good deeds don't usually bring in income
Posted via RS Mobile

While people can argue that it's not his fault that the customer is willing to pay sky high prices, it still unethical. This is like telling a white lie, instead of just quoting an absurd price, tell them that you don't really want to do it and that the price it takes for you do it. This forum likes to call people out for being dishonest, yet the people here aren't really honest either.

I remember one mechanic wanting to charge my mom 150/hr to fix a honda. :fuckthatshit:

I don't think the 2 guys doing the job are stupid at all for accepting the money to do the job. no, I don't know them, but if someone comes up to me with a job and I feel confident that I can do it, I will accept it. im not a ticketed gas fitter, so I wouldn't take a job to fix a gas line in your house just like limitless and his friend probably wouldn't take on a job to do an engine swap or do an auto to 5spd conversion on a car.

professional or not, doesn't matter. to the op, the price was right. if your rebuilding a deck in your back yard, do you seek for a reputable company...or ask your neighbor to build it for half the price cause you know he has a table saw?

money was worth it to the op at the time, so I really don't feel that sympathetic for him. life lesson for him.

perhaps stupid is the wrong word

if I offered 800$ today for those 2 to do the same job on a TL today would they accept it?
are they as confident with their work?
do they feel it's morally alright to take that money?
if the answer is no then it definitely was a job they should have turned down
if yes then I kinda lose respect for them
Posted via RS Mobile

I can't justify someone taking 800$ or any money when you have no experience whatsoever.
OP is stupid, but the guy who accepted the cash is a low life dick.
A met a guy and didn't know him very well and he asked me to paint his wheels... He offered money but I told him to just buy the supplies and a dinner and ill give u a hand.
Why did I not take his money?
Cause I have only painted wheels twice, the slack of exp is not worth the money he offered
He shouldn't have to pay someone to learn something.
And I'm not a hungry savage wolf.. I assume you are not too, right?
Could be wrong
Posted via RS Mobile

There is only 1 problem. Everyone has a different perception of quality. What some people consider a nice weld I consider a dogs breakfast. The only real important part is if the customer is happy.

I've done 50+ private welding/cnc jobs for around 10 local forums and zero complaints.

a) If I can't do it I say NO

b) If you say "but Billy will do it for $34" I say take it to Billy, because you are just going to complain as you are looking to save pennies and I have no patience for you

c) If I don't want to do it I put a high price on it. They paid, were happy with the work and it ended up being in a magazine. It's their money. They are happy with the end result and that's all that matters.

d) On the other hand I have done countless jobs for peanuts to help people out just because I enjoy the work and practice makes perfect. I hate seeing people getting gouged for simple stuff.

e) shops don't do favors, shops have bills to pay and families to feed, good ones will stand behind their work

Knowing what they know now... probably not.

Then again, if you offered them $800 today for that work, knowing what YOU know now, then, well... you and your money deserve to be parted.

Let's remember the entire chain of events here:
1. "Mechanic" (for lack of a better generic term) never solicited his services to OP.
2. Mechanic was minding his own business when OP regularly pestered him online for free advice.
3. OP then asked mechanic to do the job of his own volition.
4. Mechanic agreed to do the job probably despite his better judgement.
5. OP offers cash; mechanic pulls a number out of his ass; OP agrees to it.
6. Mechanic finds himself in over his head but still puts in a best effort.

Having been in a "similar position" to "mechanic" here, the only thing I see that he did wrong was to take the job in the first place... not because he didn't know what he was doing (apparently he did have a fair clue, but was just unfamiliar with this car), but because he already knew OP was going to be a pain in the butt.

Far as I can tell, he took the job as much to be a nice guy and help someone out, not FOR the money... a professional might know how long such a job SHOULD take and could price accordingly, but you're right, "mechanic" is NOT a pro and so had to guess and what his and his buddy's time might be worth.
OP was fine with the quote at the time, and if things hadn't gotten complicated, nobody would be complaining about it, would they?

I've done the same... guy on another forum offered cash to figure out a problem with his Jeep not starting... he was nearby, so I offered to do it for a dinner.

I've also recently done a radio install for cash... took a lot longer than I planned, and a return visit, but I got it done, and the person is ecstatic with the results.

I'm sorry you feel this way and I do respect your opinion, in the end everyone is free to believe what they want. After this, if you offered me that much money to do the same thing if it came with months and months of asking problems and countless hours of research on things that had nothing to do with the job, no I would not take the money. Hell I wouldn't have taken the money in the first place had I known all the trouble it would bring and Eric feels the same (trouble isn't including this thread or anything to do about the work on the headlight). The headlight in the end came out okay, if I knew that we would have had to redo it again then no I would not have taken the money. I thought we could have done it at first try, but an accident happened with alcohol rub (stupid accident) and I did not foresee that. After redoing it, everything was fine. I am confident on a HID PnP install and a switchback install... Headlight, after having to reseal it his, I definitely need to do my own headlight a few more times before I can even say I'm comfortable with it anymore

Headlight job did not seem hard and it wasn't. The rest are very very simple things that could not have been screwed up, and they weren't. The headlight itself was only delayed another few days because we had to redo it, and yes I completely admit fault for that, but the rest aren't issues about the headlight itself, it's mainly things that are completely out of my control (previous damages from previous owner of the car...? AC problem afterwards that should not have been linked to LED wiring, etc..). If I knew that it would take so much trouble I would not have taken the money. If you're talking about money, I said it before on the thread, in the end I received much much less than $5 an hour. The countless hours helping him research (4g TL's are impossible to find info on online), helping him obtain quotes from other shops, helping him with everything else about his car (quotes, information about exhaust, paint, etcetc..). Trust me, if I could take my time back and give him his money back and have none of this happen both Eric and I would be VERY happy to. I spent a lot of time myself helping him, but I'm sure Eric has spent even more than me talking about stuff that was unrelated to whatever we were doing for him.

The thing is, headlight work is straight forward to me but I consider it very very time consuming. The amount of time to take off the bumper carefully and the headlights took me a good hour (I don't know if it's just me but holy shit 4g TL bumpers are annoying to take off. Never ran into a car like this before). Then took everything off the headlight (ballast, screws), baked it, pried it open which took another hour or so for both. Stripped the chrome off, sanded it and prepped it, primer, paint while sanding in between... Figuring out how to mount the LEDs on the shroud then leading the wires out of the headlight while putting all the pieces back together, then sealing the headlight. Etcetcetc took a very long time. I would not have ever done this for free for a stranger, a good friend maybe or to return a favour.

On the other hand, I have no problem at all helping friends swap wheels, install spacers, intakes, exhaust, etcetc because that stuff isn't as time consuming

I did free work for Soundy cause he's a lazy prick. Then his dog shat on my lawn.

cant really fuck that up

last time i accepted an offer to help a friend i was amazed by the amount of unpredictable shit that went wrong.

a co worker bought coil overs for his civic and asked me to help install, i said sure.. 100$ shouldnt be too hard ive done my suspension and friends many times.. so it turns out a bunch of my tools are stripped from doing previous LCAs, his sway bars were seized, he didnt have proper lug nuts for his new wheels, fenders were not rolled to handle the new wide wheels... long story short is that it was not worth the 100$ for me.. sometimes when offering to help people you win or lose, it cant always be perfect... especially when going into the job blind and unprepared..

ps co workers car turned out great, just took longer than anticipated...

both the "modder" and OP were at fault in this, "modder" took on to large of a project and OP is still clueless as fck

i hope everyone learns something from this

so tempted to edit title to modding privates...

Please change Limitless' user title to Private Modder

I could see many things going wrong with that, stripped bolts, bad alignment, etcetc :S But yes, not exactly difficult, which is why I said I wouldn't mind that.

Nah, cuter (the dog, not Soundy)

Thread was a lol.

Legit lesson:
Don't expect it a job to be perfect. Something ALWAYS goes not according to plan. It's a fucking car, there's too many variables on half-decent sized jobs.

And when it comes to money. You can't fucking blame Limitless for this shit, OP didn't know shit as $1100 or $800 is still way too much for a 'blackout headlight DIY.' OP was just LAZY, didn't want to send out the headlights, and didn't do checks on Limitless' work.

And I bet the grass came up nice and green in that spot too! :lol

This is the thing: even if you're a pro, from time to time you'll run into something that completely befuddles you and what should be a simple job takes all frakkin' day. Doesn't matter if you're talking mechanical, electrical... or just about any other profession, not just automotive. Maybe something gets stuck and needs a bigger hammer, maybe something that's already weakened breaks off when it normally wouldn't... maybe you get a new model to work on and something subtle has changed and throws the whole process off, but not until you're deep into it.

Oh yeah, I have similar kinds of stories... from my years in various IT jobs, from a couple years doing car audio, and plenty from my current decade or so doing CCTV and security systems. Pretty sure everyone who does any kind of professional, technical or hands-on work does. Dismissing it as "well a professional wouldn't have had that problem" is unfair and misleading.

If RS has taught me anything, it's that there's always room for funny cat pictures.

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/l...d/mechanic.jpg

http://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/20...36680a30c8.jpg

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/3914921984/hF4201319/

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/675931392/hF08C2436/

I private modded melloman's car and all I got was chicken nuggets.

:sweetjesus: chicken nuggets

How could you be mad at this face?

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.n...51292093_n.jpg

Edit: and I told you to let me know the next time you're at the sushi place over here, and I'd buy you unagi :D

I agreed, that dog's cute as fuck.

regardless of what happened, its not us; the community to say whats right or wrong.
its up to the customer and dealer to sort it out. our opinion is nothing greater than 0.
to OP, you're an idiot for paying the amount you did, and the way you scheduled the payment. i hope this lesson taught you well.

Everyone, I am not posting this forum for personal attacks to either me or limitless. It was not my intention to start a fight over this issue. Limitless and I have are settling this matter personally so I would appreciate it if attacks on both sides would stop.

Thank you

BTW. Spotted you at highgate last night :toot: around 8:15pm parked on Salisbury! :hi: