[Alan's Classic]

Originally Posted by nuke1

Hmmm, looks all too familiar, been there many times in the industry myself, hate doing it , or should i say hated doing it, i build hot rods and restos now, much better for me, but i do miss the flat rate pay, i averaged 300 a month, and yah if the car was that bad here, i would have gotten all new panels, to do the repair with, or it would have gotten totaled. All in all thou, it is a good hit, but a very fixable hit, i have repaired a whole lot worse in my days, sectioned two cars together to make one, complete centers and so on and forth. it just needs a little tug here and there and done, right! lol . i know your feeling, i often talk to the higher powers to see if it RIGHT to repair he car. Feel for you.

Flat rate sucks. I flagged 26.6 hours this week. Flat rate was great prior to 9-11 then went downhill from there. I've been praying for a way out. I would love to have a chance at a rod shop.

Originally Posted by Mister laugh

I see where you are coming from and don't blame you at all, just like the rest of us you go to work and do your best at what the boss man tells you to do.

Amen, brother

Originally Posted by Frizzle Fry

Don't go and loose your job over it. I've seen enough of your work on here that I know you of all people can make it safe. If you were to step off the job they would find someone else to do it and probably end up with an inferior fix. That's a lose-lose...

If I would have followed thru with my intentions someone else in the shop would be stuck with it, which I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Originally Posted by NONHOG

I dont mind dropping names. But I wont on Alan's thread.
More often than not you go cheap you get cheap.
Read your policy (set aside acouple days)

Bad thing is this is a very common name company.

After I posted my last post of not doing the job, I thought about it some more. To save face so-to-speak, I'll do the job I was hired to do and forget about it. In all reality I believe this might be the best way to repair this one. The piece that I am putting in still has all of the factory spot welds. Just the joints and where it welds to the car will be welded. All of the pinch welds will remain factory. If I had to piece it all together with new parts nothing would have factory welds. Another plus is aligning the doors shouldn't be too much of an issue. For those of you that don't do this for a living, it sucks aligning doors on a side hit. You get paid to replace the doors one time, but with a side hit the doors are R&I several times. Then sometimes when you weld, things might move which causes more problems.

I did talk to the boss and asked him if it was totaled on paper and he said no. We are a DRP (direct repair program) shop. We write the estimates for the insurance and they come out and spot check our estimates and ding the shop (score wise) if there are discrepencies for doing their job. There's so many times that I've done the work and insurance comes out and cuts the labor. The shop usually makes it right, but sometimes they don't. I don't think I'd be able to walk if I contracted a builder to build me a house for 100K and after he finished I told him I will only pay him 80K because he finished it too quick. Anyway back to business.

This dash is such a crazy design. The pile of parts is the visable part of the dash.



This is the dash reinforcment.




Dash removed. Had to remove right door and cowl screen. There were 2 bolts under the cowl.



Outer skin removed.



Reinforcement removed



Ground the spot welds down instead of drilling because of HSS.



Inner removed



B pillar in work.