If your planning on having a shop do your restoration for you, then be prepared to give them what they need to restore your car, as I have said earlier, you will be spending a lot of money to restore your car, so be prepared, a shop will need parts on a regular basis until your car is done, and they will need paint supplies, and a lot of other things, and most shops don't have the space to store your car if no work is being done, so give them what they need to build your car.

A restoration of a car that's in good shape will usually take about 900 hours of work, and if the car is in bad shape it can take a lot more, but remember that you get what you pay for, if you want the car done really fast they will need more then one person working on it, and this will mean that you'll be charged at the shop's labor rate for each person working on your car, if you can wait and you have some time to complete the project, then you will more then likely save some cash.

Most shops will try do restore your car for the best price that they possibly can right at the first, so bargaining with them to lower their prices probably won't work with most shops, the shops don't make a high profit margin on their work and usually can't afford to be cutting their prices, and in most cases shops don't do estimates, due to the fact that it's pretty much impossible to estimate a restoration project because there are so many variables that enter in to it, it's a lot different from a collision repair shop.

In a restoration there is no standard for the time that it takes to perform a certain task, and it is impossible to know what's rusted or damaged in the car until you start the project, the shop has to tear in to the car to find all of the defective areas of it, and this can't be done without bringing the car in to the shop and putting a man on it, it's never just a matter of a simple looking at the car, it a matter of locating everything that has to be done, and it is never an easy job.



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About the Author

I live in Salt Lake City, Utah, and have been in the automotive business for about 25 years, and during that time I have worked in all facets of the industry, plus owned my own shops, like I do now.