Bumpers & Lights & Seats — Oh My…

As noted in prior posts the front and rear bumpers are com­plete and back at the shop.  While the car is out I’ve been spend­ing time pol­ish­ing and buff­ing trim, work­ing on the head and tail lights and gen­er­ally get­ting every­thing ready for the “Gray Lady’s” return from the shop.  This week, I worked on all of the bumper pieces, I coated all of the inside areas with POR-15 to elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­ity of rust from the inside out.  They look beau­ti­ful, and all I can say is every­one bet­ter get their sun­glasses on for roll out, those bumpers are going to be blinding.

Head­light, tail light, and direc­tional lights have all been bro­ken down, media blasted and are ready for paint­ing before being put on the shelf to wait for instal­la­tion.  Wiring, sock­ets and back plates have all been checked and repaired as needed, the bezels have been re plated, so we are ready to go there.  When back, the car will be com­pletely fin­ished, with the under­side com­pleted (may need a lit­tle touch-up), body com­pletely refin­ished includ­ing the door jambs, posts and the under­side of both the hood and trunk lids.

A big dis­ap­point­ment has been my asso­ci­a­tion with SMS Auto Fab­rics, when I ordered the mate­ri­als a month ago I was told they were in stock, but the head­liner and car­pet set would have to be made up.  I asked them to send the mate­r­ial and not wait until the liner and car­pet were ready, they assured me they would, but of course did not.…  I called them at least 4 times over the last 3 weeks and every­time was told they would check on the sta­tus and let me know.  I don’t have to tell you how many times my phone didn’t ring.  I was writ­ing a scathing review of their cus­tomer ser­vice when UPS finally deliv­ered the head­liner and mate­ri­als yes­ter­day almost a month after it was ordered.  My uphol­sterer is PO’d because the seats have been sit­ting there for 3 weeks with no fab­ric, so I ran it over to them yes­ter­day.  Of course, now I find out they would pre­fer not to make the pip­ing, we need 75 feet, and asked me to track it down and get some.  So yes­ter­day I had to call SMSand order it, I asked about the delays with the prior order and was essen­tially told that they were busy and things hap­pen, no apol­ogy, just excuses.  Once again they assured me they would try to expidite the pip­ing but I won’t hold my breath on that one and fully expect another 1 month delay.  I run a busi­ness and know that my cus­tomers would not tol­er­ate ser­vice like that from me, but I do have com­peti­tors to keep me in line, unlike SMS.  I guess when you pretty much are the only game in town, you don’t really have to be good, you just have to be open…  If you go here, the prod­ucts are good but be sure to build in plenty of lead time.

I will try to get in another body shop update tomor­row, but a fam­ily emer­gency requires an imme­di­ate trip to Dal­las and Mary Lee and I are leav­ing Thurs­day morn­ing for a few days, if not we will be back to it next week.

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