kevm14 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 14, 2022 8:21 am
I canceled my appointment for the West Bay Iron Works people. They are my backup plan if something falls through with Atlas.
Atlas told me it wasn't worth repairing but it could be done. Basically the bigger issue is the floor area behind the rear rockers. He said they could still do the spring mount for around $1000 but recommended against it. I said thanks and picked up the SRX.
Over the weekend I took a closer look and while I would assume the opinion of guys who weld rusty junk would be trustworthy, I am not sure I totally agree with the assessment. Now, there is clearly significant missing material. However, this is nothing that wasn't also wrong with the STS when I sold it and, actually, it's not as bad I think. That said, my gut was telling me to still pursue repairing the spring mount because that is just a very pressing safety issue. The floor is not.
I was considering calling back Atlas but I decided that a second opinion would be a better use of my time.
So I took it to West Bay Iron Works today. He looked at it. He said yeah the spring mount looks really unsafe. I really do think this thing would have failed (resulting in an accident) if it wasn't for the self-leveling shocks. He also said the other side is working on it (which I already noted). After that I said, take a look at the floor/rocker area. He did. The conclusion he came to was pretty much what I decided over the weekend: fix the spring mount only. He said it will be around $1000 but possibly up to $1200 depending on how removing items out of the way goes (some wiring, suspension stuff). Also, he said he expects somewhere around 8 hours of work, which obviously translates to $125/hr. All of that checks out to me. It would take me 3x as long and come out way worse. I THINK he is gonna patch up the left side in addition to fix the right side.
However, the mind blowing part was when he pulled a piece off the rocker/floor area and said "this has been patched before." WHAT?? We bought this in 2015 with 91k and honestly it looked pretty clean to me. I mean, it did last 7 more years of RI driving (albeit garaged). But yeah he said someone welded some plate there before (no I don't think Barry's did this, but I don't really know). Which means this happened before we bought it in 2015. Between this and the STS, I think I am done buying cars with NH history.
He admitted it looked nice otherwise (just the presentation overall) and said I shouldn't have an issue fetching like $5k which is also what my intuition said, and not feel like a total scumbag since it will be safe to drive afterwards (the next owner can play around with the floor holes). So I think I am finally on an exit ramp here, at least with the SRX. He says he might be able to get to it later this week. We'll try to drop it off tonight.
Other info: he said his main business is mostly mobile welding for Verizon and other places, also I think fence work. He does rusty vehicles "on the side." Seemed like a good guy, but I'll check back when I've paid him to do something.