Learn me: Working in an automotive restoration or race car shop

This seems to be the dream for most of us, but for the few of you guys in it today, what did it take to get where you are? Where did you start? Did you come into your industry with skills or did you pick them up as you went along.

I'm hating the new job, and I'm ready to get down and go to school and learn the skills I need to learn what I want to do. These days it seems like some trade school will go a long way in getting your foot in the door with some places.

This isn't something I plan on making a lot of money with, so don't worry about that. I need something that keeps me interested every day. Working on cars has always done that for me when I have a long term project and the money to put into it. Why not get paid to do what I like doing anyway?

Be very careful. Turning your favorite hobby into a means of making a living can ruin it for you. Most guys I work with in the car repair biz no longer play much with their own stuff after work as they are sick of cars by then. I was given the advice not to do it for a living if I liked doing it for fun by a wise old mechanic/body man and today I am so glad I listened to that advice.

If you decide the above doesn't apply to you then you need to decide which side you want to be on: mechanical or body. There is a huge need for good body techs but most of the work is collision repair. Few shops do restoration type work. My current one does but it is intermingled with collision work as that is where the money is.

Mechanical is different and I'm not as knowledgeable on that side. In my mind you probably need to specialize a bit (muscle cars, British cars) and become really proficient at it.

I've also seen a need for non-dealer motorcycle repair but that can be seasonal.

+1 on hobby becoming the job. In not in automotive work but my love of architecture has suffered from being an architect. I'm sure people can work through it. My boss certainly doesn't feel that way. But once you've done it you e done it. My advice would be see if someone will let you apprentice for a week before making the investment. You may find the job is just a job and the fact that the product is a car becomes irrelevant.

ddavidv wrote: I was given the advice not to do it for a living if I liked doing it for fun by a wise old mechanic/body man and today I am so glad I listened to that advice.

I think I worked for that guy. When I was still in the Air Force I worked nights at a shop (yeah, military pay sucks) guy that owned it was a great mechanic and always talked about his dream car. One day I said 'you've got money, you've got skills, why don't you build it already?' His answer was simple, 'I do this 10 hours a day, when I go home I don't want to do it some more, I don't even have a tool box at home anymore'

At the time I was deciding between my 2 "hobbies" of computers and cars for a career. Made computers a career and as I get older I'm thankful I dont have to sling wrenches every day to feed the family. A weekend of "play" in the shop leaves me hurting for days.

I used to really enjoy programming computers. After doing it as a job for 30 years, not so much. I wrench on cars as a hobby, and plan on keeping it that way. It's good to be able to get away from it occasionally. OTOH, if you start out hating your job, I can't imagine what things would be like after 30 years.

Not personal experience but a close friend was working at a tire store when I met him. He started working on cars at his house to make extra cash. Later a friend offered him some space at a shop he rented to store his "toys" in so my friend started doing more involved auto repairs. Things grew from there and he ended up taking over the whole space and working almost full time there. He then lucked out and heard about "Spec Miata" he helped build 3-4 of these cars and it just snowballed from there. Today he has a semi truck & trailer, a totter trailer with a motorhome, and if needed a PU to pull 5th wheel trailer. Multiple employees work for him and he goes to many SCCA races each year and the SCCA Runoffs to support his customers!

I love what I do but I don't work on cars at home anymore. I switched to motorcycles so I would have something different to do.

I fell ass-backward into my job, a guy I used to work for ended up working at the shop I'm at when they were building hotrods. They needed another guy and he brought me in.

He has since retired and the shop has changed focus to concours restorations in full classic cars.

Stay away from autobody, it's always dirty, smelly and you work with a lot of transient people. Every single body guy I've met is a a "grass is greener" kind of guy who will drop this job for an extra $0.50 at another shop in a heartbeat.

Be very good at what you do, don't be afraid to try everything. I figure if some other guy can do it, so can I. Be anal retentive and picky, that's what makes or breaks the car.

Watch who you work for, I've seen some guys in this industry with huge egos and I can't believe they find guys to work for them.

As for the skills, I was an aircraft mechanic for eight years, found out the pay sucked and ended up running a power tool repair shop for five years. I quit that and went to work for the competition, I was the guy who made the yes/no decisions for the factory in China. If you bitch about the quality of Harbor Freight style tools, that's my fault. After that, I started at the current place.

Check out www.vintagerodshop.com

Good luck

What is it that you are good at that you would like to monetize as a job?

What is your value proposition to the shop owner on day one? Time was a kid got started by sweeping the floor for the privileged of being there and if he fit in he was eventually given a task to see if he had any talent.

How good are you at knowing how long a job is going to take and how good are you at hitting that target?

Can you handle working only when your skills are needed? If you are doing panel restoration, you might need to shop yourself out to a few places in order to keep busy since most projects have phases. Maybe you can cross-over to other skill sets and keep busy in one shop.

The people who pay for restoration work are finicky. If you are in a good shop, chances are the boss is going to be finicky also. So, the concept of "Good Enough" is not one to live by.

As we all know, with old cars and custom solutions, things sometimes go sideways. Your boss is going to be very aware of when you are making or losing him money. You should be also. How he express his awareness is going to be a huge part of what you think of the job.

My experience in a similar field was the offshore boat shop. Mostly fabrication and wiring. The reality was that I was not building "Boats". I had a series of "projects" such as machine a part on the mill or lathe, wire the gauges, hang the engine where it needs to be; point is I could have been building a house rather than a boat if looked at in the right light. I suspect that work in a classic restoration shop will be the same. I liked the job a lot. Later in life I got into a job building robotic test fixtures, the jobs were very similar in what I did.

Did a stint in my garage restoring shells for British sports cars. Mostly MGBs. If working out of your own shop, you need to be disciplined and not mind having nobody to talk to all day. Your overhead is about $10/hour even in your own garage,so factor that in or you will go broke. I was smart/lucky because circumstances allowed me to choose my clients. There are a lot of headcases out there that you want to stay away from. I did metal restoration work, not bodywork and the big payoff was seeing happy customers and delivering shells that were worthy of the rest of the $$$ that was going to be poured into them. Good thing I had a real job at the same time cause I would have starved. I quit because I did not want to charge more than $30/hour. FYI less than half actually finished their projects after they left. I learned not to care or want to buy them back for half of what they had paid me. So, yeah, you get a bit jaded.

I did it for years. It can be wonderful or it can be hell. Most shops (unless you are Jesse James or Troy Trepanier) are operating on shoestring budgets and it can be very stressful for the owner and therefore for the rest of the business.

I started in the business by walking into Hollywood Hot Rods in Burbank and telling Davida that they "needed me they just didn't know it yet, so I was there to let them know." I put together a portfolio, they put me through a few interviews with Troy Ladd, and offered me a position in the office. I turned it down. Instead I went to Wil Sakowski and he said I could help out for a week for no pay to see if I had what it took. After the first day he handed me $100 and said "you're hired."

Working with Sakowski was simply the best job I ever had. It was me, Spencer Getty, and Wil playing with cars and other people's money. Every once in a while Mercury Charlie would stop in when he was out on the west coast for a show. We would surf some mornings to avoid rush hour traffic, and we almost always ate lunch together; something that one of us would bring to cook on the grill. We pranked each other daily. The only reason I'm not still working there is because Wil moved the business back east and I couldn't follow.

After that I moved to Austin and Wil set me up with a job at Mercury Charlie's. Unfortunately by the time I got there he had a slump and was thinking about laying off a couple guys so that never materialized. I did go over and poke around the shop a little. I applied and interviewed at Austin Speed Shop, but that was right around the time that Jesse James was buying into it and it never materialized. It was about then that I started managing repair shops and it sorta filled the gap.

I realized that what I loved about the job was working with Wil and Spencer. We were an awesome team, good friends, and we made some really serious road candy. I never really sought to get back into it. I did work for one other shop, but only a couple weeks. The owner was a genius with a paint gun, but didn't know squat about anything else. If he had just left it up to us it would be fine, but he asked the impossible and didn't understand why we just couldn't work miracles.

The only reason making my hobby into my job worked was because I loved the job with Sakowski. It was more like practicing my hobby with some friends and getting paid for it. Anywhere else it just seemed like throwing my hobby into a pressure cooker and it wasn't fun.

I wouldn't go into auto body work now for sure, with semi-autonomous cars coming out and fully autonomous cars on the horizon. Around 90% of accidents are caused by human error.

In reply to curtis73:

Curtis, ya need to write a book.

fasted58 wrote: In reply to curtis73: Curtis, ya need to write a book.

Just think, he was THIS close to becoming a reality TV star. Hell he could have had his own show by now.

Paging DukeofUndersteer, please report to the courtesy phone.

I just want to do something I won't get completely bored with. I have an interest in working on either old cars or race cars. Computers used to be a hobby of mine until I worked in that field. Now they're just tools. I'm okay with my cars becoming tools to me. It doesn't mean I'm not going to stop enjoying driving them anymore.

I will say that it never gets boring.

I've spent most of this week cursing the restoration shop that touched this car the last time.

I was in industrial maintenance/millwrighting. I developed and honed a lot of skills. Not having an automotive background means I approach things a lot differently than techs. It has turned out to be a good difference.

The average dealership tech would be a terrible restoration shop candidate and vice versa. The former flat rate techs hate it and leave quickly. Painstakingly reconstructing a rotten old unobtainable part is just not their thing. They have been trained to replace parts as quickly as possible and move on. I can spend hours trying to find a suitable part that can be modified to suit.

The new guy we just hired has a background in aviation sheet metal and a hobby of old vw's and hot rods. He is a great fit.

I love my job. I still play with my cars on weekends.

We focus our business on high end European cars and rarely do work on cars worth less than 70k or so. It is a good business model for us and we are succeeding. We are attempting a low end restoration on a gt6 to see if there is enough money in it to make it worth our while. So far it isn't looking good for that experiment.

The work can be frustrating and difficult but it is never "bad". At no point in the last 4 years have I considered taking a day off for anything other than too sick to come in.

^This.

I came from Aviation originally and the attention to detail part of the job is a big help with restoration.

You can't be as concerned with time. A job will take as long as it takes to be right and that's the way it is. You can't lower your standards to suit a customers budget or it looks bad on you when the finished product isn't up to your usual level of quality.

I'm pretty negative on hot rod/restoration/motorcycle shops based on what I've seen.

Some of them are run by retired or semi retired people who have made their money elsewhere. Sometimes they are supported by this other money until they aren't.

There is also a lot of 'jack of all trades master of none' in my opinion and a lot of hidden bad work to get stuff out the door.

I love cars/machines/design but mainly I like making cool E36 M3 auto related or not and I'm lucky enough to do that.

So look into stuff of the periphery of the car scene and you might find greener pastures.

I have a fab shop and make aftermarket parts for off road vehicles among other stuff.

Aftermarket parts/accessories is where the real industry is in the car scene, IMO. Lots of creativity and innovation.

I think Jesse James is the real deal as a metalworker but probably made more on T-shirts than bike builds.

A guy on Instagram is Jamey Jordan who makes hand made bomber style seats that are beadrolled works of art. He does one thing well and has focused on that.

I follow all sorts of people on instagram who are making cool stuff and are involved in some way with cool car builds, but are not directly involved with patch panels and mouse nests.

For all the guys saying "don't make your hobby your job", I'm going to counter with "you'll enjoy your life a lot more if you're interested in what you do all day". I've had a range of jobs over the years, but every single one of them was something that I enjoyed doing.

There are days at work that suck, but if I was filling out TPS reports in a corporate office there would be a lot more of those days. The only benefit would be more money - this is not a way to get rich, especially if you're working for someone else.

ddavidv wrote: Be very careful. Turning your favorite hobby into a means of making a living can ruin it for you.

That's why I never went into porn or fast food.

spitfirebill wrote:

fasted58 wrote: In reply to curtis73: Curtis, ya need to write a book.

Just think, he was THIS close to becoming a reality TV star. Hell he could have had his own show by now.

I went from "almost famous" to "living in my parents house as a 41-year-old divorced fat guy".

But I ain't dead yet. Now's my time to shine

FWIW, if I were at all qualified for the position FM had open, I would have been all over it. It gets me away from home, and it would likely have been a good fit for my fast learning style. Things like lacking Miata experience and the experience in field would keep me from a job like that. I need to get over that hurdle. That's what I'm wanting to do.

In reply to jamscal:

Come see a real restoration shop, not those goofs on TV or guys who flip cars for Barret-Jackson.

We're nothing like those fly-by-night clowns.

I can give a little advice, I did not work at a performance shop or anything, but I love European cars, so I thought why not work on them for a living??? Did it for 4 years at an Indy shop, and after 2 years I HATED it. I never wanted to fix my own stuff or even look at build threads online, I am still in the auto industry (Parts) but now I enjoy working on my own stuff and as a career it ruined it as a hobby for me.

Trans_Maro wrote: In reply to jamscal: Come see a real restoration shop, not those goofs on TV or guys who flip cars for Barret-Jackson. We're nothing like those fly-by-night clowns.

I know there is plenty of great work/people out there, but just some percentage of all resto shops. I'm not exactly in a hotbed of high end cars either.