Yep.  I have moved on to a BluePrint 383.  

Well, I opened than can of beans so I guess I will go first. 

To save what little pride I have left I will not tell you how I damaged the car.  I will just say it needed a new front clip, that being both fenders and nose , it all comes as one piece. Along with fender liners.  I also managed to damage both rear fenders and both bumpers.  Not a small accident. 

Anyway I loaded what was left of my pride on the trailer, made phone calls to everybody I knew who might point me in the right direction and started visiting body shops.  Vast majority shops will not even consider such a job. Mostly it is the itch factor, they tell me. Also most have never worked or know how to work with fiberglass.  So I found 4 shops that would even look at this car. After hours of talk and spending time at shops looking at their current work, ect. I took a stab in the dark and walked off the cliff and chose my shop. Of course he had work in the shop and other jobs lined up.  We agreed on a day that I should bring in my wreck, about 2 months down the road.  Ok.  Making progress.

I bring in the car and the boss assigned 1 man to work on it full time.  Well, that sound good. He is about 35 years old and said he had not fixed any fiberglass, but remembers what they taught him in body shop school. ( All the shops I looked at had never done a job this big. Shops in the big city who do this work were 2 years out.)  I swallowed and said to myself this should work out.  I was able to hang around the shop and watch him work on the car and they even let me do a little sanding in the tight spots that did not show. He did very good work. 

I choose the supplier of body parts after watching hours of YouTube from mfg. and other peoples advise.  Good company. Quality of front clip, hood, etc. very good. Flat where it needs to be flat and edges mfg. correctly.  Great.  Good choice there. 

P.S. Body shop is over 2 hrs away.  All 4 shops  I looked at were this far from me.  Anyway I wait about 2 weeks and drive up to see the progress.  They have the front clip off and the front windshield out and back window out.  No, plastic over the openings to keep the dust dirt out. Oh, my. Get that taken care of. (I had just had the complete dash out, new interior wiring harness, new dash humps, new insulation and carpet, seats.  Oh, well I can get it clean again.  If that is the worse thing that happens, not bad. 

Another 2 weeks or so go by and they are installing the front clip and I see the hood.  Company sent the wrong hood. Bodyshop did not check to see if what they ordered matched what was sent.  Good grief.  Starting to get a bad feeling about the cliff I walked off.  Caught it in time. Company admitted they sent wrong hood and send correct one in about 30 days. No big deal, no painting had been done yet or prep work on the hood. 

I have been working on this car for the past 2 years and have ordered many parts from 2 companies.  They dominated the parts for these old Corvettes.  So I know a little bit about how they stock parts, etc.  They basically order a batch and wait till it sells out and then order another batch of parts.  They love running out because it just makes the demand higher and they can charge what they want.  Anyway the body shop owner doesn't  listen to a thing I say about ordering parts and he ends up waiting long periods for parts. That bad feeling is coming over me again.  

They get the front clip on in good shape, but they glued in the fender wells without taking into consideration the placement of the bottom part of the front fenders. It all works together.  Problem is there is a rocker molding that is about 4 ft long that goes along the doors and along the fender.  It needs to be very straight for a proper fit.  No, they did not have the new rocker panels on had when they were laying this all out because they did not listen to me say they need to have all the pieces of the puzzle when putting this car together.  The feeling is getting worse.

Ok, they only had the drivers side done and ended up cutting the fender well so they could pull in the fender for the rocker panel and get it straight.  Pass. side was not yet done so it was glued together correctly.  The drivers side up top was a mess, nothing you could see unless you bent down and looked way up into the fender well.  But people who own these cars and future buyers of these cars go over them with a fine tooth comb.  Let just say it looked very poor, but functioned.  They ended up correcting it I have been told. I have not yet seen it.  I can prob. fix it if I have too.  Another fire put out, I hope. 

So, they have been working on this car for about 70 days now and they decide that the man doing my work is to slow.  So they fire him.  Great.  The man who took this car all apart is now just gone. Permanent.  (Also was have the both doors rebuilt/repaired, loose hinges, needed a new lock, window vent gear boxes, windows worked hard, new rear view mirror, etc. a 58 year old car needed some attention in this area.)   All this is apart in pieces.  Great.  Nobody know how it goes together.  

Oh, did I tell you the body shop owner/manager now has back problems about 30 days into my job and is absent from the shop for days and then only a couple hours when he is there.  Great.  All I need yet is a shop fire. 

The next man qualified to body work is the paint man.  Has been painting full time for about 12 years.  Nice work, but he as busy as a one arm paper hanger.  My car sets for weeks.  (I think the paint guy has part interest in the shop.)  He makes a lot of decisions what others work on when I am around the shop.  I could even tell there was no one else qualified to continue on this car. Thank goodness 95% of the body work was done and ready for paint. 

I was at the shop about 2 weeks ago and pointed out how long my car has been there, going on 7 months now.  And got out the calendar and pressed them to have all the miner things that yet need to be done completed in 3 weeks.  It is just a hobby car, not coming apart at the seams over this, but lets be reasonable.  It should have been a 90 day job.

I am picking up the car on the 21st.  Been emailing the shop owner about details today.  I am taking the car back not fully assembled. Like bumpers, ex. system, radiator, unassembled headlights.  I have done and can do all those things myself and I know they will be done correctly.  Esp. those headlight buckets. 

I might actually have to do a body off frame, again, done it 3 times already, to getting everything looking and done right.  Just want to get it done before harvest and it gets cold, no heated shop and to many mice to leave things half done. 

I tried to enjoy this ride.  I would bring the shop home made pies almost every time I went up there. No, need making enemies over all this, it is only a car. People are more imp. 

Let's just say it has not gone to smoothly.  Never will I do another one.   Time for a little whiskey.