This is a very hard lesson, teaching experience to learn, Be respectful, don’t raise your voice and realize in some ways you are about to lose your motorcycle to them if not careful. If you take them to court they are going to have your bike until that court date and are entitled to start charging you storage fees for the bike after their policy of whatever time limit you have to take to pick it up and pay for it after they notified you. They will have a record of when they called, noted…if they know what they are doing. They aren’t in business I will bet to do the kinds of things frequently that you tasked them with doing. They likely farmed out the sandblasting of your frame and the powdercoating as few shops will be setup to do a frame sized piece. So, they farmed out the tank possibly as well. What does their shop in back look like and have the setup for… Granted the typical press and a bunch of work benches and tool carts but do they have in house paint facilities? Most won’t, especially in California with their Uber Strict policies and laws on anything and everything that can harm you… Odds are they won’t even give you a tour.
Paint work can be done but it has to be compliant with air handling and scrubbers and all the like and that stuff is expensive if you haven’t had it forever and odds are they don’t do much beyond spray cans if they do any work and that work is in the gray area as they are going to have a tough time regulating that.
Given the fact every car in California has a window sticker that you aren’t allowed to remove, I don’t think, warning you that the state has determined the vehicle contains chemicals or materials that may or may not cause cancer and other risks to you…
The result of the legal system in Cali and the nutso level of suing that can or has gone on there…
California is out to protect you from yourself…
Common sense isn’t common and it is a culture into itself and the logic or lack of logic is astounding. Stream news coverage from a major city for a week or two and you will have the flavor of what I’m talking about. If you are from there you won’t see it, as you are indoctrinated that that is normal.
I grew up in NE TN and lived in Western NC and Ohio before moving to Arizona. I have visited many states and I am a very detail oriented person and I observe many many things others might miss. I was a quality auditor and technical writer once upon a time and have done software and hardware testing and field support and package testing, computer system support and even did product engineering on electronic components in a different lifetime. I am process oriented and have a broad engineering base of knowledge and have dealt with the system and network recovery and understand some networks very well.
I enjoy learning and am always learning new things. I have been very trusting and naive when starting car ownership and been burned. I don’t like haggling and do not like lowballing and taking advantage of people. I value their work.
I’ve done manual labor as a job and I’ve cleaned toilets on the job and done things many don’t have the stomach for or think it beneath them. I like getting my hands dirty and being hands on and learning a system or product I’m assigned to because I have that drive to understand before I feel confident or secure to ask good questions and I’ve done product repair work on CRTs, flat screen plasma TVs, and a few other products in my day.
I was in telecommunications for 17 years and government contracting for 8 and a several other years in other lines of work…
I’ve travelled outside the US and am fascinated by other cultures and customs and social norms in various areas, as my work took me to a few other countries and I’ve gone to a few as a tourist or the like and spent time there, I’m always watching and situational awareness is often very high so I see things developing to take action if needed to respond appropriately. I was taught to always look through and focus on far ahead with traffic to anticipate anything and the head on a swivel to be aware of any movement or risk is there when driving and when riding.
So, having said alll this, use this as a learning opportunity. Be hesitant to involve legal system unless required. Definitely use another older or much older witness when you return and that person should be observing and less inclined to participate in the conversations. Introduce them as a friend or parent or the like but do not say more about why they are present. Do NOT make any implied or direct threats of court or legal action…never reveal your intentions unless forced to… but don’t overestimate or fail to do that if you say you are going to do it. Just know the cost of doing that can be very high.
At some point you have to ask yourself what is the value of the frustration and expense of making things right.
You respect the shop but don’t let them bully you or try to brow beat you into just paying…
They are feeling this a reasonable cost for the work they did, or they wouldn’t be charging it. But can they defend the charges in a respectful way.
Ask them to break its down to help you understand how they got to this level of charges.,.,.,.it adds up very quickly. Their time is money, they spent the time, you owe them a fair wage for their time, efforts and skills they employed on your. Bike.
Ask them for more information on what was done to the tank for your records as you wish to have a log of work performed and what that work entailed as you have a build book and intend to have a folder or binder capturing you time with the bike to document what you had or did to the bike to bring it up to where it is and in case anything might happen to the bike it be stolen or wrecked this documentation is essential in establishing the care and condition of the vehicle for insurance purpose or just personal satisfaction. You are the kind of owner who wants to know where your money has gone and what it was spent to do.
So, the estimate given was $2500 and you gave them $1000 deposit and you understood that they were not deviating from that estimate more than the usual and customary 20% or less, so 20% OF 2500 is $500. If their policy is different, then ask for them to show you this on a sign in their shop clearly visible and readable behind the counter or on the counter or in the initial papers when you dropped off the bike. Those papers should capture what you asked them to do. Now what they interpret what you told them and what they did may be their view of this versus your view of this and what it means. You wanted a running bike from a pile of parts. They had two print the manual for parts breakdown to know what those bolts and fasteners to use and to measure and use that as a reference if they didn’t know what was needed. If they had to delve into their collection of bolts new or used then that is something they probably lumped into the overall cost. If your fasteners were all in good shape were they clean, or rusty?
Do you have photos of what you gave them? Were they cleaned up or as you got them, dirty or crud covered? Were parts that were painted protected or just piled in a crate or tub of parts?
ALL these things impact your costs.
Putting a bike back together if you aren’t very familiar with a bike model can be a pain and wiring can be a real pain sometimes, de[pending upon the maker and how good their information is… The 650C is not a common model and they may have only worked on one or two in the past 10 years so, the similarity factor is what they are going on…
Some shops will reseal and measure things when they do it to see if you need to redo or have machine work. If they had to do that, others than a valve job cleaning the seats and doing restore work and rebuild work on the head. They had to check for runout or valve guide wear and if needed address that with new guides or valves. Measure the valves and clean and prep the,m for reinstall if they were still usable. Odds are the exhaust valve an exhaust side guides needed replaced (especially in the case of guides.
They had to hot tank or clean the head after it was stripped for rebuild. Likely needed to bead blast or vapor or steam blast the dome and might have needed to clean up the sealing faces, might have done a skim of the head’s sealing surface at the machine shop where they could send the disassembled head and valve and the seal kit and they would get back a rebuilt head with all the cleaning and painting and rebuild done with a bill. That bill you won’t usually get a copy of, because it would show you those costs…
You will get a charge for it and they add their overhead on top of the prices they were charged… Those charges included any added guides they needed or valves, etc. You 4-into-1 order for top end kit went to machine shop if they farmed out that work. They might have just sent the bare head to shop to get skim to ensure flatness. clean up by whatever method they employed, and a painted bare head back. Usually they or the machine shop measure the valve guides for wear. Odds are the machine shop as they are setup or do it for a living so they have the tools handy and do it constantly, so they just had to look up the specs and measure, if they had to replace guides they had to heat the head in an oven to bring it up to temp to install the new guides. Then ream the guides to size for the valves to provide the correct clearance. Then they had to do a 3 way seat cutting/grinding and lap the valves to the final seal. Pop the seals in and springs, spring retainers and collets and bob’s your uncle its done…somewhere in there they painted it what ever color normally on that head I hope, black or silver.
It is a high heat paint but not necessarily one that will last 20 years or 10 years. Depends on the shop really.
Presuming they got a head back ready to bolt on and install rockers and arms in the cover and they did that themselves and they pop in a new seal and they cleaned it up and repainted it, hopefully both they and the shop sent it to using same shade of silver. Or they spray both with the same paint to give the outside the same sheen…
Cylinder base gaskets were replaced and cylinders were cleaned up and painted. Oil sear on cylinder and head replaced and. If shop tells them they found a warped head or took off a lot to get it flat and cleane3d up then you might be looking at a decking the cylinders to ensure it is flat too, then they need to consider what they did to the clearances on pistons and head or if the new thicker head gasket gives them that extra 20 thou to play with in getting things flat. They may not consider anything needing to occur with any oil seals in the head to cylinders and shop skimming may not have maintained any radius cuts for orings…hopefully 10 thousandths doesn’t require them to worry much about it. But if they did both head and cylinder, then maybe so…
Been a long minute or two since I have looked at the 550 head to recall and never seen other than in photos the 650 head. So I don’t recall if they had the radius or it was flat on both cylinder and head surfaces. Some heads have a radius groove for orings, other just squish them flat to seal in the head gasket limits the expansion some…
Tank work and paint if outsourced could have really blown your budget, depending on the shop doing the work. Likely they cleaned and acid washed the tank and addressed any rust and holes or depended on the liner to do that work. HOPEFULLY they used a good liner like Caswell’s or POR15….personal preferences.
The tank was likely stripped and then before the tank was lined they addressed dent work if they were pulling dents or working them out…. If they didn’t do metal work then they likely just filled with plastic filler and some shops just cover the entire tank in filler then sand it smooth to a shape that fills the dents, seal and prime and then off for final paint.
When they did the paint work, did they replicate the stock color or a single color . If stock then they bought a decal kit and did a 2 color scheme and that takes more work and planning to do it right. If it is all paint work, then they had a very good painter doing the work if it came out really nice, and they have the ability to cut stencils or artwork for logos and the any printing needed for tanks and side covers.
Then the whole thing got its clear coat. I hope for durability they used a urethane clear because it is unlikely to be fuel safe long term if they didn’t. Anytime you fill or get fuel on your tank you should immediately clean that off and if possible rinse it clean. Leaving it to dry can dull the clear and cause it to fail or discolor, etch, etc.
They did a lot of work, they screwed up if they don’t have records of you authorizing them to do work they didn’t include in the bill. So. What did they say about the work other than it being another couple weeks everytime you came in to bug them about your bike?
They viewed it as a nuisance after a while… Or they have a thick skin and it is standard and they just view it as noise to be ignored….it takes what it takes…It ain’t their bread and butter or the toast would have been done long before it was. If they told you initially it was a short window to do it all you were naive enough to not know and they have a habit of underextimating a job. They should be experienced enough to know a basket case job takes a long time no matter who is piecing the puzzle together. It is never as straight forward as you might think and sometimes the last 10% of the work takes 80% of the time required to complete the job.
