Rust bucket!

[Ryan]

So! My XJ has decided that after 14 years of life it
no longer wants to live. It's trying to kill itself by slowly decomposing. Or my other guess is that it’s trying to become a piece of swiss cheese.

It now has pretty much no rocker panels (the strip that runs under your door that spans the length of the vehicle)

And a nice size hole above the muffler and one more on the drivers side by the front tire.

....Well I love my jeep! I don’t want it to die or turn into cheese! So I went and had an estimate done for getting all of this repaired and having it painted Black

well I was quoted $4000 bucks! and for that price I'm afraid that my beloved jeep can go rot in hell! Because I cant afford that! that’s more that twice what I paid for it!


SO my question is.....

Does anyone know of a cheap body shop that does a good job? or would anyone be interested in doing the work them selves?

Also please let me know if you have had any good or bad experiences with any particular auto body shop. This way I will know what ones to stay away from.

Thanks in advance
Ryan

[jps4jeep]

Do as much prep work yourself as possible. the smaller the shop, the better, You go to a big shop and they just try to turn out as many vehicles as possible. smaller shops might cost the same, but they will be more willing to work with you about the prep work, take more time and do it right!

Do you know what the differents is between a good paint job and a bad paint job?

about 10 years.

A roperly painted vehicle in this part of the contry should lat about 10 years of daily driving before rust shows up, a piss poor paint job will only last abouta year of two and runt will rear it's ugly head again.

[rayj]

like john said, go to a smaller shop. i have family that does body work, and i get charged a lot, but they are the best around. You get what you pay for