Your truck restoration project may be a simple affair but it can also become a nightmare. Besides finding the right parts and making sure you have the money and the basic tools necessary to do the restoration you also have to find a person who knows what he(she) is doing.

Let’s imagine that you are going to take your truck to a shop that will tackle the complete restoration project, one that has the knowledge of where to get classic and antique truck parts and that has done a fair number of restorations.

In this case you’re probably going to talk to a person who will give you the details of what is going to be done and also give you the estimated cost of the whole project. Mind you that the cost involved in a truck restoration will only be an estimate based upon the number of hours needed for the job at a certain price per hour. It’s not going to be cheap and it’s going to take long. Naturally, the shop should not make you pay for the hours your truck just sits there, but for the hours actually spent on the job of restoring it.

This is the first problem. A reputable restorer will have a system to control the hours each specialist works on your truck and you’ll have access to that information. Others aren’t as honest and may charge you more than the actual hours worked. How can you know?

It’s like going to the doctor and getting bad news. Ask for a second opinion. Talk to several restorers or find people who had their cars and/or trucks restored and ask them. Bad news spread fast and you’ll find out if a restorer is out to grab your wallet. And if you have any doubts go somewhere else.

Finding the right parts for your truck restoration is important too. You’ll save time and the quality of the work may depend on the right parts.

If you have a truck whose parts aren’t readily available, be patient and look everywhere. Surf the Internet, get in touch with other owners of the same model of truck as yours, visit all the junkyards and keep looking. And if the part simply doesn’t exist you can always resort to fabrication. Find a good machine shop and have the part made to order. It may be expensive but you will have the right part in the right place. Your restoration will be much better than if you adapted something that wasn’t right for your truck.

An old truck restoration is not the same as the work performed on a newer truck. Your can’t simply hook up a computer to the vehicle and find out what’s wrong with it. And you don’t just replace parts on a classic pickup. You have to rebuild the thing and not every mechanic is able to do that.

This is another problem. Many modern mechanics who never worked on an old car or truck may think that it will be easy to do an old truck restoration since the vehicle is so simple and basic. But that is not the case. And if you hire a person like that to do your restoration you may end up with a terrible headache. It may cost you less than going to a professional restorer but it will take a lot longer to have the project finished and the result will not make you happy.

By this we don’t mean to say that every mechanic out there is incapable of restoring an old truck. In fact, anybody can restore an old truck given the time to do it with the right tools, the right parts and the right attitude. The right attitude? By this we mean that if you want to restore an old truck you have to love it and love the work that has to be done. The money that will be paid for the job will only be a consequence of a job well done.

We have great artists who can customize your truck and turn it into a dream. And we also have wonderful restorers who can bring your truck back to its original condition and make it look like it just came out of the showroom floor. Maybe even better than that!

If you want your old truck customized or restored to its original condition you shouldn’t take it to any mechanic that says he or she can do the job. Make sure the mechanic has done similar jobs in the past and if possible talk to the owners of the cars or trucks he or she worked on. Only then you should agree to leave your truck in his(her) hands.

Only an artist could work on a FordModel A engine and leave it looking like this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.