The Fix-it Dad

[drcollie]

My son's girlfriend had a deer strike with her beater '88 Acura Legend sedan last week, and the deer hit the car right where the left front fender and driver's door come together. The deer hit pretty good and she could not longer get the door open so she had been crawling over the console to get out. My son Alex mentioned to me that the body shop quoted her $ 300 to make it so the door would open so she could get in the car (without fixing the dents).

Knowing she didn't have any money, and the whole car is worth only about $ 800 I said "Have Denise bring it over here and I bet I can make it so she can open that door and get in the car, let's see if we can save her some money."

So last night she comes over at 8:11 p.m. We pull the car into the garage so I can get it under the light and her and Alex are standing around watching as I assess the situation. I study the damaged area until 8:12 p.m., then walk over to my tool box and pull out my BOSOPB. (that's Big-Ole-Snap-On-Pry-Bar). With the BOSOPB firmly in hand, I position between front fender and door edge and then give it one 45 degree wedge push, then re-position 30 degrees lower and push again. At precisely 8:14 p.m. I'm all done. The door opens smooth and clean. Total time in the garage to fix : 3 minutes. I put a quart of oil in her car and aired up her tires just to make the experience more complete...so that took another 5 minutes.

The kids were shocked. She says "Why was the body shop going to charge me $ 300 to do what you did in less than a minute?"

I said "Because they can is why. Now you can see that sometimes you can just do things yourself and use that money for something else." They were both stunned as they stood there that I did that in such as short amount of time.

It's always fun to be a Garage Hero.

[hglaber]

She says "Why was the body shop going to charge me $ 300 to do what you did in less than a minute?"

I said "Because they can is why.

More like because they have to. My brother once owned an auto repair shop. Not a body shop, but close enough. It was in an area that I'm sure has lower rent than the D.C. Metroplex. He had 3 bays, and in order to cover just the rent worked out to about $20/hour/bay. Not taxes, equipment, liability/errors & omissions insurance, wages, profit, franchise fees, or any other overhead (on a triple-net lease). Just the rent on the building. That was hard to do, especially for an honest guy, in the Detroit area, in 2007, so the repair shop is no more.

For a body shop, that $300 is probably just the "bench fee" that is the lowest price they can charge to even drive the car in the door in order to stay afloat. Same goes for people like plumbers and HVAC techs. They can rebuild your faucet or change your furnace ignitor in 5 minutes, but they can't stay in business doing so unless they charge $75 or more just to come to your house. Knowing how to do the small stuff like that definitely helps keep some coins at home where they belong.

[beddingking]

I agree that pretty most projects of that type can be done at home. At least that way you know how things have been done, and that they have been done right. That said, I agree with the previous poster. Most places have a pretty hard time staying in business.