Bad Restorations

[sierraman]

Had a day free yesterday so went to a classic car auction, not to buy needless to say but have a browse. Don’t get me wrong there are a few really good sympathetic restoration jobs but far and away most of them there were fucking awful. One in particular an old Escort Mexico, it was just full of wob, really badly finished as well, rough bits all over where you could see it had been trowelled on over old paint. Bad workmanship abound, daft stuff like the copper brake pipes resting on sharp edges waiting to chafe through. All the more worrying as it won’t need an MOT.

I’d sort of get it if it was a cheap job on an old Minor or something to keep it on the road but this was something that they’d be wanting tens of thousands for. One of the few genuine looking things I saw was a ‘92 Sierra GT, wasn’t blemish free but it was tidy and straight and the work done to a superb standard. 

[bunglebus]

I suppose most "restorations" are amateur so not everything will be right, buyer beware.

Proper restorations cost more than the car's worth

[Bren]

A good restoration will cost far in excess of what most cars are worth.

People don't have the disposible income they used to - so they will look for who is cheapest.

Add to that the drain from the trade - many skilled have hung up their overalls to do other things.

[juular]

1 hour ago, bunglebus said:

Proper restorations cost more than the car's worth

And are usually worse than the amateur efforts if any stuff I've seen recently is to go by!

[dome]

The £5k respray on my 911 is 2 years old. 

It's not great, with bubbles starting to appear already. 

 

[Datsuncog]

FULLY RESTORED CLA$$IC M9

And this, kids, is why we don't buy cars in the dark.

[HMC]

The dark wob.

[sierraman]

I get people don’t have the money but it doesn’t take money to flat some filler back properly. 🤣

[Sham]

1 hour ago, sierraman said:

I get people don’t have the money but it doesn’t take money to flat some filler back properly. 🤣

That takes patience and a will to do a job properly, which are both in even shorter supply than money.

[sierraman]

7 minutes ago, Sham said:

That takes patience and a will to do a job properly, which are both in even shorter supply than money.

Does beggar the question, why take the job on something fairly valuable like that if you’ve not the time, money and skill. 

[DSdriver]

One would hope that a restoration would last at least as long as the original build (which might not be many years in some instances) but as the restored car is likely cared for a lot more and the modern materials should be better I would hope that it should last a bit longer.

[Sham]

6 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Does beggar the question, why take the job on something fairly valuable like that if you’ve not the time, money and skill. 

Restorations are generally done for one of two reasons.

1) Profit - in which case, as long as it looks OK why would they care?

2) As part of ongoing tinkering by a loving owner - in which case the quality is at a DIY level.

 

The "professionals" who do a restoration poorly for an easyish quid or ten are a different matter, though.

[sierraman]

I would imagine to restore something properly by a professional you’d be looking in the multiple tens of thousands, I get why someone would do the work themselves as it’s a matter of enjoyment but looking yesterday at some of them you can see it’s been attempted by someone with the attention span of an orange. Buying something at one of these auctions must be an absolute minefield if you are a bit green and can’t spot a nail.  

[HillmanImp]

15 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Does beggar the question, why take the job on something fairly valuable like that if you’ve not the time, money and skill. 

Are you in the right place? Nearly everyone on here has eyes bigger than their driveway and bank account (and in my case skill). 😉

[HillmanImp]

Saying that not much of our stuff is valuable. Although it might be relative to our income compared to the people doing some of the other stuff.

[sierraman]

I’ve done some bodges in my time but we’re talking old bangers. I haven’t yet welded up an E-type bonnet out of the side of an old Zannussi yet...

[Merryck]

9 minutes ago, sierraman said:

I would imagine to restore something properly by a professional you’d be looking in the multiple tens of thousands

I recently spoke to a Mini specialist as mine needs similar work to something he's been working on and the number was just shy of £20k. I think about half of it would have been labour from memory. Obviously for a mid-80's Mini that's an eye-watering figure. Even for an early Cooper with racing pedigree it'd be on the steep side.

If I had the money I'd pay it in a heartbeat, as I know the car would be better than when it left the factory, and if I looked after it probably wouldn't need doing again in my lifetime.

For something rarer/more complex than a Mini I can't imagine how quickly those numbers ramp up. You can buy most of the panels you need for a Mini and they'll only need minor modifications/fettling to get them to fit. If you start needing to have even fairly simple panels made up from scratch the price is going to skyrocket.

[New POD]

Just now, Merryck said:

I recently spoke to a Mini specialist as mine needs similar work to something he's been working on and the number was just shy of £20k. I think about half of it would have been labour from memory. Obviously for a mid-80's Mini that's an eye-watering figure. Even for an early Cooper with racing pedigree it'd be on the steep side.

If I had the money I'd pay it in a heartbeat, as I know the car would be better than when it left the factory, and if I looked after it probably wouldn't need doing again in my lifetime.

For something rarer/more complex than a Mini I can't imagine how quickly those numbers ramp up. You can buy most of the panels you need for a Mini and they'll only need minor modifications/fettling to get them to fit. If you start needing to have even fairly simple panels made up from scratch the price is going to skyrocket.

Bloke at work just sold a modified to look older than the 1994 mini it was for £11k.  It was immaculate and had a 10 inch brake conversion, so it could have smaller wheels.  

[Merryck]

Just to add to the above - I felt his quote was actually quite reasonable, I only mention it as my Mini is never going to be worth even half that, so any illusions someone might have of being able to restore a car for profit should be well out the window. Even if I had their knowledge, skill and tools at my disposal I'd still be unlikely to break even on the cost of parts and materials, and that wouldn't even include the cost of the car.

The only way you'd be able to do it is either by doing a half-arsed job or outright bodging it.

[Stinkwheel]

I think a lot of US based restoration and/or rescue programs show a lot of folks who arent bodyworkers how much clag they use to 'shape' things and give them bad ideas. Hence a lot of shoddy restos.

Actually, a lot of folk seem to get very confused if something thats had one new shock (possibly even one new set of brake shoes), a patch of welding and paint, a couple of tyres etc is now in their eyes 'restored'

when its actually just (badly) maintained

[straightSix]

Anyone watch the Harry's garage lancia or Jaguar restorations? Doing that shit properly does not come cheap.

What annoys me is when something just needed one extra step. On one of my old jags, someone had welded in a panel into one of the doors pretty well so you couldn't tell but not sealed it on the back, so it started bubbling within a year 🤷‍♂️

[danthecapriman]

To put costs into perspective, when I (stupidly!) added up costs on my Capri resto, the total price for all the panels needed alone - just buying the panels and having ones that weren’t available made - was about £9k. Ok, this could easily have cut down by going for non genuine panels & parts but it shows how, even on a mainstream car things can quickly escalate price wise! 
This is why you get cars that get tarted up with filler & bits of biscuit tin riveted over holes! It’s either a DIY effort where the owner had good intentions but found themselves some way short in both money and skill to do it right.   
Or a ‘professional’ attempt to make money. Obviously you’re not going to make much money easily and quickly spending money like that and time fitting and fabricating new panels when you could instead just kick off the loose mess, shove some chicken wire in the hole and shovel in the filler! 
The result afterwards to many people will look more or less the same regardless of if it’s been done right or done wrong - it’s the right shape(ish), it’s got shiny paint. It’s only a while down the line the difference will become clear.

Then of course you get the cars where they’ve just been continuously messed with and bodged up just to keep them going over many decades. These are usually obvious though!

It still amazes me how many people are in the market to buy a classic car but have no idea what they’re actually looking at when there’s a potential purchase in front of them! ‘Oooh shiny’ is about the limit of their checks! They don’t get down on the ground and look at the floors/chassis, they don’t run their hand around the wheel arch lips, they don’t take a magnet to look for filler, they don’t listen for rumbles/rattles or smoke when running… the list is endless! It’s those people that get ripped off and tbh, if they don’t educate themselves before buying or make any attempt to check things properly, then that’s their too bad! A fool and his money are easily parted as they say.

There’s nothing wrong with DIY efforts though. There’s some incredibly talented amateur restorers around doing a fantastic job of it. Likewise some people know their limits and aim lower - nothing wrong with that either as long as the end result pretends to be nothing else. I think my own efforts with limited tools and a single garage even surprised me tbh, but there were some hard lessons learned in the process!

[danthecapriman]

1 hour ago, Stinkwheel said:

I think a lot of US based restoration and/or rescue programs show a lot of folks who arent bodyworkers how much clag they use to 'shape' things and give them bad ideas. Hence a lot of shoddy restos.

That annoys me too. 
I like watching the YouTube etc channels from the usual suspects, and they do some great stuff, plus I love the cars too. But, it gets inevitably round to the rust holes or missing floors and it either gets filled with expanding foam/filler or plated over with a road sign or license plates. For a quick fix fine but it’s not good at all doing that! I bet far more people would watch (and it’d give them more content to put up!) if they spent the time showing how to do it properly or at least semi-properly. 
 

I’ve mentioned this before on here, but when I picked up my yank tank from the shippers warehouse here I was waiting around for a while so the guy took me for a wander around to see the other recent arrivals from the states. In one corner they had a little workshop where they did repairs to cars that’d come over and been found to be not quite what the buyer thought or MOT type fails. 
There was a Chevy Biscayne that looked nice but the entire front suspension & steering was a mess of assorted parts for anything other than the car they were fitted to so the thing wouldn’t drive straight at all!

Chevy Elcamino with floors made of road signs. These were all being chopped out and repro ones welded back in.

There was also an old Plymouth (can’t remember the model) but there was a crack in the paint that extended from the centre of one rear wheel arch right up the wing, over the rear panel and down the other rear wing! It turned out to be rotten and had been ‘fixed’ with lots of filler. This had then cracked as the metal underneath continued to dissolve and the car was driven! No idea what happened to that one but if you’d bought it then shipped it here you’d have been seriously pissed off!

It’s hard to check things thoroughly though if they’re thousands of miles away in another country. There’s a good amount of trust in the seller involved.

[juular]

Even avoiding off the shelf panels wherever possible, using a mend and make do approach, the real killer is time.

I go out to do "one small job" and I'm still swearing at it a week later.

It's got to be one of the most difficult jobs to quote for as well. Sometimes someone along the line has done a really good job of doing something incredibly badly and you only find out once you're surrounded by offcuts of rusty bodywork that your work is now going to take 10x as long.

[Bren]

21 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

That annoys me too. 
I like watching the YouTube etc channels from the usual suspects, and they do some great stuff, plus I love the cars too. But, it gets inevitably round to the rust holes or missing floors and it either gets filled with expanding foam/filler or plated over with a road sign or license plates. For a quick fix fine but it’s not good at all doing that! I bet far more people would watch (and it’d give them more content to put up!) if they spent the time showing how to do it properly or at least semi-properly. 
 

I’ve mentioned this before on here, but when I picked up my yank tank from the shippers warehouse here I was waiting around for a while so the guy took me for a wander around to see the other recent arrivals from the states. In one corner they had a little workshop where they did repairs to cars that’d come over and been found to be not quite what the buyer thought or MOT type fails. 
There was a Chevy Biscayne that looked nice but the entire front suspension & steering was a mess of assorted parts for anything other than the car they were fitted to so the thing wouldn’t drive straight at all!

Chevy Elcamino with floors made of road signs. These were all being chopped out and repro ones welded back in.

There was also an old Plymouth (can’t remember the model) but there was a crack in the paint that extended from the centre of one rear wheel arch right up the wing, over the rear panel and down the other rear wing! It turned out to be rotten and had been ‘fixed’ with lots of filler. This had then cracked as the metal underneath continued to dissolve and the car was driven! No idea what happened to that one but if you’d bought it then shipped it here you’d have been seriously pissed off!

It’s hard to check things thoroughly though if they’re thousands of miles away in another country. There’s a good amount of trust in the seller involved.

Look on youtube for furious driving and watch how his crown victoria turned out....

[sierraman]

Very few people buying these things know what’s ‘right’ on them or what should be. There was an RS Turbo there, to all intents it looked immaculate but it was way too shiny, presumably it had been done in two pack. When you got a bit closer you could see the wing wasn’t fitted properly, it was way out on one side, then the bodykit didn’t fit right down same side. I wasn’t in a position to look properly but it didn’t look like it had been done at all properly. And this is something with a guide price of maybe £10k yet it was never going to be ‘right’ again. 

[lesapandre]

Also the way things are 'shown' can be set up to deceive. Parked up indoors under a flattering uniform artificial light quite a lot old nails can look really ok. Get them outside in natural light or sunlight is a different story.

It is always a really good idea to carry an inspection light at any of these sales. A look under the  car or bonnet can often tell all - also looking inside the fuel filler flap and places difficult to bodge will tell a lot etc 

[danthecapriman]

1 hour ago, Bren said:

Look on youtube for furious driving and watch how his crown victoria turned out....

Yeah I saw that one! That’s on a comparatively new car too. Good on him for fixing with the welder though. He could have just made the visible ends good, shoved the sill trim back on and sold it on with a new MOT.

[HMC]

Define restoration?

My eyes were opened by the epic and absolutely next level approach @TripleRich and his colleagues undertake. 

[Aston Martin]

I don't think Harry has given us the full price of the Zagato resto yet. But I believe it's close to £100k and the car looked OK pre resto.