[herr_oberst]

First of all, how cool is this? To get to work shoulder to shoulder with someone who knows what they're doing on an air-cooled flat-6? I'd be waiting at the shop door at 6am for a chance to do this with my engine!

Anyway, Bruce Anderson (and I'm sure others) used to have engine building seminars, and they weren't free. So that's a potential cost to the customer. You came in on your days off. Personally, I like to get time and a half for that. Shouldn't there be something extra for fastfred?

BY RIGHTS, you should be able to charge one and a half time your normal shop rate, plus a bonus for the education.

WE ALL KNOW, this isn't how it works. You aren't going to want to alienate this guy. He seems like good people, otherwise you wouldn't have put up with him for 6 weekends.

In a perfect world, you'd submit an invoice for something like what I described above, then you could knock of the "fastfredracing" friends and family discount, and he would gladly pay.

How many more of these engines is he likely to build? Is he going to write a book on the experience and make a little money on the side (and gain a small measure of fame on Porsche boards, and then get too big for his britches and try to get out of tickets by using toy police badges and get indignant when the bulletin board members don't side with him?)

Fast Freddie, I guess you just have to do a gut check and figure out how you're going to feel one way or the other 2, 3, 6 months down the road when it's all water under the bridge....

I guess my take on it, is charge him a fair price, give him a break on it, but try to tactfully let him know that this isn't the normal way that you like to do business, and your time is worth as much to you as his time is to him.

[[[Bonus tip, take part of an evening, jot down what it took for you to undertake teaching a man to rebuild a flat-6, and maybe start having your own seminars and charge people to come and learn how they can rebuild an expensive motor on their own!]]]]