'68 Coronet R/T wrote:Hopefully you plan to keep this car. You will never sell it for enough to compensate all your work and materials.
Once people see your work, you will have a line of prospective customers.
I have them sign a contract, stating the cost as "time and materials." It states my labor rate and the original plan of action on the vehicle. That I will bill them monthly, they can pay the bill and I continue or they can pay the bill and take their car somewhere else if they are not happy.
I have never had an unhappy customer doing it this way. Quoting a job is always risky because you often don't know how bad things are until you get into it. Also price increases in materials and parts are pretty frequent now days.
Another thing I suggest is that you keep a spread sheet.
I use Microsoft Excel and have a page for labor, where I keep log in and log out times, with hours totaled for the month and total job . A page for materials used (I bill paint, reducer, thinners, etc. by the ounce. Sandpaper by the inch, cut off discs, etc.) and parts ordered, with totals for each month plus a grand total. A page to track billing and payments. Some guys over pay when they can afford to and this tracks the use of those payments and the invoices they are applied to.
When done, you will know exactly how many hours you have in the project, how much the materials cost and hence a total cost of the job. This will help you see just how high you would have needed to quote the job and it will be much higher than your thought.
All excellent points. This Civic is my adult son's car and he will never sell it. And yes no way to know scope until you dig in. This one sort of surprised us with level of rust behind rear wheels ect.
My next car in line is my son in laws '87 Mustang GT. Its a sun roof car and the roof is totally rotted out. We already have another roof. But its a Virginia car so other then the roof its rot free.
I just purchased full AMD 1/4 panels for my '69 Barracuda. So that one comes in after the '87 mustang. Will be doing full floor pan replacement too. So will be a big project. So I am booked for many years to come....