More interior work done

[chevynut]

Unless you want to wait another 2-3 years to drive it, just put a couple seats in it and have fun with it for now. I'm on my 3rd season driving my car with no interior except for 2 seats and a little carpet. It's so much fun to drive I don't even care if I ever even put a headliner in it, and people love the car as it is. Since you have never actually driven one of your chassis designs, you might not even like how it drives, handles, shakes, and will need to blow the car apart to change it. I can't imagine why your interior guy doesn't jump all over getting your interior done being the nice guy that you are. Even if I had $30 grand to blow on the interior, that would ruin all the fun of driving it. I spent $2000 including the seats.

Are you really that oblivious to how much of an ass you really are? I don't give a rat's ass about your car. And my C4 suspension is no different than any other C4 conversion except for the narrowed rearend that you claim won't work right because it's "not the way GM designed it". My car is on an entirely different level from yours which you don't understand and never will. Please, just stop your inane comments on my threads. I'm really sick of your shit.

[chevynut]

Well I've been composing an e-mail for the past week I've been in Montana and sent it to Larry today. I told him that I needed to see more consistent progress and need to have him give me a rough schedule in writing with an estimated date for completion. I also said I needed written receipts or at least a documented acknowledgement from him on what I've paid for the materials he owes me. I don't want to piss him off, but I want him to get off his ass. He sent me a picture of his shop, and he's nowhere near finished on it. I told him it looks like he's got 6 more months work on it to get it "done" enough to work in it.

I told him I've been contacting other shops and it looks like I can get in 4-8 months from now, but that it would be finished about 12 weeks after that. So I asked him to either commit via a written agreement to having the interior DONE by around January, or if he prefers I will send him a settlement offer for what he owes me. I told him I prefer to work with him on it but I can't have one thing done every 2-3 months with months of delays. I can only do so much of it myself, and I really shouldn't have to do anything.

He doesn't like to be pushed, so I'm pretty sure he's going to take the settlement route that he already proposed to me as an alternative in December. The question is whether he agrees with my numbers. Shops are now charging $85 an hour for interior work, and chassis shops 100+. I hope he doesn't think he just owes me my $75 per hour that was my shop rate 9 years ago. Then there's the issue of taxes. If he pays me, I have to pay taxes on the money I get. He got his frames and didn't pay a penny in taxes. So I think he should have to pay at least 15-20%.

I told him I did want him to at least finish the headliner installation and the dash, so I can get the windshield in and assemble the rest of the car. I could even drive it like that. At this point he needs to shit or get off the pot. Everyone I talked to said he does great work, but everyone who knows him says he has no concept of time.

tic, tic, tic.....

[55 Rescue Dog]

Why not just have him return the 2 frames, materials, sell the frames and start over?

[chevynut]

About a week or so Larry and I had a discussion about my interior. He's really struggling to get his shop done, and he's been working on it for over a year. It's a huge project and I really don't know why he needs multiple engineers involved in it and so many inspections. A couple of weeks ago he finally got the metal frame inspection on it. They had to inspect the welding like it was a commercial building but it's at his house so I don't know what he's building. He expected to be done by June, two months ago. Weather has also been an issue both in the past winter and this unusually wet summer. He said that when he gets it closed in he can spend more time on my interior. I asked if that was 2-3 months out and he said "no, probably October -November". I reminded him it was mid-August .

He said he couldn't commit to a finish date and said that I wouldn't agree to a deadline if he told me he needed a frame built by the end of September. I replied and told him I wasn't giving him a deadline, I wanted HIM to tell ME when he would have it finished. He still wouldn't commit so I told him I had to have it done by summer 2024. He said he didn't see that as a problem. That's the closest thing to a commitment that I've ever gotten. I can't get into another shop until after the first of the year or into the spring, so this still works for me if he does it. And it allows me to work with him and continue to build some of it that I want to do, and learn as I go.

Anyway, it turns out that he didn't want into my shop to install my headliner when I last left for Montana in June. He didn't even have it made yet. He was looking for information as to how many panels it had. He said he usually uses the original headliner as a pattern. It turns out I had a new headliner made in the late 70's and I gave that to him with the caveat that I didn't know if it was made correctly, but I had installed it and it seemed to fit. I also measured between the bow screw holes and gave him the spacing which is 12 1/2". I told him my schedule and he said we would have it installed before I left for Montana. He called when I was passing through Helena and wanted to come over to install it. So we agreed that we'd do it when I got back to Colorado.

I'm still not fully convinced that I'm going to get the interior done by summer, but I told him that the other shops said 10-12 weeks for a complete interior so that's about what I expected from him. I need to remind him that "by next summer" means when summer starts, not when it ends. I'll see how it goes in a couple of months, and still may have to find another shop. We'll see.

[WagonCrazy]

I used to read about the horror stories of guys getting their cars stuck in "paint jail" but this one is leaning that same way.
Don't you think you should be driving it soon anyway (without the full interior) to work the kinks out? Why wait for the full interior? Keep up with your forward momentum and the interior will be the final piece of the puzzle.

[chevynut]

Don't you think you should be driving it soon anyway (without the full interior) to work the kinks out?

Yes Paul, I told Larry I wanted the headliner and dash in so I could install the windshield and drive it a little. Hopefully that gets done pretty soon. I also asked him to sew me up some small pieces of charcoal leather with French seams with matching and contrasting thread so I can see them together and decide which way to go.

Problem is I'm going elk hunting with my son in Colorado for 2 weeks starting September 9, and I have to do some work (balljoints) on my 03 Duramax to take it. I many pay a friend to do it if he's interested, but not paying $150-200 an hour in a shop. Then we're going back to Montana to hunt deer and elk there and probably work on the house some more. The gate powdercoating is supposed to be finished by then too so I can install it if the rock work gets done. I likely won't get back to Colorado until early October. Hopefully the weather holds out and I can make it driveable by then.

[BamaNomad]

Good luck Laszlo!

[chevynut]

I contacted Larry last week the day after I returned from Montana as he requested. He told me he had the headliner made and that he could come install it Tuesday (yesterday). He came over late morning and we laid out the headliner on a table to install the bows. The material is awesome and it's a tan wool English broadcloth...Larry says it's the best you can buy.

I gave him my old headliner to use as a pattern but he said he found a pattern he made in the past for another Nomad project. For some reason, he sewed the cardboard strips on TOP of the headliner and he pushed them and the fabric into the bows, which took about an hour. I told him that wasn't the way I did it when I installed the old headliner, and that I just slipped the bows over the cardboard which was sewn on the BOTTOM of the headliner. But I told him I wasn't sure I did that correctly decades ago and that he was the expert on it.

IMG_6051.jpeg

Once he got the bows installed we got in the car and started screwing the bows in from the front of the car to the rear. I thought it looked great, back to the 4th bow, but as we got to the rear of the car I noticed the spacing between the bows wasn't right and the bows started leaning forward and we were running out of fabric. I suspected what was wrong but I bit my tongue and hoped he would realize it soon. All the bows were leaning forward and the rear one wouldn't even line up with the holes in the car. Something was badly wrong.

Larry said we'd have to drill new screw holes and I told him I was concerned about doing that since the holes were all in the stock locations and measured 12 1/2" apart both sides, but the bows measured 11 3/4" apart. There was also a bad "puckering" of the material above the windows. Finally he realized what I already concluded, that putting the cardboard on TOP of the headliner consumed a lot more material as it was pushed into the bows and it wasn't right. So we took it all down and he's either going to modify it by putting new cardboard strips on the bottom or make a whole new headliner after he orders more (expensive) material. Pushing the cloth into the headliner created a crease in it that may not come out and he may have to start over.

It was a total waste of about 5-6 hours of work, time I needed for other things this week, and I'm not sure when we're going to try again since I'm leaving Saturday morning for a two week elk hunt with my son, and when I return we're going to Montana to hunt and work on the house. I may not be back until around mid October which is another 5-6 week delay. I hope this isn't an indication of how things are going to go.

[chevynut]

I asked Larry to make me a couple of small samples of the charcoal leather with french seams using color matching thread and contrasting thread so I can make a decision which way to go. Here they are. I'm not sure the brown thread is the exact color he plans to use on the tan leather, but it's probably close.

It's pretty clear that the contrasting thread makes errors more visible but these were just samples and I'm sure he can make straighter seams. I hope.

IMG_6056.jpeg

[tightline5]

Sounds like this guy is going to take you for a ride. It's obvious that he was in a hurry to pump something out to get you off his back and that's exactly what you got. I would say if he doesn't show up in Oct. with a very nice headliner to install you should have his bill ready and call another shop to get you in in the spring.

Lazlo time to take the gloves off with this guy.

Wishing you the best on this harrow show.

Mine will be home from paint next Saturday, The guy did a excellent job. Went over the entire car with a sun light, and I was a high speed printer for 30 years so all I ever see are the flaws. Custom color we made up so no one else has it.