[old Rusty C10]

Im not looking to pick a fight with you tony, as i have no problem with you,nor do i WANT to have a problem with you. I did however get involved in this to the extent that i did see the cab before and after you got hold of it and worked on it. I have nothing to gain by saying anything here. I have built a boardmember friendship with Kenny XXL as ive spoken to him several times in IM and the two times ive met him in person picking up the cab and delivering it to him much the same kind of relationship that i have with you, except that he and i have spoken in IM more than you and i have, but in all fairness you and i have spoken on threads a few times when ive asked for members advice.
To the best of my knowledge and recollection when the cab arrived at your shop it was in pretty good shape for a standard cab. of course it hadnt been chopped, and the doors were opening in the regular fashion. Kenny had done some work to the doors in the fact that he had shaved off the door handles, eliminated the gas tank filler, and there was some work done to the back of the cab making it flat with metal and fiberglass, the dahsboard had a piece over the glovebox etc, and there was some filler on the firewall in effort to shave the heater box holes. Any work kenny had done was started not completed, first coats of filler etc, and while it was a good start, by no means was it complete or ready for primer/paint. The way I understand it was you were to prep the cab for paint, prime it and finish it off in the mach 1 blue for a SHOW QUALITY truck. Granted some things got added with the rockers and the suicide doors but that has no bearing on what the finished product should look like.
In hindsight it appears that rather than sit down and give Kenny a detailed account of what had to be done to correct anything he had done to the body giving him photos explaining him what was wrong, the cost of such repairs, and a time frame when this could be done, things were left alone. Kenny is a reasonable man. When we discussed the ways i could truck the cab back to him we spent at least an hour on the computer going over trailer rentals( which didnt work out) and even the cost ofrental trucks ( which was so far out of the price range that it was immediately dropped) We discussed blankets and strapping and everything else we could so when the cab arrived at kenny's house he would not be upset and he would know in his heart that everything was done to prevent damages to his cab. I will point out that Kenny has made many remarks to both myself and to others that he was very happy with the services i provided for him. I found when i dealt with Kenny he was quite eager to listen to my opinions and did not balk when i suggested things to make the trucking easier and safer for his beloved cab. when we realized the trailer was not an option, kenny was ok knowing i would still exercise the utmost in caution delivering his cab , and was fine with whatever i decided to do to effectively deliver his cab, and the whole thing was communication.
Forgive me if you think that i am kicking yopu when youre down, but i am not im simply stating my observations being a bystander who simply had a better view than most of the people replying to this thread because of my personal involvement.
While you probably did more on this cab than you ever bargained for, the fault of that is because you did not tell kenny the exact problems, or so that appears from the story related by both of you in this thread.Im sure that had you approached kenny he would have been receptive to your ideas. Had he not being in your shoes, i would have completed the chop top and suicide doors and even the glass and told kenny there are several things that need to be done before this cab can be painted, and being i do quality work i cannot paint the cab at this time until these things are fixed or the cab will look like crap and i cant in good consience finish the cab that way. I would then ask kenny to email me permission to repair these defects in the body work or authorization to stop work on the cab because it wasnt sufficiently prepared for paint and why.
I work in peoples houses all the time and i do the same thing a car and a house arent much different when you are improving either...and frankly i dont even take jobs with people who want shortcuts or half baked plans for doing something i either do a job right or i dont do it at all; If i screw something up i eat what i have to eat and get the job done right anyway, no matter how much money i lose on the deal... the reputation i gain from doing that makes me far more than the few dollars i saved by doing something half assed and getting paid.
Im not a body man to any great extent, but i was appalled by the spray job on the cab and the apparent lack of quality in the paint. If I had been doing the spray job on the cab, id have sent kenny a sample of the paint on a piece of tin just for him to verify the color i mean what does a stamp cost? the biggest part of the problem here has been poor communication and um the customer is always right when it comes to business. Ive learned from my first construction job that any details of a contract should be spelled out to the NTH degree, you can never use too many words to describe how a finished product should work. i even specify brands opf sheetrock and studs i use on my jobs to guarantee customer quality ( maybe im an idiot for that but hey i have no complaints in the end and i get more work than i can handle sometimes) Im sorry for you that this worked out the way it did; the best thing you can do is to learn from this and conduct your business in a more cautious manner from here on in. Kenny, im sure has also learned a few things. NOW hopefully we can all get past this .