Recently I was phoning around local spray shops to get a quote for a
complete respray. I wanted it done locally so I could keep an eye on the
progress, so I looked in the yellow pages and found two shops in my home
town. I called one and asked if they did complete resprays and was told they
did and was duly handed over to the boss man. I told him the car was a
Spitfire and he said "oh that's restoration, I can't help you" and put the
phone down before I could even utter one word about the car. I'm told the
car business in the UK is bad at the moment, no wonder when they refuse
work.
Anyway the other shop in town had restored Spitfire's before and was happy
to take on the work and at a reasonable price, also they could pick up and
deliver the body. I am still waiting for the car to be finished and have
chosen Inca Yellow, the original colour, now I'm itching to finish the
project off.
cheers,
Pete.
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1976 Spitfire 1500
Body off restoration and hopefully soon to be a fair weather driver
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-----Original Message-----
From: Dean Dashwood [mailto:Dean.Dashwood@enron.com]
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2000 10:10 AM
To: spitfires@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: LBC prejuduce sure stings
It's not just body shops that don't like working on our cars, but keep
looking,
and you'll find someone that'll be delighted to do the work!
Last year, my drivers side door wasn't closing properly, and I decided to
adjust
the striker plate. Unfortunately, one of the screws just would not budge,
no
matter what I did with it. Eventually, I decided the job needed some more
substantial tools than those I had available. I figured that loosening a
screw
is a fairly simple job, just about any garage should be able to do it, so I
took
the car to a garage just round the corner from my house.
I explained the problem to the garage owner, who said he'd be happy to take
a
look. As soon as he saw the car, he said "Hey, that car's old, isn't it?
It's
over 20 years old! I can't touch that - it might break!" I'm not quite
sure
exactly what he thought might break - maybe he thought there might be some
rusty
panels that would disintegrate when he touched them, and I'd blame him? But
he
made it very clear he wanted nothing to do with the car at all.
I took the car to the next garage a little further down the road (acutally a
tyre/exhaust centre) and got totally the oposite reaction. They loved the
car,
and said they weren't sure they could help me, but they'd certainly try.
After
around 1/2 hour of attacking the screw with a wide range of space-age
looking
tools, it eventually came loose. They then insisted on adjusting the
striker
plate themselves, even though I said I'd be able to do that. I think they
just
wanted the car in the garage for a few minutes more! Once they were done,
they
refused to take any money off me. "All we did is loosen a screw - we can't
charge you for that!" "Yes, but it took 1/2 hour!" I convinced them they
should take £5 and get themselves a couple of beers, and the reluctanty
accepted
- and I left happy, and with a door which closed properly.
So if you're having trouble finding people to work on your car, just keep
looking. You should eventually find someone who will gladly work on
something
as beautiful as our cars. And if you use the same people over and over,
they'll
realise after the first couple of jobs that you're not going to abandon the
project and leave them out of pocket, and they'll be happier about taking on
bigger jobs.
Dean
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