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Permalink Reply by Mark Clayton on June 20, 2011 at 6:17pm

Welcome Willy,

I set this site up so we can easilty and quickly communicate with each other free of charge.  This site has the unique ability to seek out the good guys and eliminate the bad guys.  This is a huge benefit for the hobby.  There is no other place that we can review and discuss everything from restoration shops to parts and vendors.  

 

We are adding over 20,000 pages of tune-up data, and overhaul information on virtually every part on our cars.  It starts at 1912 and goes through 1959.  This is a good start, but we will be seeking and adding this information on cars all the way up to present models.  This feature is also set up like wikipwdia, where members can add their own data and writings.  

 

Be sure to check out the classifieds section.  It is free for a basic ad, and has so many features like reviews, ratings, emails sent to you when a part you are looking for is advertised.  It is truely an interactive classifieds site.  You can upload a video, pictures, discription, and even an Ebay URL.  

 

I hope this is good for you and all our members.

Mark Clayton

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Permalink Reply by willy vinton on June 21, 2011 at 9:33am

Mark.

thanks for the info, this is a great start to help police the industry and hobby, we have 78 vehicles in our collection and keep 60 on display at all times, with all cars except 3 kept in running order and driven at least once a year. i have some great experiences to share, and some not so great ones as well, with a couple restoration facilities that have went above and beyond what was agreed on, so it will be interesting to see who has had similar experiences and we can maybe help someone from going thru the same thing. Again thanks for the site.

willy

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Permalink Reply by mike engard on January 29, 2012 at 9:15pm

Willy,

A disclaimer first; I run 2 restoration shops in NE US. We've never done any work for Willy and I doubt we ever will (for geographic reasons). If you're just interested in bashing a few shops, we can stop right here. However, with yours, and others, help I'd like to 'police' the industry and try to improve the experience for hobbyists as a whole.

As a service business I often discuss with my clients how we did on a job, but I can never be sure of getting a truthful answer since we have their car in the shop.  I'm interested in hearing from an experienced 'client' who has no direct interest in my business and I have no interest in trying to have you for a client; a truly un-biased discussion.

I'm curious about your good and bad restorations and what made them good or bad. Have you ever had a good restoration (job well done) that was still a bad experience? Usually it's a mis-communicated quality level or a budgetary issue. What was done that was 'above and beyond'?

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Permalink Reply by willy vinton on January 30, 2012 at 10:44am

Hi Mike, i have had many experiences, only one was extremely bad, i have settled on 2 quality restoration shops that i use today. we have 83 vehicles in the collection at this time, and still have 6 in restoration in the lower 48 states. at this time i wont list names, but will say that the bad experience resulted in my taking 7 cars out of a shop in canada, in pieces. this was all due to things like double billing, theft of parts, poor quality work, having to repair and repaint cars that were paid to have full restoration. billed for work not done, and out rite fraud. this is the only shop out of 5 that we had problems with. one shop did good work, but seemed to bill excessive hours for machine work, work that i would have done in far less time,if i had the time to do it myself. i now only use 2 shops, one in WA state, and one in CA. both do quality work at a fair price, and produce show quality work. my advise to all is take the time to visit the shop you want to use, get to know them a little and check references. some of the lessons we learn are hard and expensive, and sometimes do serious harm to a historic auto.

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Permalink Reply by mike engard on February 13, 2012 at 7:39am

re;Your Comment,

things like double billing, theft of parts, poor quality work, having to repair and repaint cars that were paid to have full restoration. billed for work not done, and out rite fraud

 Is it possible that the problems were a result of incompetence and/or misunderstandings between you and the shop? The way this is written it sounds like you feel that this shop deliberately took you for a ride. Yet you had seven cars there...there must have been a point where you trusted them to do the work requested. Did you then and do you now feel that, at the beginning, the shop and you had the same goals; quality restorations at an agreed budget?

Having been on the other side of jobs that have not had a happy outcome, my interest here is determining how to prevent the acrimony.  You mention both money problems and quality problems. In the case of quality, how did you communicate that the quality level you were seeing was not what you had expected and hoped for? How did the shop make you aware that the budget was insufficient to achieve the quality you asked for? What could the shop have done to prevent the erosion of your relationship?

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