Body shop prices

[reservefj40]

Looking for some advice on what the following should cost. I have a fj40 with a lot of rust. I want to get the cowl removed from the frame and cut from the remaining tub, soda blasted and then welded to a new Heritage 3/4 tub. (my present to myself for a 13 month vacation with my Reserve unit).

I have a local body shop that does resto work on older autos. They can't give me an estimate, but they charge 65/hr for labor and 100/bag for soda blasting and I will settle up with them at the end of each week.

I'm stripping the tub down to nothing, so I don't have to pay for them to remove knobs and seats and such. I know any advice would be a guess, but if someone has experience with this and can let me know the ballpark I'm looking at (10, 20 or more hours) it will let me know how much money I should be looking at.

Thanks for any help.

 

[jtaco1]

Cut the tub off yourself, use a sawzall and go to town and then deliver them the rolling chassis or go one step further and just give them the cowl to blast alone if you are doing the resto.

Shouldn't take more than a day to strip the cowl and blast it with two guys. Aligning and welding the tub up maybe another day or so, if the cowl doesn't need any additional work.

Figure maybe 20 hours tops if they have some clue as to what they are doing. Whatever you can do yourself will help cut costs.

 

[Waorani]

I cut my cowl off myself with minimal problems - used spot weld cutters, grinder and cutoff wheels to do it but came off ok. Body tub was already off frame and stripped but it only took me a couple of hours to separate the cowl from the tub. Just take your time and cut/grind through the body side to minimize damage to the cowl metal.

Also had it soda blasted (https://forum.ih8mud.com/showthread.php?t=157587) which took about 2 hours just because the guy that did it was fairly new at sodablasting and he spent a lot of unecessary time blasting the tar mat material from the floorboard areas - which I actually told him not to worry about. An experienced sodablaster should be able to do a cowl in less than an hour.

Plan is to weld myself to a new premium Heritage 3/4 tub but haven't gotten that far yet.

 

[reservefj40]

Waorani, good looking job on the soda blasting. I have a grinder and cut-off wheels, is the spot weld cutter a must or can I get by without it? Also, how many bags of material did it take for the soda blasting. body shop wants 100/bag.

So, cut it on the body side and let the body shop trim the excess to avoid any major screw-ups, huh? Will they need the frame to line up the tub and cowl? This might work out - I can cut the cowl, let them blast it and fix the rust, then run the tub down to weld it together. That would actually give me time to strip the frame, then let them blast it and put the two together.

I wish I had the experience and room to weld and blast myself. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Poser]

Will they need the frame to line up the tub and cowl?

If you want it to look correct when it is done, I would make sure they have the frame, new body mounts, front fenders, hood, bib and anything else that will be used with this tub at the time of install.

 

[Waorani]

You can get by without spot weld cutters but they can make the job easier. I wasted money on what were supposed to be some super duper cutters from Eastwood but they weren't worth a crap. I'd think some cheaper ones like these http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_36327_36327 would work just as well.

Forgot that I also used a 1/4" carbide burr in a die grinder which worked well at grinding through spot welds.

I'd remove all the tub metal myself if I were you. It will save $ and its not that hard to do. If your tub is trashed and not worth saving - I'd whack it off with a sawzall/torch/plasma/whatever right behind the cowl and then go to work removing the overlapping tub metal from the cowl. That will be much easier than what I did (trying to minimize damage to both and just trying to go down through spot welds to break them loose).

$100/bag might not be that bad a price depending on how efficient they are. The guy that did my soda blasting is a friend and we swap favors so all I paid was the cost of soda, fuel, and the time his worker put in on it. I think he has his blaster adjusted so that he runs about a bag an hour or 45min through it so if your guy is similar $100/hr isn't bad. My guy's normal rate is $175/hr.