question re: 328 major service

I had a customer bring me one of those a couple years ago. The tunnel had been sawed out to get at the transmission by the Jaguar dealer when the car was but 5 years old. It had been cobbled together with scraps of tin and sheet-metal screws. He couldn't figure out why he had so much oil and dirt inside the car. As part of a restoration I spent days putting it back together. I've seen Ferraris with the subframe cut away to get the crank pulley off in the car. Even cutting corners like that is still a lot of work. There is no substitute for doing the job right and it takes as long as it takes.

 

i agree Tim. Seems like a lot of folk spend an inordinate amount of time and energy to NOT do things right, and God help the next poor ba$tard who gets it to work on!

can't wait to see all these aluminium cars in 15 years with the wrong fasteners used.

 

Agreed. I took the numbers from an earlier post and that ad showing the shop hourly rate reduced to $95. Obviously that is on the low end for experienced, qualified Ferrari mechanics. Rates can be much higher, which just makes my point that much more obvious.

 

On the hourly rate discussion I recall seeing an hourly rate sign in a BMW motorcycle dealership. I forget the cutoff, but for illustration bikes older than 1985 cost an extra $15.00 per hour, so it might have been

Hourly Rates
$95.00
For bikes built before 1985 $110.00.

I got a laugh out of it. They confirmed that older bikes have had more years to have questionable work done to them, they tend to be fragile from age, fasteners are rusted, etc.

 

How long does it take to remove a single Weber carb from a Vintage Fiat where there is total access to all 4 mounting nuts? Ten mins max?

1.25 Hours when it is glued on with Yamaha Bond. Never under estimate the last person working on any given project... assume nothing.
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OMG!!! Now THAT'S scary!!

 

what do you mean you don't use the whole tube? more must be better? At this price I will use it all, don't want it to harden in the drawer....

 

Nothing but the finest workmanship for a multi award winning, world class restoration.

There are no variables in this business, everything is as it appears and is as easy as it looks... trust me.

 

Idle speed too high? Takes only a moment to turn that down. A bolt in place of a misplaced idle jet? Who needs em, just turn up the idle speed.

Running a bit "Off"? Just turn the idle mixture screw, 30 seconds max. Unless the last one there forgot to actually screw in and BOTTOM the needle and seat on a ham handed and welded DCOE.

You can teach a monkey to do this work at the speed of heat.... These last three photo's are just my Wed. work load. Destroy them if you want with blind work practices, there is always someone out there to do janitorial work. Think its expensive to do it right the first time...imagine how much it costs to identify/diagnosis and do it the second time!
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Who in the hell was the DSPT that worked on THAT thing?

Never had to use a 13mm wrench to adjust a carb before......

 

The DSPT was rushing things when the DSPO informed him that there were folks that could do major services for 3 hours...

 

So how DO you calculate a job? Do you assume everything will go smooth? Or everything will be hard and takes more time? Or something in between?

Do you use estimates at all?

What if during the job you're running out of time compared to your estimate. Do you call the customer? Or what if things go faster than estimated. Do you deduct this from your estimate? Or is it all in the game? Should a customer write a blanc check?

Just throwing some things out there from a customer's point of view.

p.s. this is not to critisize the mechanics who posted here, far from it. I'm honestly curious.

 

I love to look at work previous owners and shops have done .

I am currently giving a little TLC to a 930 I picked up last year. Price was cheap enough that I expected problems. I want to track it, so I decided to go through it system by system...

Founds some interesting stuff:

1) The right rear wheel castle nut was held on by a roofing nail...
2) The castle nuts on the front tie rods were missing...replaced on one side with a nyloc, totally absent on the other side...
3) Right rear shock was incredibly bent...odd...
4) Right passenger window wouldn't work... Traced the wiring, couldn't find the culprit. Finally took the doors off, and saw that during a repaint, they just "snipped" all of the wiring from the door to the chassis, and then twisted it together...if there was ever electrical tape on it, it was long gone. This explains the smoking dash issues...
5) The HVAC system didn't work. During the repaint (which appears to have been a good job), NONE of the wires/HVAC was reconnected...zero...zilcho...

 

Absolutely nothing surprises me on an old car. You never know what you'll find.

I rebuilt a Healey gearbox a few years ago and on disassembly I discovered someone previously had substituted cut off pieces of finishing nails for needle bearings.

One of my customers has a Ghibli that had been previously restored over a number of years by "others" when he brought it to me. There were a few things that needed completing and one of those was determining why his shiny new engine didn't seem to have much oil pressure and why the pressure seemed to drop when it was revved up.

The Ghibli has a dry-sump so it seemed the obvious place to start was in the oil tank to see if there were any restrictions to flow there. The tank is a fairly complicated piece with baffles and fine mesh screens that is somewhat difficult to clean without cutting an access hole. Eureka! It didn't take long to find out that someone had given the oil tank the "Gas-Tank-Renu" treatment in an attempt to prepare it for the new engine. As you can see from the photos everything (including the screens) got a thick coating. There was really nothing to do with the tank but toss it and replace with a new one.

It is amazing that his engine hadn't already seized from oil-starvation but in this case he dodged a bullet.
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A. Sometimes WAG (Wild Ass Guess)
B. No. For every 10 years of age I usually add 10% sometimes more. If it has evidence of much do it yourselfer type work I usually just turn the job down. I turn away a considerable amount of work. I also turn away many cars because the owners have unrealistic expectations. There are a lot of those.
C. Most of the time but there are some jobs that just have to be time and materials.
D. Yes, for anything more than just a few dollars.
E. I charge for what we did to the car. Sometimes less. If we get it done under estimate the price goes down.
F. I believe the owner needs to have some expectation on what it is going to cost but it is not always that simple. Most of the complex problems are of the self inflicted variety. Meaning either the owner attempted a repair and botched it or the car has a history of being placed in the wrong hands and a great deal of bad work needs to be undone. We do what we can to be fair but I will not willingly become a financial participant in an owners exercise of bad judgement. We are asked to do exactly that every day.

At the end of the day my fall back position is "I didn't build it, I didn't buy it, and I didn't break it. I can fix it but it will cost a reasonable amount of money to do so."

 

Brian, any thoughts of moving to the East Coast?? We could certainly use you out here!!

 

I have a brother in Maine and another in Florida. I promised to stay 3000 or more miles away and Hawaii only has 8 Ferrari so I guess I am stuck.

 

Much the same as Brian.

I work off a customers set budget and see how far I can make it last. That method requires a good deal of trust on both sides but most of my customers I have a very good relationship with. They know I will stretch a dollar as far as I can while assuring the work meets my own requirements. I cant remember when I did my last written estimate, thats another hour worth of effort that can go towards fixing the car and is ALWAYS wrong.

I pull old RO's and use them as a realistic example, the add on's add up and I want them to know real numbers.

Photo's emailed each evening to show any new findings and have the ability to discuss any problems found. If I can see it, they can as well and we can discuss weather a change in game plan is required. This then allows me to burn a full photo file of each critical service.

 

Dave, Brian, 2NA, Your all wasting your breath. Do you're work to the standards you guys are known for and charge accordingly. Trying to talk sense into the majority of people on this site is futile.

GM dealers charge over 100/hr to fix a Caviler. Why can't people get it into their heads that a Ferrari is NOT a Caviler. Top notch service comes at a price.

Do your 308/328 belt service for $995, then take it all back apart again and then some, to do the cam seals a week later.

 

You're right Tom but bigodino is a good guy and he asked a reasonable question out of genuine curiosity.


Many others here would have gotten a 2 letter response and I am sure you can figure out which 2 letters those are.

 

Dave, you truly are the best.

-F

 

At the end of the day trust and great service is what keeps me going back to the Toronto shop I use to service my Ferrari,I don't even know what he charges per hour nor I care.

 

OMG, the amount of YamahaBlonde material that was applied is overuse and abuse.

 

Thanks Brian.

I think two things mentioned by Dave sums it up with regard to a good relationship between customer and mechanic: trust and communication.

If there's no trust that the job will be done properly no estimate will do.
Communicating (e.g. like Dave with pictures during the proces of the job) makes your work a lot more transparant, aiding to the trust and understanding.

Customers should not try to intervene with the way a mechanic does his business. No haggling about how something should be done or how many hours it will take.
But with any maintainance there are margins and this is where opinions can differ between customer and mechanic. There's no right or wrong in this and ultimately both parties should discuss the choices and consequences.
In the end I think the customer is the owner of the car and should have the final say. But if this goes against the principles of the mechanic he has every right to turn away a customer.

p.s. I write this from the perspective of a Ferrari owner that isn't very rich all things considered. Ofcourse for someone with deep pockets it's easier to tell the mechanic to go wild.