About Restoration
Many mobile techs out there will tell you that one should specialize in a single service, rationalizing that "how can you be an expert at more than one thing?" With this, I completely disagree.
A good craftsman with a life-long devotion to developing his knowledge and hand skills should be able to fix anything.
My love of restoration, touch-up, repair, modification/customizing, hot-rodding, and general tinkering goes back to my childhood when I built my first BMX bike. I started with a hand-me-down Schwinn that I got from my cousin, at around age 9 or 10. I remember disassembling the bike, sanding the rust off of the frame, and re-painting it a cool Metallic Blue color.
It was then that I learned that lacquer doesn't stick to bare steel very well, when my painstakingly applied spray-can paint began to flake off. The "School of Hard Knocks" tought me to use primer, as well as so many other "hands-on" tough lessons. I think that those who stand the tallest, stand upon the biggest pile of failures, and learned a little something from each one.
Not long after my bike racing days, I gained valuable skills as a teen-ager helping my old friend Reg Jarrel restore antique Plymouths. Reg was a retired Chrysler proving grounds driver/mechanic. I believed that he could build or fix anything -and he could!
Since that time, I have worked in a custom hot rod upholstery shop, attended Luthery School in Arizona, and became a guitar repair/restoration technician and was promoted to "Custom Builder" at the Gibson Custom Shop.
After burning out on factory life, I began doing route work in Nashville in 1999, when I met some of the auto dealers that I still do business with today.
I'm the guy that dealers call when a less experienced, or just plain careless mobile tech comes by offering "a bargain" repair. Trying to save a buck can turn out quite costly, when the "bargain" repair has to be undone before it can be re-done. You get what you pay for, or sometimes less. Most of these repairs looked better before the guy touched it. I remember telling my friend Charlie from University Motors that "You paid someone to do this to your car!"
I also do not participate in the $35/car scam. These guys claim to do it all, and charge a flat rate to repair every car on the lot. They do not do it all, but rather simply open the door, put down a plastic floor mat, and proceed to the next car. And if they do actually attempt to fix something, you can usually count on a two minute, instant oat-meal, Made-in-China quality repair.