A friend decided his "retirement" job was going to be building hot rods and street machines. He wanted me to be the mechanic/fabricator because he is more of a bolt on type.
He rented a shop, he needed a shop type space anyway to house his car stuff. I made sure the storage was well separated from the work areas.
Our plan was to find guys who wanted cars like ours but couldn't/didn't have the skills or time to do it themselves. Took us less than 2 weeks to find a stalled project ,not a signature car for sure. The stopping point was wiring. The owner bought into the magazine hype that it just goes in in a weekend. Over a year later he was frustrated and stuck.
The problems where many but the main one was cross breeding a harness from one supplier,engine harness from another (efi swap) AC kit not matched to wire harness. All pretty strait forward for me to figure out,because I'm wiring guy,but the customer was against the wall over it all. The customer also moved the fuse block from it's designed location and cut all the break out legs so it was just a mass of wires.
I looked the project over to build the estimate while discussing exactly what we where to do.
In the end we estimated 50 hours to correct wiring.Wire gauges.Connect EFI. Install an EFI fuel system. Connect Power steering,mount and plumb PS and Box. Connect and mount shifter (AOD swap) then test fire engine.
Time was discussed and agreed to. I work only part time as I have a real job. But it was done in less than 3 weeks . Under budget.
We also estimated everything else the car needed to be a SAFE driver. Brakes,suspension exhaust ,only another 15 hours. Thats way too much ?
2 years later the car has yet to be driven.
We then got another project,friend of the first guy, that was just a list of do this next type work ,4hours here 6 hours there he finally took the car home when he figures out we where not going to replace all the sheet metal on his Mustang for $200.
Over time we got pretty good at estimating jobs,and must came under budget to the customer.
We even got to estimate some jobs that sound like huge money but truly are not. Can You put my 70 Boss 302 back together? Yes $30,000. WHAT! still sitting..... Put my bad ass highriser in this 62 Galaxie and make it look great? Yup $2500 , you guessed it 3 years still not done.
Too be honest the Boss should have been closer to $40000 but the end result would have been a nice calling card and the Gal. easy $5000 with the complete detail on the under chassis.
OUR problem was/is I'm not in the position to be in 100% , I have a "real" job and boss needed much more $$ than I could earn 10 hours a week.
But even with me passing out flyers at every cruise in and car show in the area ,over 1000 flyers just me , we only got about 20 calls ? and 1 customer.
I have seen some of the lost customer paid for someplace else work and 2 told me they got screwed. $600 to install a 4brl on a 289? From a $300 quote. Our shop rate is $80 per hour.
Our plan at the beginning was 2 or 3 guys like me with different skill sets but we never found a 2nd or 3rd . So it's now our project work space.
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