Went out first thing this morning to do what I thought was supposed to be a quick thermostat job at my buddies house. I normally don't work on people's cars unless they bring it to me, I hate not having the tools I need, but it was a simple thermostat. Turns out thier water pump is junk, which means tearing a bunch of stuff of the motor, so I told them to tow it to my house and I'd do it. The garage down the street from them wanted $150 just to change the thermostat. The thermostat I bought was $7, the gasket was $2 and it coulda been changed in, maybe 15 minutes, if you took your time scraping gaskets. So $10 in parts, $140 labor/15 mins. . that's $560/hr labor rate..WTF? I couldn't imagine the screwing they'd get for a water pump. I can get all the parts for $80, save them a ton of cake, and still make a little pocket cash, in maybe 2-3 hrs of work. When I got home I worked on the Chevelle. I got the used quarters stripped and cleaned up. Some asshat filled some of the inner panel seams with brazing, so they were a mother fucker to get apart, especially the inner wheel well that I need. Pulled the window trim from the windshield and rear window and stripped most of what was left of the old vinyl roof. I found small rot holes around the windshield and base of the rear window, so now I'm probably pulling the glass. I need to pull the side windows to get the rest of the vinyl roof off..it was glued on before the glass and is under the window gaskets. So now it looks like I'm stripping it down to just a shell from the windshield back and doing a complete overhaul on the body.
I was reading back over what I've done in the last couple weeks. I get more shit done than i give myself credit for.