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Automotive restoration: How to avoid common mistakes

by John C. Carpenter

Created on: January 05, 2010

How To Get An Outcome That You'll Be Satisfied With In A Car Restoration


We've all head the saying, you can't please everybody all of the time, but it's sure possible to lean the odds of being pleased with a, auto restoration in your favor, first of all you'll hear bad things form people about a shop, just because they heard, and are now repeating it.


What I'm saying here is that you should do you own research before you take your car to the shop, ask the shop owner for references from customers that have had work done by them in the past, and by all means if the customer wants to brag about his car, let him, you can learn things even from bragging.


You should also take a tour of the shop, look at how clean it is, look at the tools that the techs are using, make sure that the equipment in the shop is up to date, and ask the owner if his shop has any cars in the shows at this time, if it's in a show at all, it's a great indicator of high quality work.


By all means you should not go in to a shop with $5,000 to spend and think that you can restore your car for that price, be prepared to get what you pay for, and remember quantity is not equal to quality, this kind of work takes a lot of time.


Spend time at the shop that your car is getting the restoration work done at, this tells the shop that your interested in the process of a restoration, and most shop owners won't mind if you hang out a bit if you have an interest in the process, other then to just put a foot up their ass.


A little bit of nice will go a long way with most shops, the outcome of the restoration work is really up to you, if you constantly on the shop, pushing them to go faster, you'll make yourself have a bad experience with that particular shop.


The biggest that seems to affect people before they come to a shop to get their car restored, is when the owner tells them that he can't estimate a restoration job on a car, they are not lying when they say this, they are being 100% truthful.


This is not collision work, where you have a book, and a computer telling you a definite price for everything, that does not exist in a restoration shop, because it can't, there is quite literally no way for the shop to estimate a job without starting on it first.


So what I'm saying here is that you should be prepared before you take your car to get it resorted, you should always ask a lot of questions, you not stupid for asking questions, you stupid if you don't ask them, so write them down before your go to the shop.


Ask the shop questions about the restoration process they they will use to restore your car, and them if they have restored a car like yours in the past, ask them about the paint process, and the body repair process, and any other questions you can think of.


Doing these simple things will help you to get what you want in a restoration on your car, when it's done you'll love it, because you took the time to get involved with the process, you took the time to show the shop how much you love your car, and that it all it takes in most shops.

Car Restoration

Learn more about this author, John C. Carpenter.
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