as two stage paint. No. Does single stage paint last as long as two stage paint? No. Well, why do we use it? Because it solves the following problems:

1. You no longer need to wear a bag over your head
2. The cost is modest compared to a two stage paint job
3. You are not trying to go to Autorama with this car anyway.

Finally just because a single stage job does not look as good as a two stage does not mean it looks bad. Quite the contrary. We get smiles all the time from people who had a car that did not look good that look pretty good. They drive away happy, for not a ton of money.

So, what’s the difference between a single stage job and two stage job? Figure everything being equal but the paint, about $1,000. That is significant.

So if your car needs a freshening or has a lower market value but you want it look good but don’t want to spend a tone of bucks, single stage is for you.

The last word: Color makes a difference in single stage: Solid colors like white and black come out best in single stage. Metallics, particularly like silver or gold, do not come out quite as good.

A couple of articles ago, I told you we were testing some new single stage paint form PPG. Well, the tests are over and the paint is being put into general distribution. It is a huge step forward in appearance. Silver and gold cars are now, in our opinion, good enough that we will recommend them. Solid color cars come out better too. We now believe we have a competitive edge over other shops that spray other manufacturer’s single stage paint.

Today’s final comment: Winter is the time to work on your classic. If you are thinking about it, shops are generally more “flexible” at this time of year in their pricing. Why? Holiday season is for family and traveling to grandma’s, not working on your car. So, until all the collision jobs come in when it starts to rain, there is excess capacity.

I told you we used PPG’s solvent based DBC line of paint for our spot jobs. Well that has been cast aside in favor of PPG’s Envirobase, which is a water based automotive paint. And it should be no surprise the solvent for Envirobase is water, albeit a special one.

But first, some of you may listen to Cruisin Talk on KSTE 650. The host is John Sweeney. Through my marketing efforts I have gotten to know him reasonably well. We were talking about random stuff including the swap meet at ARCO Arena, and he told me about boomerradio.com Check it out if you like the old stuff. I am partial to the “cruising oldies” channel.

OK, back to paint. The reason for the transition to water is the various air quality districts are attempting to reduce the amount of bad things that get into the air from paint. Generally, these bad things are called “VOCs” or volatile organic compounds. As you might imagine California has some of the nation’s strictest rules and places like Montana have less strict rules.

There are different rules depending on the location. Los Angeles has different rules than Sacramento. Grass Valley has different rules from Sacramento. The net is what paint you can use depends on where your shop is. (Regardless of the rules, there is an exception for certain kinds of paint, like lacquer that puts a huge amount of bad things in the air, if your car has “significance”. We used this rule once to spot a Corvette with lacquer that is a “survivor”, i.e. still has its original paint.)

The net is the shops in a geographic area need to meet the local rules for VOCs. How you meet the rule is your problem. If you can do it with existing technology, like solvent based paint, it’s OK. If you need to go to water, OK. All you need to do is meet the rule.

For our spot jobs, PPG chose water. As it turns out, it has some real advantages and shops in areas that are NOT required to change are changing to get the operational advantages. We made the change much earlier than required to get the advantages. Here they are:

1. Better color matching compared to solvent
2. Less variables to deal with when spotting a car
3. Easier to fix if you make a mistake on the job.

We expect NO difference in durability either. In fact, water based paint has been around for years in Europe. If you have a Ferrari, Lamborghini, or Maserati, you already have water based paint.

I went to class with our painter, Ivan Martinez. We both painted panels. My panel looked as good as Ivan’s. We were both surprised. We then took our panel and did a repair on it. The instructors had us blend our repair on the panel, with a similar but different color. You could hardly tell the difference. We were amazed.

We now have about a month or so under our belt with Envirobase. We are pretty happy with it. And I should mention the clear that goes on top of Envirobase is the same clear we used on top of DBC. The clear is solvent, not water based. Take a look at the picture. I took it in the quarter panel of a 67 Riviera we are working on. This is a nice result.

Two final comments

1. The only downside to the water based paint I have seen is that we need more compressed air. This is because you use a blow dryer device between coats to dry the paint. The blower uses a lot of air. So I may have to add another compressor to keep production up. That is not so good.
2. While PPG chose water to meet the VOC rules with two stage paint, they have retained solvent in the single stage paint to meet the rules for that product. We are testing the product now. A plus for us is the new single stage paint has much better gloss than the old formulation.

As always, send any comments or suggestions or possible topics to me. Or better yet, we can talk at the show. I will be there starting Friday AM. And I am honored to have the Cockroach in my booth.

I have been told by people older (if that is possible and possibly some of you) and wiser (easily done) that crow is best eaten while still warm. Well, I am going to take a big heaping plate full. Remember last month I said the Studebaker was the only fiberglass car that behaved? Take a look at the picture. This is the car I was talking about. I took it at the recent Studebaker meet at McClellan in mid May. Isn’t it beautiful with rechromed bumpers and NOS emblems? Yep, sure is except for something you can’t see in the picture. And that is the bubble on the hood. Yes, a bubble and two other items which appear to be some sort of a reaction. Only on the hood, nowhere else. Obviously the Gods of Fibreglass wanted to get even with my boasting. So the hood will be back in the shop getting fixed on warranty, i.e. no charge. So there are two lessons

Don’t brag unless you want to get slammed later
Why your shop will charge more for fiberglass cars

Well with the crow completely consumed, here we go on single and two stage paint.

At the highest level we have two completely different paint systems, although they both come from PPG, our paint company of choice. (We have used several different manufacturers of paint since I bought the shop and we have found PPG, which at one time stood for Pittsburgh Plate Glass, is the best. Most high end shops used PPG, although there are zillions of other including DuPont, Sherwin-Williams, House of Kolor, BASF, etc.

Single stage paint is just as it sounds. We mix the paint and put it on your car. To make an analogy, think if the way your mother or grandmother did her nails. She simply took the bottle of nail polish and painted her nails. One bottle and done.

Two stage paint has two different components: the color coat and the clear coat. To use the nail analogy again, today women who paint their nails use a two step, two bottle approach to their nails. The first bottle is color and the second bottle is the clear.

Advantages of single stage paint
inexpensive
great if your goal is simply to make the car look better. For example, if you want to make an older car look better for your 16 year old that will drive it to high school

Disadvantages of single stage paint
made to paint the whole car, not part of car. So if you get in an accident you will generally need to repaint the entire car
metallics don’t look as good as solid colors. In other words, black comes out better than silver.
Never looks like factory
with minor exceptions can’t be buffed, so those little scratches can’t be made to go away
does not last as long as two stage

Advantages of two stage.
can paint part of the car, so spot repair are possible.
All colors come out the same and always better than single stage
Looks like factory
you can buff out scratches.
lasts longest
with a few variables, discussed next time, can be made to really stand out.

Disadvantages
more expensive

Don’t listen to the folks that say, “I don’t want two stage paint on my car because it peels. I want single stage.” That is a bunch of hooey. A good quality two stage paint, which is not defective as some of you GM and Chrysler owners may recall, that is properly applied will always outlast single stage and look better doing it too. Simple as that.

Next month I am going to talk about differences in two stage paints and clears. I also will touch on water based paint as my shop makes the transition in July.

This month’s subject is a question: Are there any fiberglass cars that are not a pain to work on?

The answer is “No”.

End of this month’s article.

I thought now that I gave you the answer, I would tell you how we deal with fiberglass cars. And mostly this will be about Corvettes. In the four years I have had the shop, we have done about 45 Corvettes ranging from 1956 to 2006. Most of them have been complete paint jobs, although a few have been partial paints, or “spots”.

First of all the best behaved fiberglass car we have ever done was a ’64 Studebaker Avanti. A a side note, the car was originally owned by Rod Serling, the creator of Twilight Zone. In any event we only painted it once, which is unique as you well see below. More typical is a car that belonged to an individual who shall remain unnamed and to whom I shall simply refer as “El Presidente”.

When we estimate the cost of doing a fiberglass car, we expect and plan to paint it twice. Take El Presidente’s Corvette. When it came to us, it was bubbling all over the car. It had an excellent selection of fisheyes too. Lots of potential problems for sure. Here are four common sources of problems

Replacement of a panel which has fiberglass of low quality and therefore has air pockets
Poor repair of existing fiberglass creating air pockets
Improper mixing of materials
Incompatible materials

With the exception of #4, problems come not from the manufacturer but from repairs, either prior or current. (I will discuss incompatibility in another column). The issues with El Presidente’s car all came from previous repairs and here is what we did:

1. Repair all the bubbling areas and prime
2. After sanding (not quite a strip, but close to it), prime the entire car again with polyester primer. (We do not recommend taking a fiberglass car to a stripper, by the way)
3. Sand and prime again
4. Sand and paint the car and let it air dry (no baking like we do with regular cars)

Between each of those steps there were days, and sometimes weeks, when we had the car sitting in the sun. We did this not because we were looking for another deposit, but to see if any bubbles would appear. And since El Presidente’s car was going black it would get very, very hot in the sun giving any pockets of air are nice opportunity to make some new bubbles. Further, El Presidente was going to have some fancy graphics on his car and would not be happy if Sam’s paint bubbled.

After weeks, no problem. Should be OK right? Nope. After we painted the car, a bubble appeared in an area that we did NOT repair. It was a previous repair. So we repaired the area and painted it again. It came back again. So we repaired again but significantly expanded the repair area. This time it worked. Why did this happen? I confess we actually do not know why the previous repair decided to act up, just that it did. What we know is that if you do not give up, you will get it. The Gods of Fibreglass do what they want to do, but they always will yield.

I can keep writing this stuff probably forever. However, if you have something you would like me to talk about, email me at smhedgpeth@sbcglobal.net.

I was recently at the Friday Breakfast meeting and Diane graciously asked if I would like to write an article or two for the Newsletter. Well, sure, why not? But what am I going to write about? It needs to be something interesting and it should be something you might not know everything about.

In search of a subject, I started thinking about all the interactions I have had with Club members when I worked on their cars. Most of these cars had names too, like Bat Rod and Cockroach. (I wonder what you call a 58 Chevy Bel Air that is still not back on the road? That, of course, is another story.)

Anyway one comment I heard over and over was, “You actually worked on the car and got it out pretty much on time and it did not take a lifetime”. I was really surprised that was such a big deal. Seriously. I mean why wouldn’t a shop try to get the customer’s car out in a timely fashion? The metrics are pretty simple really:
Take car in
Work on car
Finish car
Make customer happy
Get money
Go home and have a glass of wine with your wife.

It’s not that hard and just why would a shop keep a car for a year or two, or even more? Well this is a real head scratcher. After much research, I discovered the top five reasons it takes some shops an inordinately long time to complete a job:

Reason #5. The shop does not have enough work so it needs your car in the parking lot so it appears busy.
Reason #4. The shop is in cahoots with your grandchildren so the car after it is done will go directly to your great grandchildren who are yet unborn
Reason #3 Your children don’t think you should be driving at your age, particularly a hot rod with a big, loud motor.
Reason #2 The shop owner does not like you, your attitude or your car because you keep asking when the car will be done.
Reason #1 The shop is not in the business of completing cars, only taking deposits

As I will explain in the next paragraph, Reason #1 actually is the only one that makes sense to me. The shop owner gets the deposit and goes on vacation to Las Vegas. The deposit is lost at the tables leaving no food for the family. The search begins for another deposit as the cars stack up. The goal is more deposits, not completing cars. This is really nice work if you can get it.

In fact, I know this is true and what follows is true. We recently completed a 70 Firebird that the customer gave the previous shop a big deposit. The shop owner had a real nice Christmas, gave his kids gifts, etc. and lost interest in the car. He went looking for more cars. After a year or so, the customer was all over the shop owner like a bad smell. The shop “completed it”, but not really. We redid a bunch of his work and finished the car. It looked great when it was done but the customer had aged 10 years during the process.

Soooooo, the moral to the story is make progress payments for work done, not advances.