What's the Longest you've had a Car in a Paint Shop?

[BMR Sales]

I'll start this by saying it's a Bit of a Rant! In all respect to any Painters here, my experience is that all Painters are Paint Huffing Freaks and can't be Trusted!

My current car has been in the Paint Shop for 6 Months - No Body Work needed. The paint had gone bad from a prior Re-Spray (previous owner) where the Primer hadn't cured before Painting. My Painter who I used to work with at a Large Porsche-BMW Dealership does nice work and has done a car for me before that took longer than expected, but not like this. He said this Job would take 7 Weeks at the longest ("that way when it is done earlier, we will both be happy"). At 4 Weeks, it looked close and he told me it would be done in a week. 2 Weeks later, the car hadn't moved an Inch. Then a Month. Then he decided to join a Reality TV Show (kind of a cross between Car Warriors & OverHaulin) and walked away from his shop for a while. He's not very good at returning calls & texts, but when I got a hold of him, he said he would work some nights and Sundays and have in done in 3 Weeks. 6 Weeks go by and shooting on the Reality TV Show stops (he's only making $1,000 a week doing it), I go visit the car and nothing. I knew when the Show was starting back up and I visited the Shop - he told me it would be done before the Show started back up. The show started back up, he's there for the filming ( I know because BMR is supplying Parts for a couple cars they are doing) and my car is not done. I sent him a Text detailing all the Promises he has made & not delivered on - he called me and got all belligerent with me, finally he said it would be Painted last weekend. You guessed it, I'm still waiting!

[Schwartz Performance]

In our experience it's been close to the same as yours, maybe around 8 months maximum, which didn't require any metal / rust repairs, just bodywork & paint.
Small shops are not that great for quick turnaround, because they find it hard to say "no" to the small jobs. It gives them a chance to do walk away from your job for a couple days.
Bigger shops are better for turnaround but sometimes the quality isn't there because of how it's managed. They could have stuck one of their interns on it with little to no supervision.

Only thing you can do is to be persistent and maybe have a contract in the beginning saying "to not exceed ___ days" or something. Usually it's too late for that though ;)

-Dale

[BMR Sales]

Yeah, too late for a Contract or to get my Deposit back without going to Court. He used to be my friend!

[bovey]

I've never had a problem with paint jail - very fortunate to have a great shop when needed. But I have an engine build that is going on 19 months. Grr.

[BMR Sales]

Also as a Note, I have had problems with Painters for years.

1.In College I had some rust through on a Volvo - I replaced the Fender and had it painted. It looked good til I moved to Florida a couple of months later, then the Paint burned off with the Scorching Sun

2. The 2nd 57 Corvette I restored, I took it to a well respected guy (& Son in Law of one of my Customers) - he never finished it and I never got a Cent Back. The next guy was almost as bad!

3. I thought I had finally a good guy 15 Years ago, he did 3 Cars for me On Time & On Budget, but then I took him a 74 Carrera RS (1 of 54 made). He left it outside most of the Time and I got back in Primer, but then it had Rust on the Bottom of the car!

4. I had another Rare Porsche that a Shop told me it would take 6 Months - they finished it in 3 1/2 Years! He did have a Heart Attack & was out for about a Year.

I guess I'm a Magnet for Paint Ass-Hats in addition to Psycho-Women!

[killer69]

HOW MANY times have we heard this story?????
why do people continue to ignore the warning signs, if you walk into a paint shop and there is one guy and 5 cars covered in dust turn around and walk out!!! what makes you think he is going to work on yours any sooner.

[SSLance]

Paint & body shops aren't that much different than home remodeling contractors, some like to do 1 job at a time, do it right then move on. Others like to get as many jobs as they can and when they get too busy, they just spread themselves around doing a little bit on each job...just to make a show and have a hard time ever finishing any of the jobs.

With either, if you can work it out so that you can pay them weekly, for the work they did THAT WEEK...that is the best way for everyone to stay happy. The last one we had in a restoration shop...the guy had the car for over 10 years... Granted, it was all just paint work, but still... TEN YEARS...

[vintageracer]

Paint and bodymen have RUINED the Restoration and Hot Rod building hobby or I should say BUSINESS!

The customer is a "Dollar Waiting on a Dime!"

The "Dollar" being the customer and "Dime" being the Paint/bodyman! A profession with many liars and cheats!

How's that for blunt evaluation of what I really think!


I can name 10 "Big Money" guys right now that I personally know who built have multiple Big Money cars in the past and who have now QUIT spending their money building cars because because of 1 single issue. Lazy and Lying paint and bodymen. Why? Because the body shop is where the work stops and/or creeps to a slow crawl. You would think the paint guys would be motivated by MONEY. They are not! What they are good at is saying "Yes" to all your requests on the front end when they accept the job and and are great giving creative excuses when the work stops and not producing much of anything. I guess they really are good at 2 things!

A good example.

I was recently asked to stop and look at a noted and well known restoration/repair shop while at a vintage race as the shop and track were in the same city to see the quality of their work, their equipment and their overall facility for a friend of mine looking to have repair work completely on his Shelby GT350. The result of that 45 minute stop and what I told my friend is below:

The shop was in an average industrial complex. Big free standing 12,000 square foot shop. 15-20 old junk cars sitting out front of the shop taking up all but 2 parking spots. Walk inside and see a neat and tidy shop. Nice paint booth, metal fabricating equipment, welders and all the stuff you would expect in a good restoration shop. Looked at the work. Excellent fabrication work, paint work and a lot of attention to detail on assembly.

I reported all this back to my friend. His response was GREAT! I will take the car to them immediately! Wait a minute there Tonto you asked me what the shop was like NOT if I would take a car there? So now he asks the BIG question?

Would I take a car there?

HELL NO!

Remember that 12K square foot shop I spoke of earlier. The guys running this shop were working out of less than 3K square feet and had the rest of the shop FULL OF CARS! Yep, lot's of customers cars just sitting waiting their turn or most likely waiting for the customer who squeals the most to get his/her car done. These guys were proud of the fact that their shop was FULL of cars just sitting there. These guys spent over half of my visit telling what they were doing to this car and that car. They only became a "little" uncomfortable when I asked how long this car or that car had been there. The shortest time on any one car I inquired about was "A Little Less Than 1 Year"!

These guys are NOT in the car restoration/repair business they are in the STORAGE BUSINESS! The sad part is this shop is no different than many other specialty shops. All I can assume is that the business owner's strategy is to charge the customer a per day storage charge for their work as that method will generate MUCH MO MONEY than pricing the actual job since these cars can sit there for YEARS!

Oh and let's not forget to the 15-20 junk cars sitting out in front of the shop "Welcoming" me upon my arrival!

It's a whole lot cheaper and quicker to buy a cosmetically NICE CAR on front end and "Cut It Up" versus building from scratch. Most guys who fool with cars can do the mechanics BUT have to depend upon friends, relatives or hired help for the paint and body work. That's when most projects go into FAILURE MODE!

I know a lot of body guys will flame me for my observations. When you see this "Over and Over Again" over a period of 25 years it's hard to argue with reality! Yes their are some GREAT shops out there that charge properly for their work AND most importantly complete that work in a timely fashion as AGREED! Unfortunately these quality shops continue to become fewer and fewer. These shops are busy and hard to get hooked up with. Why? Because they do what they say they will do in a timely fashion as agreed and they do not STORE CARS! These shops understand the value of that 200 square feet of inside shop space that a stored car occupies is worth far more than what car storage would pay them.

Next time you visit a shop look around and see what's sitting in and around that shop. That alone is probably the best indicator of a shop you might want to consider. Ya quality of work is also a concern. The phrase "Quality Work Takes Time" is BS!

Starting and finishing quality work in a time frame agreed to at the beginning of the project by the service provider and the customer is all we want!

Sadly that has become VERY HARD to find!

[sccacuda]

Call Dennis and see if he will include it in the show...

[71maroesteban]

Body work takes a long time, the guy teaching me has been doing it for almost 50 years I asked him why it cost like 20 grand to paint a car that has no rust and we'll it's simple. If you want to do a great job you will literally sand the same small spot all day then sand that same spot with leveling puddy before you know it 5 hours have gone by and you have finished one little area. Body work takes time and I for one pride myself on doing good work with no bs like of it'll be don't in this amount of time because it won't sometimes you run into things. Body work like any other trade has been taken over by lazy greedy people who take on way to much and don't even do a good job. Every druggie down here claims to be either a body guy or mechanic I won't trust them touching my car

[Rifleman_Racing]

2 weeks. It needed the front frame cut out and replaced, the rear quarters and floor structure rebuilt, both front fenders and hood fixed, and a complete re-paint as the factory white on fords doesn't last. At 3 weeks on ANY job im calling a tow truck and taking it to another shop. The shop one of my cars it at now was just re-leased for a year for $295,000, so if they dont have a good volume of cars moving through they will be out of business VERY fast.

[BMR Sales]

Call Dennis and see if he will include it in the show...

No, because you wouldn't believe how many corners they cut doing TV Shows! A Dent, we don't have time to pull & fix it, let's cover it with Bondo! The corners they cut on Mechanicals is crazy

[saltfuture]

I've had a 78 Trans Am in the body shop for 1 year and 3 months now. Promised time originally? 6 weeks. I had to go read them the riot act about 5 months ago just to get them working on it again.
Things are moving along now, but they just cost themselves two repeat customers with a lot of expendable income, and a huge interest in cars (my brother and I).
My brother had already had 2 cars repainted there, and will never again. I'm teaching myself to do the bodywork and paint for my 71 because I don't trust those guys anymore, and if you want something done right...

[BMR Sales]

I've had a 78 Trans Am in the body shop for 1 year and 3 months now. Promised time originally? 6 weeks. I had to go read them the riot act about 5 months ago just to get them working on it again.
Things are moving along now, but they just cost themselves two repeat customers with a lot of expendable income, and a huge interest in cars (my brother and I).
My brother had already had 2 cars repainted there, and will never again. I'm teaching myself to do the bodywork and paint for my 71 because I don't trust those guys anymore, and if you want something done right...

Yep, that's what these guys don't realize - they cost themselves future work by dicking around. I told him from the beginning that I was going to Flip the car, but it needed to be nice as it only has 40,000 Original Miles & is otherwise perfect and that I had another car to paint when this one was done.

Being in Sales, I realize it's much easier getting repeat business from a Happy Customer vs. finding a New Customer

[SSLance]

That's the problem apparently, there seems to be a line of customers that are already pissed off at other body shops a mile long beating the doors down, so none of them ever really run out of customers...

I know a guy with a shop that does great work, but he charges through the roof and doesn't take on any collision work on the side. He's got a bunch of cars in various stages in his shop as well, but he can only do so much work a month on each of them because that's all the customers can afford.

There has to be a happy medium in there somewhere...

[groho]

Mar 18th and counting. . . .as of two weeks ago the car was back on the suspension, bottom and eng comp painted, and exterior primed. I've got a motor that's eager to be mated! Should be done in the next month or so. I was told 90 days, but we're at that point now. The agreement was 1/3 $ at start, 1/3 $ once primed and blocked, 1/3 $at finish. Is it moving as fast as I wanted, no, but it's given me a nice break to address other issues like motor, interior, steering, etc.

[WallaceMFG]

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, my car went from bare metal to finished paint in 2 weeks and its one of the best paint jobs I've ever seen

[impala65maniac]

When I worked at my father in laws shop our turn around was at times fairly slow. This had nothing to do with the shop, some customers changed their minds mid way through the job. We finished painting a 1971 442 clone and the guy changes his mind about the firewall. He decides he wants it to have a shaved firewall. This required removing the work already done and plenty of metal work. Then he wanted custom painted graphics from some pinstriper he knew. He didn't like them so we had to literally re-paint the whole car. Car took well over a year to complete. Long story short, make sure you aren't the one holding back progress. We had a guy take a year to pick a color! Bodywork was done and the car was sitting in primer and just waiting on him to pick a color. My 1965 impala took 1 month, working after work and on the weekends. Me and my brother in law working on it. She was pretty straight already and choosing the original color was really easy for me considering I grew up with this car. My old car, a supra. That car took 1 week (my vacation time). Stripped to bare metal, dents fixed, primed and sprayed. Show winning quality in one week, that was the hardest week I have ever worked.

[rustomatic]

Some years ago, in like 2002/3 or so, I totaled my motorcycle, or so I thought. All of the bodywork was shot, and the rear subframe (sportbike) was bent, among other problems--I smacked it into the ground and rode the street on my back through three or so lanes...

It took about 2.5 months to get it back. In that time, I'd bought another bike from a junkyard (yes, it was faster). When I got the bike back, I immediately sold it back to the dealer. I couldn't wait. I'd go insane.

I've never actually had a car at a body shop, except for when I parked at one to go to work (1993?--stupid part-time job in college)...

[shmoov69]

People suck......... Too bad in a person too! DOOH!!

Sorry for your woes man, when my 69 was T-boned, they had it for like 13 months or something stupid. And to make it worse, it went thru 3 different managers and 4 different body men!!! Talk about a cluster....!!