body and interior Taller Los Ponchos Tijuana...any personal experiences? SoCal Alternatives?

[jrhone]

28 minutes ago, TobyB said:

You're gonna have hell attaching the trim, tho...

 

hee

 

t

 

 

Previous owner removed the trim and filled the holes and left the metal very wavy. Probably the heat from the welds. Anyway I purchased a roll of trim that looks just like the stock trim and has 3m adhesive. So it'll be a piece of cake!  

[ray_]

46 minutes ago, jrhone said:

 

Previous owner removed the trim and filled the holes and left the metal very wavy. Probably the heat from the welds. Anyway I purchased a roll of trim that looks just like the stock trim and has 3m adhesive. So it'll be a piece of cake!  

 

Thanks for doing that.

 

I was planning to come by, sneak in and do it in the middle of the night. I've canceled my ticket.

 

[jrhone]

Car is finished!  Picked it up yesterday!  Very happy with the results...will post a full review of the experience in its own thread.  I'm VERY VERY VERY happy with the results.  I now have to put the bumpers and trim back on the car.

[Cole]

This is a pretty old thread so not sure if anyone is still following, but I have my 02 down there right now (at Los Panchos, Ramiro is the owner). So far things are going well. I took it down April 15th and he gave me an estimate of 2 months and he looks like he is on track. The doors are off, all windows are out, the trunk and hood are off and sanding is about half done. Ramiro has sent pictures and video of the work being done. I speak OK Spanish, but his English is almost perfect so you will have no problem if you don't speak Spanish.  He originally quoted me $5,700 for paint and body. The car is straight and rust fee so i thought that was a little high. I countered  with $4,000 and we agreed on $4,600. I think I could have gotten him lower but when he said he worked 7 days a week (I was there on a Saturday) and paid his guys $400 a week I didn't feel like trying to beat him down too much. Besides It would cost more than double that in San Diego. If anyone is interested in more info I'd be happy to oblige. 

[jrhone]

Wow.  Thats a pretty big price difference.  Looks like he is getting alot of work!!  Thats triple what i was quoted.  I ended up right ar $2k.  Including a tip which went to the worker.  

Edited May 11, 2023 by jrhone

[tech71]

yeah its a lot more now but still an attractive price.

You So Cal guys are lucky, in that respect anyway

[RYOLEER]

No way it’s that expensive now. 2 years ago, I was able to a restore my 2002 in Silverlake( by Downtown LA) for $5500 all in. It sounds messed up but I am hoping he took advantage of Cole because I just don’t think that they have tripled the quality of work they do in the span 8 years. I was planning to drive down to TJ to restore my other 02 but I might just end up going with a “body shop” out here in Compton or something. 

[Cole]

Yea I think things have gone up everywhere. I had a couple San Diego shops quote me around $10,000 and more. Of coarse that includes sanding all the way down to bare metal and welding/filing the old bumper and reflector holes and straightening a couple things. I met a guy at La Jolla independent BMW (Carl Nelson's shop) a couple weeks ago who just got his 73 Malaga 02 back from Mexico from a different shop and he paid over $4,000 as well. I saw it and it looked great.  Inflation is everywhere.  

[Cole]

JRhone, yours looks great. We'll have matching cars, I'm changing color from gray to Fjord. 

[Leucadian]

FWIW I got 2 quotes for bumper hole filling and trim delete, basically respraying the bottom 2/3 of the car.  $6500 for one, and around $9k for the other.  

[Mike G]

The price of paint itself has sky rocketed the last few years. 

[Cole]

Thanks for the info Leucadian, that sounds about right. Get rid of those reflectors too, at least the front ones. 

[rstclark]

I’ve replied on this before. I had them paint a car for me and in the end it wasn’t worth it. I ended up with an Earl Schib paint job of paint that wasn’t color matched. Apparently they mixed up different batch’s of paint. From what I have learned to do I could have done a equally good paint job in my back yard for $500 in materials

Might as well go Vegas. You pay you money and you take your chances and in this case it’s in a foreign country

 

Earl Schib btw was famous in LA in the 60s for having  for a chain of auto painting shops that advertised on TV. The infamous ads featured Earl himself saying “I ll paint any car for $29.95”

 

[cda951]

2 hours ago, rstclark said:

I’ve replied on this before. I had them paint a car for me and in the end it wasn’t worth it. I ended up with an Earl Schib paint job of paint that wasn’t color matched. Apparently they mixed up different batch’s of paint. From what I have learned to do I could have done a equally good paint job in my back yard for $500 in materials

Might as well go Vegas. You pay you money and you take your chances and in this case it’s in a foreign country

 

Earl Schib btw was famous in LA in the 60s for having  for a chain of auto painting shops that advertised on TV. The infamous ads featured Earl himself saying “I ll paint any car for $29.95”

 

This is not a shocking thing to learn. I am sure a quality paint job could be achieved somewhere in Tijuana or elsewhere in Mexico for a fraction of what it would cost in Southern CA. But where might that be, and on which day? If one is willing to venture down there and take a risk, you have to be willing to accept the results. 

 

Finding a quality body shop in CA or elsewhere in the US is a challenge in 2023, especially one that is willing to take on an old car project. Sometimes the super high quote one receives is used by the body shop as a deterrent, but other times that is actually taking into account the potential hidden costs for unforeseen additional rust repair. This is an incredibly labor-intensive business, and as we all know, labor costs have risen considerably in past few years.

 

Routine insurance-paid jobs are a more reliable form of income for most body shops, even with the advent of driver-assist technology such as lane-departure assist and radar cruise control, et al (there are mobile services that travel to body shops to recalibrate such things).

 

So, don't expect to find inexpensive bodywork on either side of the border these days. You will get what you pay for, no matter what.

[jrhone]

Disagree with some of the stuff here.  Materials in Mexico are cheap.  They have lead based paint.  No EPA laws.  Most of a good paint job is labor, not materials.  Labor again is cheap.  The hard part is finding someone who sees your same vision on what you expect.  Then they quote you the hours it takes to get that result.  Anyone who didnt get the result they wanted, didnt properly communicate what you wanted.  My quote went from $1200 to $1500 to $2000.  Not because of anything except the amount of labor involved in prep work and my expectation.  So the $4000 quote might be for what would be a $12k paint job.  A bargain if the result is achieved.  In my experience, it seems like they hire ONE person to do your car...If they hire someone that isnt skilled then you get a half ass paint job.  They didnt start my car for 2 weeks because he wanted "The right guy" to do my car.  It wouldn't surprise me if the "good" body guys work at alot of different shops and are hired to do individual cars.  Anyway...I hope the price hasn't quadrupled...lol...I have a car I need to send down later this year...