My (Bob) Norwood Experience

Chapter 9: A/C woes

After my aborted test drive around the end of Sept I left Bob to work on putting in some seat belt anchors so I could safely drive the car, getting the motor to run properly, ensuring the brakes were good, and getting the a/c working. There was a small list of minor items that needed to be taken care of but I told Bob I would do these myself, as I had given him a limit of $50K on the project. I needed him to get the car to the point where I could safely drive it home and that was it. During this time he informed me that the motor would have to come out to put the valve timing back to spec. to fix the idle problem. I told him there was no money in the budget, the $50K was firm, and that if that was indeed the cause of the problem I would live with it until the next major at which time the valves would need adjustment anyway. So he could take that item off the list and work on the other items. (It wasn't until much later that he retracted the valve theory and advanced other theories as to why the idle was problematic, more on that later.)

As far as the brake bias, I did some research and determined that there is indeed a proportioning valve in 308s and I even sent Bob a photo of the location of the valve, hoping that he could make a simple adjustment to deal with the imbalance problem. He did not respond so I assumed that was taken care of.

He found one seat belt anchor (driver's side) but could not find the other side. I told him to leave it at that as I had found that DeLorean anchors would cross reference and there is an outfit (in TX) that specializes in DeLorean bits and they had them in stock. So that came off the list as well.

That left the A/C. The motor that came with the car had it's a/c compressor intact and the guys had run all new a/c lines to the front of the car when they put the motor in. They also removed and replaced the dryer. I assume it would be a relatively simple matter to hook everything up, charge the system, and run it. Apparently not. Bob informed me that he replaced everything including the remaining hoses and the system was still not working, thus I would need a new compressor. I resigned myself to this final piece of bad news and told him to go ahead.

In early November, almost a year after buying the car, Bob told me it was ready to go. I made plans to pick it up in the latter part of November in conjunction with a trip to DFW to meet my son who was in his final year in college and would be visiting for Christmas. The plan was to drive over, have my wife drive the Ranger back, and I would lead in the Ferrari so that if anything broke I would not be stranded.

A couple of days before the planned trip, I received the final flurry of invoices. I gave them a cursory look and noted that there was labor mixed in with parts which made the calculation of the final settlement messy. Also I did not have revised copies of some of the earlier invoices that Bob promised to fix to address "errors" that I had brought to his attention. So I asked Bob to get all the invoices up to date, to scrub them for errors (as I had previously requested since there were some errors and questionable charges in the early invoices), to get his accountant to segregate the labor from the parts, and to have all the invoices ready when I got there so I could settle up. I checked the weather the night before and noted that it was supposed to rain, but clear up late in the day. So I emailed Bob to be sure that the wipers and lights were working as this would be a night drive.

The next morning we set out, checkbook in hand. The weather got progressively worse the closer we got to Rockwall. By the time we hit I20 it was bucketing down. However we pressed on as the forecast called for clearing in the late afternoon. I had no idea that the real storm was just getting started.

 

Aaron's animus has returned I see.

Actually, as you will see everyone got paid what they demanded, even if it shockingly exceeded the original estimates. I am not going to get into the lawyer matter other than to say I paid in advance in full. I, on the other hand, did not get what I paid for. Not in either case.

And in Bob's case "all things" came down to getting the a/c to work (and even that turned out to be somewhat of a headfake) and installing one seat belt anchor. He did nothing further on the brakes, and nothing further on the idle problem. He did invoice me plenty though, as you will see in the last and final chapter "Amnesia".

 

Chapter 10: Amnesia

We (my wife and I) arrived at Bob's shop mid afternoon and it was still raining. It had rained a lot, there was water on the floor of Bob's workshop. He and his guys were huddled around a bare 308 chassis which some other client was having built up as a GTO. Apparently said client had bought up a number of genuine GTO parts in Europe and wanted them incorporated into the car. I commented that I hoped he had more money than I.

My car was nowhere to be seen. Bob advised me not to try to drive it in the wet .. he said he drove it that morning and the water was leaking down onto his arm, the windshield was fogging up (so much for RJ's heater), and I should plan to come back on a sunny day. Instead he invited me into his office to go over the invoices.

The first thing I noticed was that the labor had not been segregated from the parts on the final set of invoices. That left us unable to make a simple adjustment to the labor billings, ie to split the overrun vs the original labor estimate as we had agreed. I also noted that there was no charge for a new compressor, something I was dreading. Bob told me that his friend fixed it for free. I did note that the invoices seemed excessive vs. the apparent progress on the car. But I did not say anything as by this time I was somewhat stunned by the whole situation and just wanted to get it over and done with.

Bob then took the position that since I would be "happy at $50K", that the final amount exceeded that by a wide margin, so he thought that I should pay him a flat $60K. The amount per se did not shock me but I found the logic wanting. I thought we had an agreement and since I did not have final copies of the invoices, I thought we were going to make the calculation, settle up, and be done. I pointed out that we had an agreement as to how the overrun would be handled and that we needed to calculate the total that way. We started to sort through the invoices but since the labor, parts and other charges were not segregated we were getting nowhere and it became apparent that Bob had forgotten what the agreement was, despite the fact that it was his idea and that I had spelled out the formula twice in writing with the last two payments that I had made. I again wrote down the formula on the back of one of the invoices while my wife looked on. Bob was to get paid 100% of the parts, 100% of the outside services, the first $13325 of the labor, and 50% of the labor charge over $13325. I had no idea what that amounted to but fully intended to pay whatever the amount was. This all took some time and I had a flight to meet. Since I could not pick the car up that day (I didn't even see it), I asked Bob to have his accountant make the calculation and send me the final scrubbed invoices together with the total so I could settle up. I had to bring my son back to the airport in the first week of Jan so I could fetch the car that day.

About a week later, Bob sent me a calculation that came to $48K plus minus. I told him that did not sound right (too low) and he should check it. In the same email I wrote out the formula again, as clearly as I could. A few days later he sent me a corrected demand for $50,350 as the final tally. Since I had paid $45K to date, I replied that I would pay the balance of $5,350. I actually waited a few days to see if Bob was going to take exception to that but he did not. So I wired the money.

In the meantime, since he had the car, I asked him to quote me to upgrade the front brakes as a separate project, ie not subject to our agreement or my $50K limit. He normally puts Wilwood front brakes on his conversions and had all the bits to do the work. Why he had chosen to take a shortcut in my case was puzzling but water under the bridge. He provided me with a quote for give or take $2750. I did not respond as I thought he should have offered to credit the cost of the first failed attempt against that amount so I let it percolate for a while.

While all of this was up in the air, I went off to a trade show in Las Vegas. While I was there I asked Bob whether RJ would like to buy my old (black) Jeep as his Toyota had blown up. It seems RJ tried to do a valve job on his car and had crashed the valves. This would then provide enough cash so I could proceed with the brake job. Bob did not reply.

When I got back from Vegas, I told Bob I had had a minor success there (I sold a Holland and Holland double rifle for $24K) so I had some cash and could swing the brake job. I expected him to reply "AOK, will do". But instead I got this email:

"
RUSS. as near as I can tell the total on your car is $78,360 and you have paid $50 k . I understand that 50 k is all that you wanted to spend on this car. The reality is this is a carpenter car and I should catch on to fact that no amount of estimating will get you to the bottom line. As I told you earlier I am willing to take a big hit on this deal. I am not willing to take a $ 38,360 hit. I am willing to settle for 10K which is a 28,360 loss to me..
I Talked to my attorney about this issue and he said you need to keep the car. I told him that you had paid as promised on invoices and i needed the space for other jobs. He thought a note for the balance may work. Think about how you want to handle this. I am in a messy lawsuit on the previous carpenter car and we do not need to go there on your car.Thanks Bob "

This was a shock to say the least. Apart from the fuzzy math, there was no reference to our agreement or any version of our agreement. And the grand total was now 3x the original estimate, and the mechanical and electrical work that Bob was supposed to do was hardly complete.

I replied

"Hello Bob,
I can understand that you are not happy. Join the club.

Early on, I could see the writing on the wall. I was ready to pull the plug but after you offered to split the labor overrun, I decided to proceed. Did you explain to your attorney that you were the one that offered to split the labor overrun on the car 50:50, which is exactly what we have done? Had you not made that offer, I would have stopped the work some time ago. I ate the parts overrun 100% even though you guys missed the fact that I would need to replace the entire rear suspension and the wheels when you drew up your estimate, as well as the need to replace the front brakes and a list of other unplanned parts that had to be replaced.

I accepted your offer to split the labor overrun and documented this agreement in writing some time ago and have followed this formula since then. Had I known that the original estimates that you made after having a lot of time to look the car over, and which I assumed were thorough since you billed me for the time to draw them up, were going to be off by a factor of 3x, I would not have commenced the project at all. I would have parted out the car. It was only because your estimates seemed affordable that I commenced the work, and you seemed happy to have the work at the time, and to continue on the basis we agreed.

Carpenter had nothing to do with this car as best I can tell. The bodywork was done by Wicked Autosports in LA or something to that effect. In any case the overruns had almost nothing to do with the bodywork. It was all mechanical and electrical and that was all "made by Ferrari". In my opinion, a good amount of the labor overrun was due to your guys doing work out of sequence and doing some of the work twice or three times. The only bodywork issues were the fitting of the rear quarter windows, and the alignment of the subframe with the rear wheel wells. Neither of these were a catastrophe.

Subsequently, as a separate project, you offered to swap out the front brakes for the second time. We discussed the issue of brake balance before the first attempt to fix the brakes and it's a bit hard to swallow the fact that I now have to pay for a second set of front brakes because of a balance problem. Notwithstanding, I offered to pay for that in full. But as I am sure you can understand, if you are going to take the position that you are now taking, I am reluctant to do any further work on the car. From where I stand, the brake job could end up as a $7500 job and not a $2500 job as you quoted.

It's too late now to try to rewrite the deal. We proceeded on the basis of that deal and we both have to live with it, for better or worse.

I will come to pick up my car on Thursday, February 8th, and I consider the matter closed. I hoped to end it on a more positive note.

Russ."

I was out of the country for the last week of January and the first week of Feb. While I was there his lawyer sent me the attached letter.
(continued in a separate post due to the 1000 character limit)

 

(continued)

This was another shock. The goalpost had now been moved from $60K to $72K. It seems Bob did not have amnesia after all, he just had his own version of what we agreed that he failed to mention on any of the six occasions it was referenced and when you would think he would have brought it up (two face-to-face meetings one when the $14K invoice was presented, one when the job was done; three payments citing the formula that he accepted, and one email spelling it out in great detail after he sent me the $48K number.) Heck, he didn't even take exception to it when he himself applied the correct version of the formula to come up with the $50,350 final tally. But now that the bill was settled, Bob wanted more. Perhaps mentioning my minor trade show success was a mistake ... or perhaps the fact that another Fchat member paid another shop $60K for a similar conversion caused him to have "seller's remorse", if there is such a thing. Perhaps he is just forgetful.

The day I got back to the USA, I emailed Bob asking for a meeting the following day to inspect the car and to go over the invoices. He denied my request, stating that the car was now in offsite storage. He told me to submit my questions regarding the invoices in writing, which I did in some detail. I received no substantive response other than a brief note blaming Carpenter and the car. His lawyer subsequently sent me another letter upping the demand to the full $78K plus storage fees and threatening to send the amount out for collections.

In May of 2018, after considering my options, I showed up at Bob's premises as promised with a Bank of America cashier's check in hand. Instead of producing my car, Bob then hit me with a new demand for a legal release and told me to come back with cash as a "cashier's check can be cancelled". In other words I drove over 400 miles for nothing.

So that brings us to today, almost a year after Bob made his offer to split the labor overrun. I don't have my car and have not seen my car since Sept 2017. I know the car has issues with the idle, the plugs fouling, the new battery is dead, the new brakes don't brake, the doors won't latch, the rear bonnet won't stay open, and the car has damage to my console, my louvers, my buttress and my spoiler. I don't know whether there are other issues with the work as I have not been able to inspect it. Bob has taken the position that he won't release my car or allow me or my agent to inspect it until I pay him in cash, and until I sign a release stating I won't sue him for any reason.

I warned the readers early on that this would be a long, complicated saga. To those of you that have stuck with the story, I hope you found it informative and not too boring; to those of you who have expressed empathy, I offer my sincere thanks. To the one or two that found my story annoying, I can only say nobody held a gun to your head. The only gun in this story is the one being held to my head.

I will let this rest for a while. If there are any developments, I will post them here.