It Lives!! (Friend's FB)
 

Hey Guys,

After almost 5 years of absolute insanity, my friend Marc's FB finally moved (and thankfully, stopped) under it's own power today!

This project started very much like Project Naomi - as a complete teardown and rebuild, rotisserie and all. The short version is that one awesome shop took it apart (RPM Motorsports, you guys were awesome while you lasted), and they gave it to a paint shop. This paint shop did half the job, stopped making progress for well over a year, then the owner of the shop broke the contract, demanded almost double the original cost to finish the project, and just generally screwed my friend over big time.

Eventually we got the car back (but not before negotiating paying $4k beyond the original price to get a car with no paint on it other than the engine bay), and took it down to Joe at ClassicAuto. Joe did an awesome job of picking up the pieces, finishing the paint and body work, and assembling a rolling chassis for us with glass, trim, and a virtually complete interior.

Unfortunately, in the shuffle between three different shops, through the closing of RPM, and all the crazyness and confusion over the years, many parts were lost. More recently Cary (trydis7) hooked us up with a friend of his who had a parts car that we could grab to salvage parts from. It's been a few months of intense weekend work, but this morning we started the engine for the first time since fall of 2007, and took it for its maiden drive!

There are still a lot of little kinks to work out. The maiden voyage took us to the local Canadian Tire, which is the only place that was open to do alignments in Gatineau on the labour day long weekend. Unfortunately we got there late, so they've got it until Tuesday, but at the same time they're also going to fab up a muffler bracket, change the front driver's wheel bearings (which we only discovered were shot to hell today), and address a few other little things. We've got a whole bunch of electrical issues to chase down, but it drives!

Here's a picture of the car in the CT parking lot, right after its first drive under its own power in almost 5 years. We're proud, and super stoked to take it on a longer voyage (and snap more pictures) later this week. I'll see if I can dig up some more pics I took of it in the last few weeks as we were building. We haven't been documenting much but I'm sure I've got something.

Hells yes! This is awesome!

Jon

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634422

Okay, so I dug through my pictures and found enough to make a mostly complete point-form timeline of this project.

In December of 2007 Marc bought the car. It wasn't running, and was missing a gas tank and a bunch of little things, but the price was right and the car was in decent shape, so he picked it up.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634263

We spent the next month sourcing parts and spending all of our free time getting the car running.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634263

The snow hit in mid November that year as it tends to do, so Marc only really got a week or two's worth of driving out of his new FB before he had to garage it. One day he asked me what my plans for my car were. I told him that I wanted to have it put up on a rotisserie, stripped to the metal, and rebuilt from scratch. "Okay, let's do mine!" he said. I told him how much I figured it would cost, but he wasn't swayed.

At the time I had already been chatting with Joe and Dan over at RPM about eventually doing my project when the time came, so we sent them some pictures of the car and asked if they'd take on the project. They said they knew a paint shop up the road and could strip it, send it for paint, and reassemble it for us. Plans were made, and Marc and I started stripping to car to try and save RPM some time. We pulled the Engine/Tranny for them before they came to pick it up in December of 2007.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634263

They got right to work taking the car apart. By the end of February 2008 they had dissasembled it, built a rotisserie for it, got the car mounted and stripped off every last thing that wasn't going to the paint shop

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634263

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634263

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634263

They handed it over to the paint shop, and at first the paint shop jumped right onto the project (next post)

Always great to get a project done!

Within the first month at the paint shop the body was blasted to remove the surface rust, grit and grime, and anything else that was stuck on there after two and a half decades of driving

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634501

In April of 2008 the car was primered, seams sealed, and actual body work could begin.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634501

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634501

The original contract with the body shop explicitely outlined the project details and cost. The body as delivered by RPM would be stripped down, all rust removed, new metal welded in where necessary, all body repairs would be made then it would be primed, sanded, painted the original colour and clear coated before being returned to RPM for disassembly. The cost for this was a cool $10,000.

This last picture of the state of the car in April of 2008 is just about as far as the project went with that shop. Pretty much all the metal work got done, but then the car sat for over a year on the rotisserie in primer and seam-sealer. We kept hearing that "all that needs to be done is some body filler, sanding, and paint, it'll be back to RPM soon!". In June of 2009 I specifically remember a promise that it would be back to RPM before Canada Day.

Some time shortly after Canada Day 2009 the owner of the paint shop called Marc. He said something along the lines of "I've done a lot of work on your car. In fact, I think I've done $10,000 worth of work already. I know I said I'd have it back to RPM soon, but truthfully I think I've given you your money's worth already. If you want the car finished and returned to RPM for reassembly, it's going to cost you another $9,000". We thought he was joking. Nearly doubling the price of the project, this close to completion?

The contract clearly stated that $10k would cover everything unless a major issue was unearthed, for example had the rust broken through around the control arms. But there was no issue, just a greedy shop owner 500km away in a different province who knew that he had Marc by the balls. We had already paid him the full $10k up front (our mistake) and the shop owner was banking on the fact that we wouldn't spent the time, money and effort to go back and forth to Kitchener and hire a lawyer to run this through the courts, so things stalled.

Eventually, Marc and him settled on an agreement that I personally think sucked. Marc gave him another $4,000 to coat the underside, prep and paint the engine bay only, and release the car. The car was released to RPM and they were able to assemble enough of the underside to put the car down on its wheels. We now had a car with no paint and no glass, and reassembly couldn't continue until that was resolved.

By this time I had met and begun talking to Joe from ClassicAuto in Hagersville about project-related stuff. Joe agreed to take on the unfinished project, and being very sympathetic to Marc's plight he gave him a very good price to do the finishing work.

Time passed, and by February of 2010 the car had paint, glass, and most of an interior!

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634501

Marc and I took a week off work, drove to Hagersville, and got rooms at a local motel. Joe's parents were nice enough to let us use their home garage to start putting as many pieces back on the car as we could. We made a trip up to RPM, grabbed as many project parts as could be found (they had just moved shops and much of it was scattered or in storage), and spent a week working on the car. We dropped in the Engine and Tranny, and bolted as many things onto the car as we could.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1346634501

Between February of 2010 and Summer of 2012, the project again grew stagnant. For many months we weren't sure how to proceed. We were still missing tons of parts that got lost in the moves, and we tried to see if Joe at Classicauto would be willing to finish the assembly to save us the towing costs of getting it from Hagersville, ON to Gatineau, QC more than 600km away.

That didn't pan out, so eventually the car was towed back to Marc's parents' garage here in Gatineau. It sat there for many months, as Marc and I had a really stupid falling out over some woman and didn't really speak for almost a year. Eventually we buried the hatchet on that one, but still didn't know how to proceed.

Finally, in May of 2012 we had a breakthrough. Cary (Trydis7) PM'd me about a GSL-SE that his friend was sending to the junk yard. He didn't even know we were looking for one, but he had helped me with Project Keiko and thought that I might have a use for it.

Side Note: Project Keiko was my attempt to build an "in the meantime" FB for Marc as a birthday present before we had the falling out. I never got it running and ended up selling it to a nice guy from the Ontario side who finished the project and got it on the road!

So Marc co-ordinated with Cary's friend, bought the rusted-out -SE parts car, and work began.

I'm having trouble pulling progress pics off my digital camera right now, but I'll edit this thread to add those later.

Finally, today, 4 months later, we got the car running, driving, and stopping all under its own power. It's a hell of a milestone, but the smile on Marc's face when he got to drive his rx7 again after all of that was worth it.

We're hoping to iron the kinks out in the next week and make the 400km round trip to Montreal for poutine and smoked meat as the first real road trip with it.

It's been a hell of a ride, but I sure am glad it's wrapping up now.

Many thanks to Joe and Dan from RPM, Joe from ClassicAuto, Cary and his friend, and all the people who helped out as this project unfolded. You guys are awesome.

Jon

Great Story, way to see the project through. Congrats!

Wow! 14k on body and paint. I will never complain about my bullshit 1800 dollar paint job again. That is committment...the car came out great btw and that blue is one of my fav colors for these cars

Stories like this are not as uncommon as you may think. The best bet is to just give them a deposit or pay in stages as work is accomplished. Still, it's no gaurentee. The guy spent the money without completing the work then moved on to other paying projects to keep the money flowing. After all that time passed, he was forced to re-negoiate the price in order to avoid working for free.

If he was reputable to begin with, he would not have gotten upside down without saying anything in the first palce. Your friend can still go back and sue but its probablly a lost cause as he does not have any means to reimburse him anyway. Sad story, but its good to see that it didn't stop there. I also applaud his efforts in stripping it all the way down and begining there.

Yup, plus what was paid to RPM for the disassembly, and ClassicAuto for the final paint job, and the parts car, and the parts we had to order from BlackDragon, and the upgrades etc...

This project's somewhere in the $20k range. People think we're crazy, you could buy a decent FD at that price. But these cars are getting rarer and rarer, especially up here in Canada where rust is a huge issue. Having a car that you've restored to "new" condition is worth it, if you plan to keep it another few decades! That's why I'm doing mine, too. But hopefully mine won't cost as much!

Jon

Nice looking car and for all the trouble, at least it's been done right. You just can't be too careful with body rust north of the Mason-Dixon.

I certainly respect professional mechanics and body shops, they know way more than me and can do a better job in less time. But when I see the costs, I step back and say "hey, I want a piece of that action" and end up doing it myself. And since the car is sitting in my driveway, it's a daily inspiration to get back to work and get it finished.

But hindsight is always 20/20, you guys deserve tons of credit for seeing this thing out through all the trials and tribulations. We're looking forward to the pics and videos as she gets back on the road!

great story!! any more restoration pics to shareof your friend's car?? they really did the job right by stripping it completely and restoring it! what did they coat the underside of the car with?

Glad ur friend is happy with the end result, that's what matters the most. But why not share the name of the shop/shop owner in order to help future restorers avoid this (of course paying in stages helps also)...unless there was some sort of nondisclosure signed.

I debated sharing the shop name, but decided that I wanted the thread to be more about the completion of the project than airing that dirty laundry. I didn't want the thread to degenerate into debates over how trustworthy the shop owner is, if people who knew him started to chime in (mainly in the Canadian section where I cross-posted this).

If anyone does want the shop's name, PM me and I'll share it.

Jon

good answer jon and very fair.