[Cairo94507]

I will chime in on the thought of being close enough to the build to keep an eye on it. I made the mistake of sending my car out of state, across the country, after a strong recommendation from a fellow club member. I did my own research and it all lined up. The shop owner made a lot of promises and had in the past done what appeared to be excellent, concours work. I got a lot of pictures but it is hard to see that kind of detail in pictures. I was able to make one trip to the shop after about 2 years and the work appeared, at that time, to be solid.

I believe the shop planned to bondo the heck out the car and "sculpt" the finished product, paint it and I would not know the difference. Of course until it all started to fail a couple of years down the road probably. They knew I would never send it back across the country for any issues.

As it turns out, quality work was not what I got. I pulled the car from the shop after 5 years of snail-pace progress and thank God I did. The work that had been done was terrible and we had to re-do almost all of it. Cost me a ton of money for crap work and then had to pay to have that crap work un-done, corrected properly and then build from there. My car is now about 400 miles from me, in Torrance, CA in a shop that truly exemplifies craftsmanship and attention to detail. Everything is metal worked and done to perfection. My chassis will be better than the day Porsche made it. My initial experience, out of state, was so bad I considered abandoning my project and selling it as it was. I am so glad I found the new shop and it has worked out better than I ever dreamed. Because they are relatively close, I am able to go down and visit with the shop and see the work semi-monthly.

The lesson I learned the hard way, if you can't keep in close contact with the shop, personally, you are taking a big chance. I was lured across the country by a person who talked a great game, had apparently at one point done some nice work, a decent hourly rate and the promise to do the complete project, "turn-key". In the end I was just throwing my money and time away.

After the fact I have been contacted by several people who suffered much the same fate as I with this particular shop. They however never posted of their experiences and I paid the price. I am still trying to recover some of what I paid in the form of parts I let the shop owner have in exchange for labor, about 10% of what I paid to him-the rest was cash. We will see how that goes. That is the only reason I am not mentioning the shop in this thread.