rc000e

I have been self employed for several years now. From 2000-2004, the business was my full time primary income, but the area I live in faltered somewhat and business slowed. In response, I shifted my priorities more towards fabrication, tuning, wiring (i.e. more supportive services of the diy guy that likes to wrench him/herself). Point being, now this has become more of a secondary income to a job I now have, along with school pursuing my M.E. degree.

Well, as a result, I don't do as many installs anymore. I do though, still do installs for past customers if they ask. Recently I've had a guy who called me asking to do a turbo setup for him. I did the swap in his coupe about a year and a half ago, so I told him I'd do it for him if he really wanted me to.

Now, having never been a fan of low prices just to get the work, I have always been on the upper end of pricing with the tradeoff of quality work. In the time when I was working full time at this, it was important to me not to degrade the market value of the work being done with crackhead pricing to compete with guys in their moms' garage. I relied on the quality to speak for itself.

Well, recently having gone through hell on occasions here and there with a few customers, I can't say I miss doing it full time. It was starting to ruin what I once enjoyed doing. Like I said though, I still do one or two installs here and there. Given the fact these are "side" jobs in a sense, I no longer see fit to charge on the high end.

So to sum it up...what's fair pricing for the following work so I don't hear ---- about it:

Sourced and obtained all parts for turbo setup
Fabricated stainless log manifold
Oil, water lines
Mount large frontmount
Customer bought aluminum intercooler piping...so add aluminum welding to the labor
Mock up all charge lines
Full down pipe in mild steel with open dump
Chip P28
Street tune on Crome w/wideband plus full datalog...not seat of the pants b.s.
Additional info: All welding is TIG, the car has A/C (not sure if he wants it retained or not), car also has power steering, the guy may want a full custom fabbed downpipe-back exhaust sytem as well.

Labor costs w/o exhaust ?
Labor costs w/ exhaust ?
Labor add if A/C retained ?

I'll hold what I typically charged for this job until I see some responses.

Thanks.

jinxy

2800ish

while a real shop would charge 3-5k


3500 with a full stainless custom exhaust.

J-SMITH69

0

burn tell him to drive it and be happy with the 40mpg

RENR

70 bux an hour..

2stockrocketz

thats not at a lower rate.....any auto garage or fab shop may charge that much, but it doesnt mean the tech is getting 1/2 that.

if he made $70/hour and not have to pay a high rent(for the shop) pay insurence that a shop would pay (to cover there ***)...then he would be makin more then a dealership (not the tech) would make

SpankedYA!

LOL where the ---- do you live. Any decent shop around CT gets $85+ per hour.

RENR

ya so? end result is the same. The guys still has his own bills topay. maybe 70 might be overkill but 40-50 bux is more than fair.

rc000e

Alright, lets all gather round....

Hourly rates and all that jazz are fine, but if any of you deal with parents and youngin's (i.e. 16, 17 etc.), you know they just want a price up front.

I can guesstimate timeframe, and hell if you throw in the standard rate for TIG welding...this dude's lookin at big dollars. Like I said, this was my number crunch method years ago...I just fab parts now and do supportive tasks. I charge hourly for tuning, diagnostics, and all that, but this guy just wants a setup.

I am just wondering what you part timer's are charging out the door roundabout for a complete setup that's fair to both parties. I am just tired of hearing ---- from some of these local quacks on the local speed sites. They know I am not doing this for business anymore, so I guess that's a victory for some of them...whatever. Anyway, I just was curious what some of you part timer's were charging for a quality setup, done right, out the door.

FooK

tell them the price you're already holding at, and if they bitch about it, tell them to ---- a goat.

rc000e

That was generally my approach in prior years, but unfortunately I have to maintain some acceptance on the local sites to sell my mani's, O2's housings, dp's, stuff like that. I generally don't care, but a small faction of haters has assembled and this guy (with the coupe) is acquainted with them. My instincts almost tell me to send him down the road, but he has alot of friends with alot of different types of vehicles (WRX's, SRT's, etc) which could get me alot of R&D and jig potential for new products.

This really is a delicate situation, which is why I am going through all this b.s. walkin on egg shells.