04.28.08
Picking Up the Chassis — New Floor Pans
This morning, I picked up the VW chassis with the new floor pans. I wasn’t very happy with the quality of the work I received. First of all, the restoration company installed a set of floor pans that they had in stock. Theses were the flimsy Brazilian ones. They didn’t seem to want to go to the effort of ordering the heavy duty pans that I asked for. “We use these all the time and they work out just fine,” was what I was told. Perhaps they’re fine for them, but I wanted the heavier ones. If they want to earn repeat business, they need to listen to their customers.
I took some measurements of the holes in the old floor pans to determine the locations of the seat positioners. The dimensions might be useful when designing the new sub-frame. Perhaps I can add brackets to the sub-frame to tie in the seat positioners and seat-belt anchor points, rather than just bolting them thru the floor pans.
The restoration company then charged me for labor to remove the jacking points, seat rails and other fixtures that I didn’t want on the flimsey floor pans. If they had ordered the pans I asked for, I wouldn’t have needed to pay this charge. You can order pans with most (if not all) of this stuff having never been installed in the first place. If they had used the proper pans, they wouldn’t have needed to have a bunch of holes (from drilled-out spot welds) welded shut. They missed some of the holes too and, when I got the chassis back to my shop, wound up spending about 2 hours with a brazing torch closing them off.
Then, they had the audacity to charge me more than double for these inferior pans. I could have picked them up from Chirco (Tucson, AZ) for less than half of what they charged me.
The quality of the welding was mediocre. The restorer figured that they’d look just fine when the chassis was powder coated. I figured that a poor welding job – with a lot of blobs, spatter, drips and grinder marks — would only look like a powder coated poor welding job.
The final insult occurred when the restorer gave me a lecture on how he hated it when people tried to get him to do the job “inexpensively” and then never came back. He insisted that he treats his REGULAR customers very well. Uh-huh. I asked him for a quote on a set of EMPI disc brakes for the rear of the car and his price was about $150.00 more than Chirco charges. I also asked him for a quote on rebuilding the transaxle and his price was about double what I can get from Chirco for a rebuilt unit. I don’t mind paying Cadillac prices for Cadillac work but I do mind paying Rolls-Royce prices for Ford Pinto work.
While I was there, I asked them to press out the ball joints in my four trailing arms. The owner said that he’d be happy to do it, now that he had his hydraulic press fixed. Right. What did I find when he took me back into his shop? — two guys wailing on my trailing arms with a pair of sledge hammers. That’ll be great for the castings. What do you think the odds are that this company will be getting any more of my work? The owner probably thinks that his work is outstanding and would point to his wall full of trophies (from many years back). My opinion is somewhat different. I bet I know why he doesn’t get a lot of repeat business.
In the afternoon, I spent about 4 hours grinding off poor welds, brazing holes on the floor pans shut and doing a bunch of filling (with brass) to make the bottom of the floor pans look at least marginally acceptable. I managed to complete the work on the bottom of the floor pan. In a few days, I’ll need to flip it over and correct the damage to the top. There’s probably another 12-15 hours of work that needs to be done. It won’t be perfect, but it will be serviceable. The top of the floor pans will be covered with carpet, so the poor welding job won’t show. Perhaps if I undercoat the bottom with a sound deadening material, it won’t show either. My main concern is that I leave no holes in the pan unfilled — where rust could take hold.
I checked out the data plate on the G.E. motor. Interestingly, there is no G.E. data plate – only a Bradley one that gives the Part Number (G125000-1) and Serial Number (JS88-436-JS). Rats! Now I have no way of knowing if the motor I have is a G.E. 5BT1346B50 or not.
The data plate on the Lester Charger was a bit more useful…
Model: 9870
DC Volts: 12/96
Type: 12/96 LCR25-8ET
S/N: 1-81
AC Volts: 115/208-230
AC Amps: 19
Phase: 1
Freq.: 60 Hz.
DC Amps: 25
