OK, so today I went over, after being recomended to them by guys in the BMW CCA, to Master Crafters off of Rockville Pike. They talked with me about the mods I wanted to have painted and installed, discussed the quality of the parts, their fitment, and their durability, and then discussed the difficulty involved with this type of "custom work" and the troubles that he has had in the past with "kits". Fortunately for me, I sat down and did all this discussing with the owner of the shop, Kenny, and he was really straight up with me. He told me that his shop typically does work on collision cars, dealing with oem parts, and insurance companies. BUT, at his older shop, they did massive amounts of work on import cars (both euro and asian) and has delt on numerous occasions with body kits (mainly fiberglass) and has been down that road.
He told me that the last time he did a full fiberglass kit, he had a guy with an RX7 which he tracked and wanted to have the fiberglass kit put on the reduce weight for track purposes. The customer told him that the kit was a complete bolt on replacement for the oem parts and that it would just be an on/off job. 4 weeks later, a bunch of phone calls to manufacturers, etc, the customer told him that he heard the reinforcement bar had to be taken off the front (something he legally wouldn't do due to insurance/suing). The customer yelled at him, blamed his shop for the work, etc and he said he wouldn't do another kit like that at his shop.
After talking with him about my parts and letting him know that the front bumper, mirrors, and front bumper add on were all oem like direct replacements made from oem poly material, he agreed to do a test fit. He is also going to line up the fiberglass rear add on and test fir the fiberglass sideskirts and in the event that they come out as well as I have been lead to believe, he will do the work. That being said, here is his price schedule...
Body labor (12.8 hours at 38 an hour) $486.40
Paint labor (13.4 hours at 38 an hour) $509.20
Paint supplies (13.4 hours at 24 an hour) $321.60
Sublet/misc. 11.00
Subtotal $1333.20
Sales tax 323.60 @ 5% $16.63
Grand total $1349.83 (painted and installed)
When compared to wagon works, they say it will take them around half the time and will cost me less per hour of work.
What do you guys think?
Also, last night at an eastcoasteuro.net meet, I talked with a guy who owns a shop in Landsdown who said that Kenny over at Master Crafters is good but not great in his opinion. Was this guy just trying to promote his own shops work or do you think he had a point. I have decided that wagon works is simply out of the question due to the price tag and for that reason, want the second best people to do the work (assuming they are more reasonably priced)... I want to go over to Springfield and have them write up an estimate but given my classes 4 days a week and work the other 3, I never have time during "regular business hours" to make it over there.
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Originally Posted by SharkD
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