You know I wasn't so upset about the work that had to be done. More of the fact that I asked numerous times to Steve (are you sure there isn't any major work that needs to be done and was assured there wasn't). Then when I showed him the work and the money it was going to cost me to fix it and wanted him to incur only half the charges I was offered parts that I did not need. We will see how this turns out when the "check comes in the mail". Kllymartin I would have been much happier if I was comped a hood as well. Trials and tribulations of after market parts and suppliers.
Gonna,
I had a call from a fellow VCA Member today that called your body shop and was quoted $1K+ to paint a viper hood, The guy at the shop said he "did not want to get involved in this whole thing" and he qualified his quote by saying that that was a carry in price for paint only, no Stripes and no fitting whether normal (which would still be charged for, or excessive fitting which would also be charged for.
In fact he quoted $480 just to paint a clear coat on a carbon hood. I did not solicit or ask this member to do this but he, being a former body shop owner/operator saw a few too many holes in the invoice and felt a need to question the whole thing and he (the member) left the call knowing that the true price of painting the hood with stripes and all that would have normally been required to be done would not have been $528.77
Now if your painting of your hood was ONLY $528.77 including paint labour etc. why is the shop now quoting over double that? Remember your hood has stripes and your invoice represents a hell of a deal even just for taping them up, WOW .5 hours to tape up and the stripes and mask the hood off so they can spray the second color on, what a deal!!!!, especially on such a complex stripe painting like on your hood versus the easy type like the sabertooth style of a commemorative edition car, which do not go down the sides of humps or into vents etc. The guy that posted earlier with the commemorative edition paid over %50 more than you for less work on his car.
Now to have even one dollar of time or charges that should have or would have been normally attributed to something and then to have someone try to pass that off to get someone else to reimburse you for that falsified expense would be a fraud or in simpler terms a civil and criminal offense. To then try to force the reimbursement by publishing or posting in a forum or to threaten to post or publish said untrue facts would be considered a form of extortion, I really hope that your $528.77 striped hood pain cost is all that you would have legitimately incurred if you did not have these "problems", is there a written quote or was all the extra normal work just bundled in to the "let's go after Vipair for this amount" column?
Before you bought the hood you asked if they fit, I told you by email of a body shop that tried to bill me $300- $500 to fix an alignment problem and then I asked for a ratchet and showed the guy how in 3 to 6 seconds the problem was no more and then the guy walked away, you then decided to go ahead with your purchase and then the same thing happened to you, you obviously are not a hands on dude and trusted your body shop. You still paid what a lot of people pay to get a hood finished and painted and striped.
The fact that your hood touched your manifold is a rare occurrence, it has happened 4 times including Kelly Martin's who, by the way was NOT COMPED A HOOD, HE "WON" it 2 months in advance of a race from his friend who was dishing out the prizes in advance and because he (Kelly) is such a gracious "person" he now feels a need to bash the very thing that some would say was attained by less than arms length means. In fact I even have a PM from the "giver" that states that he did not draw Kelly's name he just decided to give the hood to Kelly, his friend, and I like a fool watched it to happen, and since Kelly was "compressed for time" before the race even upgraded him to a returned carbon hood that had some blemms so that he would not have to rush to get it painted before the big race day. He never did paint it, he called it a dumpster lid and has complained incessantly about his ill gotten gains ever since. I would hate to see how much he complains about things HE PAYS FOR!
Back to your hood, VIPERS ARE HAND BUILT CARS, there are many cars that my hoods have fit on perfectly, my X brace on these hoods is obviously at too tight of a tolerance to fit all of them perfectly, luckily I am now out of hoods and am redoing my tooling to make for a perfect fit, the X brace is now gone just like the factory hood has NO X BRACE. the sides have been widened and the length has been increased as well., but back to your hood, I would bet that you could not get a chrysler engineer to state that all SRT cars are exactly the same, I would bet that you would be hard pressed to find any two SRT cars the same for that matter, yes they are better than the GEn 2's for fit and consistency but they are NOT the SAME.
I have compared my 2 - 06 coupes side by side and each and every body panel is shimmed differently, neither one of my 06 cars had their hoods line up perfectly right at delivery, there were height differences of up to 3/8's of an inch in places where the fenders were higher or lower than the level of the stock hood. I did not complain, I did not cry foul, I grabbed my 12mm ratchet and loosened a few body bolts added a few spacers, removed a few spacers, filed a few holes pushed a few panels here and there and VIOLA! it all came together.
My original Vipair hoods were developed on an 03, many items have changed on the SRT's since then, HELL the cars are even built from entirely different molds at entirely different places starting in............0 friggin 6 for christs sake. The cars are bonded and bolted together and they are a far cry from being exactly alike
I wish I had a crystal ball so that I could have predicted if your hood would fit or to see how if your engine was one of the higher ones by what an 1/8 of an inch too much? Or to see how many hours your body shop actually spent doing their adjusting.
In fact I still want to see the pics to show the welded and tapped NEW HOLES IN THE FENDER SUPPORTS that I was told they had to do turned out.....somehow I don't think this was ever done, was it?
The bottom line is that you were, what it looks like, in some way, legitimately charged, 9 hours at $45 an hour to modify the hood brace, I have done the same mod myself to a hood to see how long it would take and because a guy that ordered one requested that I guarantee that it would not touch his manifold, the only way I could guarantee it, knowing there were 4 instances out there and given that I do not have a crystal ball, was to do the same mod as what you had done, it took me 3 hours, not 9 and I am not an experienced body shop employee.
Now is it my fault that your engine sits higher than other cars engines in relation to your body panels?? NO, it is not, but I agreed to help out as you asked for me to split the charge, which I have done, and mailed. I honestly do not think that your guys did any real adjusting to the fenders and your pictures pretty much prove that, if they legitimately billed you for work that they did not do (lets see the welded in an newly tapped body bolt holes as they said) or could have done more quickly if they had the proper experience with the cars or if they had just waited for the instructions I was typing up for them on how to do it as they had asked for but then rushed ahead to try on their own, then they would not have billed you so much or they would have just considered the work they did on that part, part of the whole "paint a hood" costs.
That all being said, I have replied for the last time to this wildly hijacked thread,
