How much does a restoration really cost?

[MadMike]

The resto is as open ended as the price would be. It would be an open checkbook deal.

"send me the bill".

Unless you do this yourself. I probably peed away $15,000 on my car and I'm just throwing it together. (and I'm not done yet).

My friend was quoted $9000 to paint his 71 firebird. With a 9 month waiting period. The car would be completely disassembled, cleaned, painted and re-assembled.

There is no such thing as a "common, readily available" anything when doing a concourse restoration. You'll be spending big $$$ and hunting all over the world for date coded valve stem caps, clips, fasteners, coils, springs, exhaust pipe clamps. Wait until you spend $200 for the correct exhaust clamps. If that's no big deal, then get your checkbook out.

Probably the best advice you've heard already is buy something else that's already done. After you do this, you won't be able to enjoy the car (like someone like me would). Some folks enjoy the ownership of a car like this, or enjoy seeing it in a museam or hauling it all around the country to a show. I'd prefer to hammer the hell out of my car and not worry about kicking the rods out the side of the block or blowing rubber all over my quarter panels.

If you enjoy doing this type of work, then you can take a jalopy and subcontract the work out to competant facilities with references from some of the guys here, and do most of the bitch work yourself. For $60 - $100/hour, I can do a lot of bitch work and save a couple bux.

Lastly, have all the $ up front. That's probably what it'll take anyway before a competant shop will touch the car. It would suck to run out of money and only be 1/3 of the way done. Because of this, most shops won't work unless the job is pre-paid.