Work has begun on her make-over, the trunk lid  has been stripped, left rear quar­ter dent has been pulled and repaired and work has begun to repair the rust thru on the driver’s door and the rear pas­sen­ger door on the same side.  Larry, the tech­ni­cian assigned to work with her is very per­son­able, knowl­edgable and sin­cerely inter­ested in the car, and he always has the time and patience to answer any of my ques­tions or con­cerns no mat­ter how dopey they may be.  I have to say that it is a plea­sure to inter­act and work with peo­ple who are so obvi­ously enjoy­ing their jobs, to often today cus­tomer ser­vice is a lost art and employee’s go through the motions of get­ting the job done with­out ever really car­ing about the out­come.  Not so here, bluntly, I’m impressed and feel bet­ter about this choice more and more as each day passes.  Ulti­mately, the end result will deter­mine my sat­is­fac­tion, but absolutely noth­ing so far leads me to believe I could have made a bet­ter choice.

From the front desk to the shop per­sonel, every­one has acted in a very pro­fes­sional man­ner, the shop is mod­ern and clean and so far it is appar­ent every­one of them takes pride in their work and rep­u­ta­tion.  Keep up the good work guys and gals, so far I’m a happy camper.

Later.….

Share on Facebook

Beau­ti­ful sunny and warm is a great start to “Phase Two“of our restora­tion of the “Gray Lady”.  At this point, all of the mechan­i­cals are fin­ished, she’s dri­vable, starts eas­ily and reli­ably.  The paint saga is behind us and she has made the move this morn­ing over to the body and paint shop.  It was rel­a­tively pain­less, just had to leave her there along with about a 3/4″ stack of $100.00 bills for a deposit and of course we will deposit at least another 3/4″ stack of hun­dreds when she is fin­ished and we pick her up.   Our friends over at Inter­state Tow­ing  did another superb job arriv­ing right on time, were con­sid­er­ate and care­ful load­ing and trans­port­ing her over to West Spring­field.  A new day has dawned and now we are ready to begin the min­i­mal amount of body work required prior to her being prepped, primed, base coated and finally clear coated before return­ing home some­time around the 1st of June.

She was in nice shape when we found her, but there are some minor body issues that need to be resolved.   Ear­lier I described how we found the front fender tabs rot­ted off at the bot­tom when we removed the rocker pan­els and how we repaired them by weld­ing on new tabs,  they will smooth out those repairs along with fix­ing the two small spots of rust through on two of the doors, this will be accom­plished by cut­ting them out and patch­ing with metal not plas­tic.   The front edge of the hood was pushed in slightly by a small acci­dent many decades ago and will be straight­ened and then fin­ished with a piece of NOS chrome trim when she’s back.  The driver’s side rear quar­ter also has a small dent that will need to be fixed right along the trim line  and because that piece of trim was squashed I will be busy try­ing to find a replace­ment (I don’t think it can be ham­mered out and repaired).

This past week has seen a flurry of activ­ity as we got ready for today’s move,  Joe over at the body shop asked me to remove the back seat, which we did and while in the midst of that project fig­ured what the heck, see­ing as we were that far the front seat and head­liner came out too!  We then removed the rest of the rub­ber seals which will all be replaced and so we are stripped about as far as we can go, all we have left is the car body with a dash­board, steer­ing wheel (so they can move it around) and a milk crate to sit on.  I had not planned on doing the inte­rior until next year, but with it all out I really do not see the point of putting it all back together again and then pulling it apart a sec­ond time for uphol­stery.  I had to bite the bul­let and ordered all of the mate­ri­als to fin­ish the inside while it’s apart.  SMS Auto Fab­ricsout in Canby, Ore­gon was very help­ful in track­ing down the mate­ri­als we would need, they were able to sup­ply the orig­i­nal Black and White Moroc­can Cloth and the White Vinyl needed to uphol­ster the seats and door pan­els, orig­i­nal trunk lin­ing material, are man­u­fac­tur­ing a new head­liner from the orig­i­nal gray mate­r­ial and will also deliver a com­plete new car­pet set in black plush nylon, all to be installed when she is back from the shop.

This sure is get­ting to be an expen­sive project, more than I had esti­mated and MaMa prob­a­bly would have pre­ferred another dia­mond or two or three, but what the heck, she will be a jewel in her own right when this project is fin­ished.  We will fol­low the “Gray Lady” through her paint and body shop adven­ture over the next cou­ple of weeks and will post pho­tos here when we have them.…

Back at ya soon.….….….

Share on Facebook

OK I know ear­lier I had said that this whole sit­u­a­tion was dri­ving me out of my mind, and the saga con­tin­ues sort of.…  In today’s econ­omy you would think that peo­ple would be trip­ping over them­selves try­ing to get busi­ness, but in this sit­u­a­tion I have spent the last 8 weeks try­ing to find some­one to paint this car so we could begin to move for­ward.  Being a busi­ness­man, I can­not imag­ine run­ning my busi­ness like those that I have dealt with over the last 8 weeks.  My first con­tact was with High Veloc­ity Body Shop who while a very small oper­a­tion thought they would be inter­ested, they made an appoint­ment the fol­low­ing week to inspect the car, were one of the few who actu­ally did what they said they would, but blew my doors off with an esti­mate in the stratos­phere!  I’m sure they would have done a qual­ity job but if I paid that num­ber to paint the car it would be noth­ing but garage fur­ni­ture, as I would be afraid to drive it any­where, so I had to toss that esti­mate and move on (we blew 9 days here).…

Next up comes Orchard Auto who says they are inter­ested and to call them the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day and they will come out to look at it, Sat­ur­day arrives, I call them and they are to busy to come that day and blow me off, telling me to call the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day, I don’t know about you, but I’m not chas­ing any­body to give them my money, and if that’s the way they treat me before the car arrives what will it be like when it is actu­ally there, ho hum, another 9 days wasted.…

Next Bozo in line is West­ern Mass Col­li­sion, Andre who owns the joint lives about 2 blocks from where the “Gray Lady” lives, says he is inter­ested, will come over and look at her, jerks me around for another 9 days, calls to say he will be over, never comes and the worst part about this one is that his son-in law is a very good friend of mine, but alas it is not to be and as of today he still has not looked at the car, nuff said here, just stay away, another 9 wasted days…

Now I go to John’s Auto Body, right here in South Hadley, stopped in because there was a clas­sic sit­ting right in front, of course the owner is not in and he is the one I need to talk to…  Two days later I go back again and again I’m told the owner is not there, but this time I speak to his brother who assures me that he prob­a­bly will be the one to come look at it, takes my name and num­ber and lo and behold the phone never rings.… Another one for the Bozo list, scratch 7 more days.

Now I try DMS Auto Body in Chicopee and per­son­ally speak with Wes­ley who owns the place and he assures me he will call and come see the car prob­a­bly over the week­end.… Tic Toc Tic Toc, yep you guessed it no call, how the hell do these peo­ple actu­ally stay in business?

Well, here we are eight weeks later, I’m dis­gusted and have a real bad taste in my mouth and fig­ure at this stage I’ve got noth­ing to lose, so I take a ride over to MAACO.  I meet with Joe Houghton who owns the shop, he spends 30 min­utes with me,  gives me a tour of the shop, is very thor­ough inves­ti­gat­ing my expec­ta­tions and very clear about what he can and can­not do for me, he promises to call me no later than Wednes­day.  I leave with a pretty good feel­ing think­ing I may have found the right guy, but only time will tell.  Wednes­day comes and Joe calls exactly like he said he would, meets me right on time, looks over the car, tells me he will go over the num­bers and call me by Fri­day.  I speak with him on Fri­day and he is not quite ready with the num­bers, asks me to give him until Sat­ur­day morn­ing and he in fact does call as promised with what I believe is a real­is­tic esti­mate for what I want, more than what I want to pay, but fair to both he and I.  Joe has the job!  The “Gray Lady” trav­els by flatbed to his shop this com­ing Sat­ur­day and will be there for approx­i­mately 3 weeks.  All I can say is that if Joe deliv­ers what he promised at the price he quoted, I’ll be a happy camper and glad to have this phase of the project over with.  Joe is the only per­son I’ve dealt with in this mess who actu­ally did what he said he would do, when he said he would do it.… A breath of fresh air in this crappy sit­u­a­tion.  Joe has agreed to allow me access to his shop so that we can doc­u­ment his efforts through this site.  Based on what I have seen so far I would not hes­i­tate to rec­om­mend Joe or his Com­pany, we will see how this ulti­mately plays out but I have high expec­ta­tions that he will in fact do every­thing he said he would.…

Till next time.

Share on Facebook