Pricing automotive work

[Migmac]

First thing,
Don't work out the price based on the area of that red box.. that's not big enough..

My sons old connect had the same hole. After cutting the rot out, he ended up replacing the sill.

 

[redlig]

If he is a friend, tell him to do all the cutting, cleaning, fitting of the replacement parts etc and make it clear that the ONLY tool that you will touch is the welder.
Make it clear that the cutting / cleaning etc is the horrible job, but its fairly low skill, and that youll help them out at the end of it with the skilled work.


Up until now, NO ONE who has asked me to weld their car has taken me up on this, i think, very reasonable offer.

Which, i think, is a win*.

(edit - *but then its never been good friends actually asking me)

When an acquaintance asks me to make /repair anything I always ask for a clear sketch with rough dimensions first. Nobody has ever come back with one. If they can't be bothered nor can I. Genuine friends are different but again I always want to start with a sketch drawn by me and agreed by both of us.

 

[redlig]

This is something I've been really aware of.

If a friend is helping me out and it's something that is outside of my skill set, I lurk about like a dog at dinner time.

If they drop something, I pick it up, if they need something, I'm the gofer, constant supply of tea, lunch, etc.etc. Basically I try and make it the most luxurious environment they've ever worked in.

I did a job for someone without charge a while back and kept having to go and find them when I needed anything. Wondered wtf I was doing there really.

Being taken for granted .

 

[redlig]

I looked at some pre-made bends for making up a bike exhaust recently, the prices are staggering now. So why on earth anyone would think that welding would be a cheap job is quite odd.

Because there are folk daft enough to do it on the cheap.
I had a friend straighten a bike frame on his motor liner and had to insist on paying the full price . It was his living FFS.

 

[Wildefalcon]

If he is a friend, tell him to do all the cutting, cleaning, fitting of the replacement parts etc and make it clear that the ONLY tool that you will touch is the welder.
Make it clear that the cutting / cleaning etc is the horrible job, but its fairly low skill, and that youll help them out at the end of it with the skilled work.


Up until now, NO ONE who has asked me to weld their car has taken me up on this, i think, very reasonable offer.

Which, i think, is a win*.

(edit - *but then its never been good friends actually asking me)

I fixed the chassis on a mates Landrover recently. He did ALL of the scut work, stripped the parts, cut away the crap, painted it all up. The only bit I did was welding, and helping out putting the tank back in. I didn't charge, but it's not my living. He's a mate.

He even cut the patches, to my pattern.

 

[Wildefalcon]

I fixed the chassis on a mates Landrover recently. He did ALL of the scut work, stripped the parts, cut away the crap, painted it all up. The only bit I did was welding, and helping out putting the tank back in. I didn't charge, but it's not my living. He's a mate.

He even cut the patches, to my pattern.

And bought lunch. Fish and chips.

 

[Cato]

And bought lunch. Fish and chips.

An impromptu chippy lunch is great when you're working, either as a reward for work well done or as a thanks from someone for the effort.

When I was an apprentice if you did a good job of keeping your fitter's tools clean and their toolbox tidy through the week they'd stand you a bag of chips for lunch on a Friday or a bacon batch mid morning on a Saturday. Simpler times.

 

[Cobbler]

When I was an apprentice if you did a good job of keeping your fitter's tools clean and their toolbox tidy through the week they'd stand you a bag of chips for lunch on a Friday or a bacon batch mid morning on a Saturday. Simpler times.

As a 16 year old, I used to get sent along to get the fish & chips on a Friday, then spend the afternoon chasing around to get the money. I always seemed to be a bit out of pocket on the deal, at £2-15-00 a week even a few pence made a difference!

 

[Cato]

As a 16 year old, I used to get sent along to get the fish & chips on a Friday, then spend the afternoon chasing around to get the money. I always seemed to be a bit out of pocket on the deal, at £2-15-00 a week even a few pence made a difference!

It was pretty well organised for us. Orders were taken, money collected, order phoned through one of the older apprentices was sent to collect them.

The system only failed once when a lad called 'oss chops' (because he had a long horse face, can't remember what his actual name was) came back with the chippy order. He didn't say anything before dolling out the orders but it very quickly became apparent that something was amiss. He'd come hurtling round a bend and a car pulled out in front of the service van. Oss chops slammed the anchors on and swerved, missed the car but dumped the entire order into the footwell of the service van. So he decided, no doubt in a panic, to scrape everything (including curry sauce etc) back into it's wrappers/pots. The first fitter to open theirs found a battered sausage intermittently speckled with curry sauce, gravy, sawdust, oily black lumps and christ knows what.

The cry went up, Oss chops ran, he was caught and shoved down the pit with the railways sleepers put back over and left there until the late shift went home. Every week for a month he was 'docked' the value of that week's chip order which was most of his wages. It was months before he was included in the chip order again.

 

[jordhandson]

Be prepared to fall out with mates when mates ask

 

[Onthespotwelding]

When welding rusty motors Always expect the unexpected.

When I welded a rotten transit sill I found a load of rag stuffed in there and plenty of filler!

 

[stuvy]

When welding rusty motors Always expect the unexpected.

When I welded a rotten transit sill I found a load of rag stuffed in there and plenty of filler!

Found that in an old discovery I was working on

Was a rag and fibreglass

Would have been quicker to do the job properly

 

[Onthespotwelding]

Found that in an old discovery I was working on

Was a rag and fibreglass

Would have been quicker to do the job properly

I’ve seen that done too!

Maybe 10 yrs ago a Chap couldn’t work out why his tranny failed it’s mot, it full of fibreglass. He asked how much to fix it.

It was as rotten as a pear, I told him to scrap it.

It’s a welder not a wand.

 

[Burdekin]

There’s a local young bloke who’s started his own car welding business and doing really well. He’s not cheap but man he’s quick and does a decent job. There isn’t anyone else decent around here so he’s booked up. He does classics and then will fit in MOT repairs. Unless it’s a good friend they get told to go there. A colleague bought a cheap old BMW and wanted to use me and my workshop to weld it up for him, I laughed a lot.

 

[Wedg1e]

When welding rusty motors Always expect the unexpected.

When I welded a rotten transit sill I found a load of rag stuffed in there and plenty of filler!

When my dad used to do car repairs for people in the 70s/80s there was a local garage that was infamous for 'welding' floors with cardboard and underseal.

A mate bought an old trials-style Yam (I think) that hd a tiny drip from the left bottom of the fuel tank. He reckoned that while parked for years on its sidestand, water in the tank had run to the lowest point and rotted it through.
Figuring that it probably just needed a 'dot' of weld on it he asked if I could take the TIG over (the Migatronic goes down to 5 or 7A). I was glad he was there as the harder I tried to fill this tiny hole, the bigger it got. Now he's done more gas welding than I have so said he'd have a crack, but all he did was chase the hole up and down the tank bottom as well. It was like trying to weld lace.
In the end he used one of those chemical resin lining kits - had he done so in the first place, it'd have been a lot cheaper than the bottle of Argon we mostly wasted.

 

[bert]

I restore classics for a living and I'd say 90% of the cars I see have been bodged up making my job harder.

Estimates are exactly that and my best guess as to how much it might cost. Almost all cars need a full bare shell restoration and once blasted are a hell of a lot worse that the shiny coat of paint the owners purchased.

 

[Blobber]

Ive always done my own car welding and dont mind it if its not time critical eg rushing for an MOT, I did spend the best part of a week laying under one of the 1st generation Discoveries piecing the chassis back together FOC for a "mate" though, wasnt a bad job once you found good metal!

 

[Keithmac]

I've been bitten too many times to agree to weld anyones car up ever again. You need to at least triple what you had in mind.

Not worth the hassle.

Same with any job at work now, I give them an hour appraisal and any quick fixes, after that it's charged by as long as it takes.

Too many people buying absolute sh1te of ebay and expecting someone else to take the hit..

I did our Scout Minibus for free but we're prettty much skint so every little helps..

 

[redlig]

Be prepared to fall out with mates when mates ask

So true . A mate asked me if I could get him a job that another friend had offered to me as I wasn't interested ,being retired ,and wouldn't have known what to do with the Grand a week offered. He got the job and hasn't spoken to me since. I didn't expect a bunch of roses but a phone call would have been nice. He's been there 6 years and now earns twice that now . I fixed up an interview for a job as a motorcycle mechanic for a friend with a well known Road racer of the 60,s with accommodation which my friend needed. right up his street, couldn't be bothered to turn up or ring . After 3 more similar stories I gave up being interested or trying to be helpful. S&d them .

 

[redlig]

Be prepared to fall out with mates when mates ask

A guy I worked with bought an mot pass (just) one Saturday and proudly brought it into work on the Monday. We all had apke around and noticed the sill had been repaired . Dug out the F/Glass matt and found a newspaper stuffed in the void. It was the previous weeks local paper. Kept us in P$$$ Takes all week.