Body work: Yes or no?

I don’t know of a single body shop that would be willing to do a half-a$$ repair.

Body shops take pride in what they do. So if a repair isn’t done correctly, it’s their reputation on the line.

Tester

Not to disagree but regardless of the age of my cars, they have always looked good. I just couldn’t drive a car that was all scratched up. I think the OP said most of it was bumper scrapes except for the door, that just needed to be repainted. So I guess the goal would be getting a good job done but minimizing the cost a little. That’s why I did stuff myself. So I still say find a guy moon lighting out of his garage with low over-head costs. Back when I had a body guy by day who did work at home at night put a windshield in for me. It took a few days to get it back but the cost was $25 for his time. The quality was the same as what I would have gotten going to his place of employment during the day.

I didn’t say paint the dent. I said paint the rusted spots (after some prep).
The fact that that response got 3 “likes” and mine got none suggests I should find another way to waste my time.

I was just having a little fun with you (or attempting to). No harm meant. But you did mention rubbing compound, paint, etc., and seemed to have missed or ignored the door dent.

Those rust spots are not going to slow this car down, there are more important things in life to worry about. This car may not even be around ten years from now.

Contact the local High school or trade school and see if their auto shop needs cars for the students to practice doing body work, they will do the work for much less than professional shops.

The story from my father and his friend having their “first body work experience” back in 80s…

They had one fender damaged on an old beater and sure enough decided to fix it on their own.
By the point they layed down their mallets and finished with fillers/primers/etc… it looked nice and shiny, even better than the other side.
The trouble was: they made it something like 10% bigger in the process of banging it out and flattening the metal, so it looked quite DIFFERENT than another side… although no doubt it had nice curves and transitions :slight_smile:

I don’t know where you live, but in my township in southern New Jersey, neither the high school nor the community college offer courses in auto mechanics or any other trades. The administrators explained to me that there had been no interest in those courses.

And probably take a long time to do the amount of work this abused vehicle needs.

Yeah this has been going on for a long time as high school councilors think everyone should go to a four year college. The result has been a shortage of trade people often earning $50,000 and up. Slowly this is turning around and even educators think not all people should go on to college. To help them with this concept kicking and screaming, they call vo techs colleges now. We had an excellent long standing program that just got gutted with the hard trades in favor of two year nursing, accounting, records management, etc. degrees. Only a public outcry saved our award winning auto mechanics course. Yeah and I’ve been involved with the public schools for close to 40 years so don’t flame me.

Well, 96% of the high school students in my township go on to 4 year colleges. And a $50,000 income barely gets you into the bottom of the middle class these days. To truly be successful in the 21st century you need at least a bachelor’s degree, and preferably more.

That’s nice but that’s quite a burden for the 4% when you need a car fixed, a house built, a furnace installed, road fixed, faucet replaced, tree cut down, street plowed, car towed, wifi installed, and on and on. The manufacturers in the area had an annual business outlook meeting this week and the biggest impediment to expansion is finding qualified people in the trades. Someone who can operate CNC etc.

Then let them move their plants to where the people are less aspirational

But then the aspirational people with the degrees have no where to work and no one to tell what to do.

I’m sort of kidding. But I think college is a little overrated as of late. I went myself. And will encourage my kids to go. But we’ll always need tradesmen. And some of the skilled trade jobs pay pretty well. But people need to learn the skills. Either through on the job training or a trade school.

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Like China, Taiwan, Mexico, Japan, Korea, et al. Then what is left is low paying service jobs like clerks and wait staff. Just saying there is a U turn taking place in education to provide the needed trades and less emphasis being placed on Art History, Psychology, and Sociology degrees. But of course some go kicking and screaming because it means lower admissions and loss of tuition.

Yes, the labor intensive factory jobs will all move to other countries. The future in this country is STEM jobs. Those who do not develop the skills to do those jobs will go the way of the dinosaurs.