Rick, I'm sure all this seems like a massive pain, but it will get resolved and you'll have your baby back before you know it. That sounds lame, but it's sort of like the thing you had to tell yourself during exam week when at times, you didn't know if you could keep up the level of intensity in order to study, eat, sleep, etc. until the semester was over.

That is one beautiful ride. Being on the outside of cool car ownership, I can barely understand how you can drive it with the level of perfection in the body's finish you have attained. My perspective is severely hobbled because a 10 or 20 footer P-car of decent mechanical, daily driver status and I'd be ecstatic.

Just stay with it and remember to take her out for a nice, screaming back road bash when you get her back... I'm sure she has missed the fun of the wind in her face as she's been sitting there getting her spa treatment.
:)

Again, not in a rush. But funny you should mention it. In that first photo, that's the day I picked it up after the six mos. saga around April 2005. I was so irate taking the Metro out there that day, I kept thinking there's absolutely nothing they can say or do that's going to make me leave happy. But then I saw the car, just as in that photo and my heart melted. No better body craftsman anywhere than Jack at Euro Pros....but man, does he overpromise on repair time.

I've since changed the interior around a bit. Since this photo below I've also added a black center console around the shifter and e-brake

http://fototime.com/2589A710A7EE9F8/standard.jpg

I really don't keep it looking that clean, but give her a good bath a few times a year. When time and funds allow, I'm having my Big Reds redone. I'm considering swapping my Fabspeed MaxFlows for some Supercups too.

Life happens... sometimes things don't come together like you really want them to. Just gotta roll with it.

I have Fabspeed Maxflows and love em!

Yes, I love my MaxFlows too, but am itching for some more grunt. BTW, when my car was down for the long body repair in 2005, TPC replaced my wreck-damaged MaxFlows with GHL's and didn't even ask me beforehand. I saw the car with these different exhaust tips on it and thought, "WTF is that?" So even when no expense is spared and "top flight" shops are used, things can go to hell. And TPC also didn't torque down the main shaft nut on my tranny when they replaced the nose cone. Took 30k miles for it to come loose, but when it did, I got to spend $4200 on a tranny rebuild.

That is a fair concern. Beautiful car by the way.

Truly beautiful car Rick!!!!

I must say that I am not suprised that even your "top flight" shop had some issues. In the last 20 years, the car repair business has really gone a long ways down hill due IMO to fewer and fewer youths getting mechanical experience as kids. 30 years ago, large numbers of kids still spent their free time building stuff in the garage and building hot rods. There are simply far fewer potential quality "mechanical" employees available to shops these days to choose from.

Today I do not even trust any shop to change oil in any of my cars. There are obviously still some very talented/competant people working in some shops, but the chance of getting a good wrench working on your car from start to finish is pretty slim IMO.

Thanks.

The issue with TPC is that the shop exists to support the owner's race habit and they want customers who just hand over their credit cards and don't ask questions. The insurance co. made me take the drivetrain there, where it sat in a corner fox six mos. while the body shop 30 miles away went to work. They did sort of placate me by offering to let me source the parts and then they installed my LWF and RS clutch, charging 90 min. labor only.

But they let it sit there and did nothing until the body shop called and said they were all done. Then TPC scrambled and threw everything together. They probably forgot to order the o-ring and so used silicone goop under the tranny tensioning plate, which developed into a leak a year later. The probably forgot to order MaxFlows and had GHL's laying around and so slapped them on. They lost my tranny undertray and denied it. And they totally didn't torque down that main shaft nut to spec, which is 165 ft/lbs. When catastrophic failue became imminent, this is what I found:

http://fototime.com/9FFDAC5346AD439/standard.jpg

That nut was spinning freely, finger loose. I really enjoyed that repair and paying for it.

Whew, OK, now that makes sense!! :)

Really no blend? That's scary. It's not that the paint on the rest of the car would fade but to get an exact match is very difficult even with modern computer controled stuff.

Best post yet. I can understand how things can take longer and cost more. What is much, much worse is when things take six months and come back screwed up worse than when you started.

Today should be the day. I'm told it'll be done around noon. But I'm not holding my breath.

wow just caught this. sorry for the pain. one of the many reasons we have brought everything damn near in-house. none of our crap is stock. its all custom. its all a giant PITA dealing with 1/2 assed shops and ripoffs.


your dealing with one car. (1) and wifeys =(2).



try freeking dealing with HANGERS FULL OF VEHICLES BIKES!


name the operation. paint body work trannies suspension engines blah blah. if we can do it legally in house we will. QC is our middle name.


we call it CAR WARS not STAR WARS!


crap i got a 4wd westi coming in and (2) freeking 928's all the while doing a freeking rolling resto on a 76 914 2 liter w/26k on it that has just sat idle. it never ends.



i feel yer pain. i hate contractors and i hate auto wrenches for the most part. kind of like roofers..................lower than diatoms which is lower than whale POO!



if the auto repair industry had any QC standards similar to the FAA/NTSB............90% of them would be out of biz in 6 months due to QC problems.

Rick,

Your car looks great and I hope you get it back to 100% of what it was before. There is never a guarantee on used parts and sometimes doing it "on the cheap" does not turn out as such. I went through a similar thing when my 930's front end was backed into by a parallel parking pickup truck. His insurance only wanted to pay for a used front fender which my body shop received and ended up having more bondo than steel on it. We battled for weeks and they finally spent the $2400 for a new fender. New parts are expensive but you know what you are getting.

Joeaksa is taking me to pick it up within the hour.

Ok, I'm back and pretty satisfied. Body shop total was $1450, I paid $650 for the bumper and $300 more in misc. parts. So I'm up $200 and will probably sell some old parts off for another $600 or so. I only have lame iPhone photos at the moment.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1316296795.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1316296827.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1316296865.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1316296880.jpg

He did forget to install the headlight washer delete caps I gave him. That would have been a two min. job with the bumper off and will probably be a two hour job now. And my odometer and trip meter stopped working on the drive home, so that's probably getting shipped off to N. Hollywood on Monday. I'll be there to pick it up in person, if it's done a week later.

you would think someone with such a sweet car would have a better camera:p

I have a super camera, but also have company coming over in a minute and my driveway is not the best place for photos mid-afternoon in AZ.

Hmmm. That front bumper-to-hood alignment/shut-line looks a bit off. Could just need a tweak of the front adjustable bump-stops. The driver's side bumper/fender alignment looks a bit off though too. Also, did they remove the rear deck-lid for any reason? I don't remember the pax side shut-line gap being so "pinched" near the bottom like that.

So, after all that, how does the paint look?