I still haven't seen any photos other than the one on this thread. I was told that that photo was taken when the car was not ready for paint yet.

I'm going to ask one more time. Can someone please direct me to a different thread, if there is one, with more photos of this alleged bad job?

lol :d

Exactly. Every reputable restoration shop only offers one speed and its full speed. Can you imagine the chaos if you did a half ass job because you were paid to do a half ass job? How does that contract read? “Cheap ass sucker only wanted a half ass job” total $54,000 not allowed to complain about 1” thick bondo as he didn’t pay for a perfect job

I'm really quite surprised you would even say any of this. I disagree 100% which is not normally something I would say over your posts. The value of the car is 100% irrelevant. Any professional shop taking that kind of money is expected to put out a quality of work that is acceptable in the industry. The quality that was performed on the car does not meet any acceptable standard in the automotive industry. Again, if the work that needed to be done was beyond the skill level of the shop, the shop should have informed him at that time.
It does not matter if he brought in a 1979 Ford Fairmont and requested it to come out looking like a Testarossa. If he paid for it and Esposito's shop accepted the work and said they could do it then the liability falls with them. I've not seen one single good excuse for the crap work that was performed. Why is that? Because there is no excuse that any reasonable person could make.

Please define the use of sucker in this context.

@letty, does John know you are speaking up for him? If so you are doing a horrible job stating his case.

This a dangerous game of chicken. If I was John, I'd consider folding and working this out privately.

I'm surprised the OP is still only wanting his car back. If I was him, I'd go ALL-IN and fight this to the end. He already has over $60K in this mess...

It's relevant info only because it has been brought up over and over, and by Chad not talking about it, or showing before pictures it adds weight to it. Any hole they can poke in his case they will, so it's better to plug the hole with the info.

---Adam

John tried to work it out with him. The guy wants his car back and doesn't want to pay for the work done. He learned that the car has no racing pedigree late in the game and is trying to recover his losses on a bad decision he made.

This maneuver is as obvious as the day is long.

The lien sale is less that 30 days away. He'll not only loose the car and his money but be facing a defamation of character suite, that's going to cost him. That's where this is headed in the legal realm.

So what you are saying that John E. is saying that Chad owes more money than the $54,000 already spent to be current on his repairs?

That's crazy. Are you the one giving John advise? 9/10 people who saw the pile of bondo and lousy welds will agree that $56K is generous for that kinda work.

Pls explain to me why the car racing history or non history is so important to the work that was provided?

It speaks to motive.

Let me tell a story from my business. About half a dozen years ago I took a custom job. That's not really what I do. I mostly sell from stock on hand, but if someone wants something special, I take a 50% deposit, and I'll make the parts. It's usually 8-12 weeks from the time I take payment.

So I take this job from a guy in Hungary. He gives me the deposit and we start work on it. About a month later, at a race weekend, he crashes the car. He doesn't just crash the car, he destroys the car. He wants to cancel the job and get his money back. It doesn't work like that. I've got money in materials and we've started cutting gears, and I've got a contract. I give the guy two choices, lose his $15k deposit or let me finish the job, pay in full, and he's got to find a way to sell the stuff to recover his costs. He got his parts.

Now what if someone were restoring a car and circumstances changed. I don't have a clue how JE's contracts read. But if they were partway through the job, and suddenly a bunch of money was being wasted on restoring a car that's not a valuable car I might decide I don't want to finish the job. And if there is work that has been completed that hasn't yet been paid for, the customer needs to settle up before he can have his car back.

Everyone here is taking Chad 100% at his word that he was paid up. We don't know that. Maybe the lien is legitimate. In fact, I entertain the idea that the lien can be legitimate AND the customer has a legitimate complaint that the work is shyte. The two aren't mutually exclusive and the fact of the matter is that we as observers don't have a clue. We don't know what to believe. We don't know who is right. Chad's resistance to talk about the provenance piece is a red flag to me. It has been since this whole thing started and I called it out very early in the $53k thread.

As I've said before none of our opinions matter. We're all just a bunch of white noise. Both Chad and JE are screwed in this deal and the only real winners at this point have JD after their names.

Not everyone...

MattR

Literary license. ;)
Forum dating.

Matt, I get what you are saying in your situation. I own/ owned multiple different business and can agree with you 100% on your situation.

What i can't understand is if John's (leety) only argument is the reason why the job was done so poorly was because the car doesn't have a significant history. Does that really make any sense. I can understand if the contract states John will do half ass work and the OP agrees since its a basic 911.

I can't agree when John says the car was so bad it shouldn't have been restored. If that's the case, why take the job and cry about it later?

Read the $53k thread from the beginning. While JE was out sick with his back injury and pancreatitis some trainee worked on the car and messed it up. The way the story goes, the guy was sacked, Chad gave them a punch list to fix, and work was to continue. We’ve never seen pictures of the “fixed” car. We’ve only seen pictures taken as the punch list was written. I don’t think anyone here doubts the job got screwed up. Most don’t think it’s been fixed, but we don’t know.

Fair enough. I did read the first post that was taken down and stopped because I thought it was silly and would be resolved by now. I read about the worker and the work. I also read that John said the car was ready to paint. I also know in my limited scope of cars, that pic didn't look like it was ready. I also read John wanted another $20k for the work currently on the car and that makes it $76K worth of work. No where did i read John, Leety or the other "insiders" from his shop that the pics that were posted were old pics and everything is rectified and warrants the $76K bill.

What I do know is that if the OP is telling the "truth" I'd FIGHT and keep on FIGHTING because everything I've read/ or I assume; it doesn't look good. If it was me, I don't think i would be content to just get the car back. I'd want more. I've been though litigation (no fault to me) and you need to fight if you think you are right.

Of course everything I assume, I read it on the forum. There could be a smoking gun I know nothing about that can save the day for John. But from his "insiders" I don't get why he won't give the car up and move on. $56K is enough. Way enough...

Yep, something doesn’t add up there either. There’s got to be a reason they are holding the car like a pit bull making a kill. If it were me I would want the customer and car gone and on with my life.

Maybe ego but I don't have enough time to follow this. Maybe when it's resolved, I'll PM you and you can give me a quick synopsis on what happened.

forum dating. :D

Seeing as we’re talking about dinner. I predict there is going to be a lot of Crow served for dinner and one I Told You So in the future.


Sent from my iPhone while Driving

One way or the other there will be some I told you sos

Steppin' out, I see - that's mean!

I've been looking for a place to take my 75 911S for restoration. Will avoid Esposito's shop. Not because I believe Chad's story entirely, but because the posts in support of JE seem ignorant and if thats the company JE keeps as his supporters, I am sure I will also not be happy with his shop. If you think it is not a shop's responsibility to tell a customer whether a car is worth restoring you are a crook. Is it is doctor's responsibility to tell you if you need surgery or not? Or should the doctor just perform whatever surgery a patient asks for? I have had several Porsches. I've been to some really shady shops looking for a deal to get a restoration. Even the shadiest shop in my area was kind of enough to tell me when a car was not worth the effort to restore. If JE is such a stand up guy he should have told Chad upfront what he thought of the car and that it was a rust bucket and didn't deserve a $50k+ restoration. To say it was dumb of Chad to go forward with the restoration is simply admitting that JE's shop is happy to rip people off. Yes of course wait for the full story to unfold, and all the facts to be made clear, but this seems pretty clear to me that JEs shop is not to be trusted. I don't care how ****ty the car was, over $50k is enough for any car to be brought back to pristine condition the right way.

Need an owner's manual?

_

This was my same thought when I highlighted the use of the word sucker twice when referring to Chad. When I think of a sucker I think of someone that falls for a con and gets ripped off

Perhaps the con was how the car's race history was represented to Chad before he bought it?
It must of made sense in the beginning when he took it on and started shopping body shops?

I thought that was also a possibility hence why I was asking her for clarification

If you are buying an old race car with historic race pedigree and trying to determine its provenance and value I would not expect a body and paint estimator to be of any help?

The detective work and due diligence required to chase a race car's pedigree are not something you depend on a body shop to provide.
Not only do you need to figure the history of the car but also if that time in history fits into the bracket of historic cars that are accepted to the prestigious historic car races like Reunion.
No body shop (except Canepa) knows both the car's history and the event promoter that cater to those historic cars.

A body shop is going to look at the car and give you an estimate to restore it.
If the body shop says $70k and your research says its a very valuable race car then go ahead with the restoration.
Its up to the owner of the car to decide if the project is a good gamble/investment.
It appears in the beginning the numbers supported going ahead with the car and Chad choose to have JE do it.

After that something happened, and for now only the courts will have all the facts.

It must have been thought to be a valuable historic race car for it to be worth $70k+ for body/paint restoration plus another 50k to 100k to repair all the worn out mechanicals, electrical and drivetrain and suspension.

The crazy thing is that if he actually got it done for right around $60-70k and didn’t go too crazy money wise on the rest, even doing some of the work himself he wouldn’t really be upside down even if the car had zero history so I’m not sure why that’s given such importance.

Regardless of anything else if the work they did didn’t look like Shyte when Chad went to make a payment none of the this would have happened or at least he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. It’s completely possible that he wants out of this project but that doesn’t let JE off the hook for doing a quality job. If Chad really wanted off the hook he wouldn’t be just asking for his car back he would also be asking for his $54k back

I do not think that word means what you think it means. The only levity in this thread is the Ronnie show.

^^^ You beat me to it.

_

Forum synchronicity.

Oops you are indeed correct. Thank you. Glad I have you hanging on every word ;)

Price Check Plexiform?
Please show them this historic 911 race car and ask them the value after restoration?
They won't have a clue! lol


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1511193465.jpg

Seems someone is in a better mood today. Good for you. Life’s too short to be pissed off

or someone on the clock.

She's neither the shop owner nor a lawyer AFAICT.

I'm not a fan of doxxing, but she's made herself very easy to find.
Look for her posts.

There's a few personally identifiable things in there that a few seconds of google make it easy to find the person behind the posts, and she's not a lawyer. She has some interesting political views that help paint a picture, but that's not really germane.

FB also has her posting as a customer of the shop in question. But that's FB. They can't filter Russians posting let alone Americans...

Edit: I was curious as to motive rather than stalking. I'm going with white knight as my guess as to motive.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1511228786.jpg