Bad Quality Restoration

[Tony Z]

A VERY large part of the responsibility sits squarely on the shoulders of the customer to go in with their eyes open and stay involved. And be ready to pull the plug the moment it looks like things are not going the way you expected.

I do agree with you Barry, but to add to your comment above...
It is also the workshops responsibility to keep the customer informed and occasionally communicate with the customer before blindly doing something. The guys doing the work are the guys seeing it all come together and if they have an idea of what the customer wants (based upon his other requests) then they should be open to make suggestions. A lot of people will appreciate this and give the go ahead, happy to pay the extra.
As an example, I know of a car that had a full respray and then had the 30yo door seals (perished and falling apart) refitted because the customer didnt specifically request new door seals. A simple 1 min phone call would have led to new door seals and a much happier customer.
This example has nothing to do with Vintage Kombi / Jacques

[Mars67]

I agree with both the sentiments expressed here. To add something else. We all make mistakes, things sometimes goes wrong during a repair or a job. The principle that applies then is that if you stuffed it up you should fix it and not expect the customer to pay for your mistake. This is part of the responsibility you assume when you take on the job because you are representing yourself as capable of doing the job. It is amazing in how many instances people try to avoid that accountability. I once had 2024 T4 aluminium sheet for aircraft wing spars and ribs waterjet cut at a place and when the labourer loaded the wrong sheets into the machine rendering thousands of rands worth of alli useless the owner said - "Don't worry. Just bring me some more and I will cut it for free". It doesn't work that way and fortunately being in the law, I could show him the error of his ways at considerable school fees for him. The important thing was that the instructions where very clearly conveyed and agreed upon and the metal was clearly marked. The expectations were therefore clearly conveyed and agreed upon.

[fig]

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." -- George Bernard Shaw

In business, it's not whether you screw up that's an issue; we're all human and we make mistakes. What makes the difference is how you deal with it when you screw up.

[ST Man]

I agree that in some cases communication is the problem BUT Communication is not an excuse for bad quality work.
Read through post number one and decide whether these issues are bad communication or workmanship.

[ST Man]

My frustration with the work on my bus still continues. I had to remove engine and gearbox due to oil leak on gearbox (that has nothing to do with Vintage Kombi, I had gearbox rebuild at other supplier). While the car is not running I decided to also fix a bunch of other items and the long weekends are helping with this. So the more I dig the more issue become apparent.

1. Engine only held on with 3 of the 4 bolts.
2.The paint issue that came up earlier that is blamed on the frame that was in the way is not correct. The whole area around the gearbox was not painted. Now that engine and gearbox is not in the way it became very apparent that it was just not done.
3. Where engine wires go through body on right of engine no rubbers was used so it will chafe through.
4. NO washer on any area in the rear.
5. Rusted bolts used in various locations
6. Rusted quick nuts/nut plates used.
7. The two small seals that fits on engine lid around hinges was not fitted or returned so bought new items and fitted them. When I removed rear lid I realised that the hinges was never treated after being taken to bare metal in the areas where hinge and rear engine lid mates. So instead of just fitting rubbers, I have to clean rust, paint area and then wait for items to dry and refit.
8. Fuel tank wires not routed correctly
9. Exhaust that was fitted is very bad quality and is leaking from box. See images to follow
10. One of the heater cables tubes was broken before hand and is still broken and still being held in place by a piece of plastic tube.

One issue I had that cant be sure what cause was or whether it is just a small mistake or no ones fault, that when I filled fuel tank up the whole car was smelling of fuel. So I removed fuel tank saw leak marks on top and then got hold of some aircraft fuel tank sealant and made sure the tank around fuel level sender is now sealed.

I also removed the door frames on front two doors to fit correct rubbers and get door lock to work easily. Here I found some more issues.
1. Half the bolts never fitted. Some where rusted out bolts fitted.
2. Rubber are incorrect and holes were not even cut for lower slider frame bolts to go through. The two bolts that hold lower slide window frame were never fitted.
3. Did I mention rust in the door. I am now cleaning that up.

[ST Man]

Some images of the issues above and more....

[ST Man]

Some more quality issues with Vintage Kombi Workmanship.
I know they di not make exhaust but in my industry we have approved suppliers to ensure products we use are good quality.

[calooker]

Splitbusahollic must be on a hell of a business trip......., can't wait for his response....... or excuses.

[splitbusahollic]

As there are many things repeated in Leon's initial post , i will address as many as i can without repeating anything or become all drawn out.

A bit of back ground info about Vintage Kombi and the restoration work We do:

We run 13 to 14 restorations per year, all at the same time with three teams.
We offer Standard restorations, a show condition restoration will take up to 18 months and cost around R400 000.
In our work-schedule we set out the time frames of the work we do :
it takes from month 6 to month 11/12 to do the following stages of work : recondition suspension front and rear,Re -wire and connect all electrical parts , Recon, bench test Engine, fit Fuel tank, Engine, Assemble bus , all rubbers, glass, handles etc, microdot, police clearance , registration and roadworthy , Final road test, teething problems. Hand over to Client.
At the Time of doing Leon's bus , a basic standard restoration cost R236 000.
My Staff are qualified Panel beaters and mechanics ( one of my mechanics started his apprenticeship in Aircooled VW 's straight out of school and is now 41 years old, He has never worked on anything else in his life.) They all have years of experience in a Mechanical/Body-shop environment.
The Painter that sprayed Leon's Bus painted for VWSA at the Uitenhage factory for 22 years.
We only invoice for the work we do. we do go out of our way to rectify mistakes and keep our clients happy. we have testimony of this.
We Always check with our client's when the project requires extra panels or extra labour and discuss everything and get approval from the client first so there are no hidden surprises, We did exactly the same with Leon when when extra metalwork was needed on His Samba. All extra metal work was discussed , approved By Leon himself and backed up by Photo's on whatsup and some via email. Options were offered to repair or replace panels, including the long side panel.

I would just like to mention a few points regarding the agreement (between Leon and Myself) about what was to be done to the Samba at this stage (after paint) :
After understanding that all the parts needed for the bus was supplied in the crates and that it would be fairly straight forward new part assembly,
We had sold Leon 7 days worth of assembly time on his bus. He did say that His budget was tight and that had we not finished everything within the 7 day period, he would rather finish off some of the stuff on his own rather than spend more and more money on the bus.
We had agreed to do as much as possible in order for him to be able to at least drive the bus down at Glentana were they were on holiday. We actually did a lot more than that, not to show condition standards but at least making the bus as complete as possible so that if leon wanted to finish it up (as discussed) he would do it at his own leisure , Leon and myself spoke telephonically about this scenario more than once before the collection date.
Our (both parties) main concern at this stage was to get the bus complete so when leon was towing it and it ended up raining , at least all the windows etc were fitted and the bus complete (95% components fitted) and drivable whilst he was on Holiday. They did drive the bus and Leon did tell me it went well except for running out of fuel.


What went wrong with Leon's restoration : (some basic facts)

We did make some time-management mistakes which put us under huge pressure !!

At the time we agreed to take on Leon's work we weren't that full and over a very short period of time we had taken on a bit more work than we had space for.
This found us in a difficult situation and stuck in a 300 sqm workshop with no space, we needed to move the vehicles outside during the day to enable us workspace which caused delays on projects and caused us to fall behind.
We were stuck in our current Lease till end Sept, when we moved to 1000 sqm workshop. It was a huge move and getting everything up and running caused more delays.
The Metalwork on Leon's bus took a bit longer as there was more to do than initially thought as there were structural issues from the accident the bus had been involved in.

Unbeknown to us, the Paint-shop that was doing all our prep and Paint work at the time had some internal partner issues and this led to them falling behind and with major staff changes and firing a number of their staff( the ones working on Leon's bus). I did put continuous pressure on them as their delay was also putting us under huge pressure. With prep and paint unfortunately you can not rush the work as we have subsequently seen.

Leon was kept up to date with the progress and when the bus was painted and sent update pics all the time.

The largest mistake related to the Paint on the bus was the fact that The Piantshop never flatted and polished the bus, the staff member never came back in time for this to be done , so My staff did some flatting and polishing on the Bus. If this had been done properly it would have solved a lot of paint related issues on the Samba. The bumpers were done a while after the bus was painted by yet another staff member at the paintshop and the finish on them were not up to standard, due to time constraints i did offer Leon to send them back at my expense so we could re-do them when i saw Him in Glentana in Dec.
We were all jut too busy trying to get the bus a far as possible instead of paying more attention to the paint finish. in Fact Leon spent a whole day at my workshop on the day He collected the bus, Him and I fitted the sunroof together and not once did He point out that He was very unhappy about the paint work or anything else at that stage. Had He done so , we could have agreed there and then how to resolve the issue and fix the bus with more time on hand.

The slight hail damage on the rear roof of the bus was overlooked or just not done, i did make it clear to the Paint shop that we did not want excess body filler on this bus , the same as with all our buses, whether they thought that this was part of "not putting too much body filler on , or not, by the time we discovered the mistake it was too late to do anything about it. It can not be seen from standing next to the bus only if you climb in and look out the sunroof at the back do you see it, that is why i never picked it up in time.

At the time the bus went to the body shop it was strapped onto the trolley that Leon had made for the Bus, The paintshop has no facility or crane to lift the bus in order to paint stone chip underneath the areas covered by this trolley , once the bus was on it's own wheels and mobile we were to occupied with the rest of the work and rushing to get the bus complete that we overlooked touching up underneath where the bus had been lying on the trolley. Our Mistake.

We were told that All the parts needed for the bus was in the three Large sealed wooden crates and other smaller sealed wooden crates supplied by leon.
I did not want these crates opened up too long before we were ready to build the Samba , to prevent anything from being misplaced or mixed up.
Once we opened the crates , the parts were all over the place, not in any order, not grouped or cataloged , and also not sorted together but instead various components parts in different boxes all chucked together like a huge lucky packet.
This made our work extremely difficult at a time when we were already under huge pressure to complete. We did not have the time to scratch for bolts or small parts amongst all the boxes and used what we had readily available , thinking we could always go back and replace it once we found the correct part/bolt /split pin. some of these parts were not exchanged as we never had the time to go back and check everything as Leon needed to take the bus.

To Add to this , all the major components were stripped and in pieces,(not reconditioned and assembled ready to be fitted to the bus as i had understood it to be. This misunderstanding also added pressure on us as it took more time assembling these parts before fitting them to the bus)
There were parts missing like the fiber bushes on the front suspension were gone, With no where to buy any and not being able to find them amongst the packets and packets of parts in all the crates we had to find someone to supply the material and turn the bushes at a time when most engineering shops were in year end close down mode.
The Grease nipples were removed from the front axle, We searched but there were no replacement ones supplied by Leon , i personally went to 5 of our suppliers (bearing man, SKF, etc) but no one had the correct size that fitted.

The Engine Leon supplied was supposed to be reconditioned, He did ask us to give it a quick look over as he was not sure how well it had been done, The engine was never reconditioned and turned out to be a 1300 instead of 1600, leaking oil everywhere when we bench tested it ....basically stuffed.
We now at the 11th hour had to supply and rebuild a new engine for the project , This was not time budgeted for.

The bolts and nuts for the Samba were supplied (plated) in various containers , and all mixed up. We used what we could figure out , failing we used what we had in stock to get the bus as completed as possible. We did return some parts to Leon so that when he wanted to, he could sort through the parts and replace what needed as/when he had time, this was my understanding (at the time) based on the fact that he was happy to complete assembling the bus had we not managed in the time He paid for.

There were also fundamental part missing, like the rear section of the gear shaft. without that the bus wouldn't be drivable...This part can not be bought over the counter, i did by chance have one in stock from a previously stripped bus , and used that. The rear door lock was also not supplied together with a few other small bits and pieces.
Due to all the delays and us starting late in completing Leon's bus we had also ended up at the wrong time of the year doing this. Our upholsterers had closed for the year and i had made special arrangements with them to let their hood lining guy come and fit the supplied hood lining. We needed to fit the hood lining in order to get the skylight windows in so the bus was water proof for towing to George and then to JHB (as Leon had sent all the seats down on my timefreight account from JHB and they would be in the back of the bus with new upholstery on and you wouldn't want this to get wet !)
The Guy had never fitted one of these before and yes, it could have been fitted better, but this was all we had available to us at the time , perforated vinyl can stretch and you can remove it , clean the glue off with some petrol and re fitted according to my upholsterer. With no time left at our disposal we let him fit it and continued to assemble the bus. Leon in fact had said that if we don't have enough time to do the hood lining to leave it and he would fit it himself once back home, i thought we would save him the trouble and get it done so He didn't need to remove all the skylights etc and re fit everything, in hindsight i should have just left it out.



in a nutshell :

Had we had more time and not being caught in December shutdown, a lot of these issues related to Leon's bus could have been avoided.
Having realized that we will run out of time , i should have insisted to complete the bus in the new year instead of rushing to get it done.

I did tell Leon to leave the Bus and we can send it up in the new year to give us more time, but he refused.
i did personally go see Leon in Glentana after He expressed unhappiness about the paint , and offered to go and Pick up the bus at my expense from George, sort out the issues and send it up with Peter Benn once we were done with it. Leon turned this offer down.
I also offered to get Leon to send the Bumpers and other loose panels back to us with Timefreight on my acc so we could fix them and return to him.... he never took us up on this.
I never promised the paperwork in January as i told Leon that we have absolutely no control over the time it takes to get issued.
I'm not sure where i lied to Him , but as far as playing someone is concerned in my book that is as good as lying or just another word for deceiving someone.
We don't flat and polish the area under the front seat or the floors of any of our restorations, most client's fit carpeting.

None of the metalwork was unscheduled....everything was discussed in detail with Leon and approved before we continued. i have all the relevant emails related to this.
there were quite a bit extra work on the long side where the bus had fallen on, especially the driver side door frame, roof area, swaige line, B pillar, A pillar etc.
Leon did opt to leave the rear floor with UN-matched panels and He said this would be covered by carpet and no one will ever see it. This was left , acting on His instruction. I thought it would be the same with the area under the front seats and the front floor. Leon Had sent me pic's of sample carpeting he intended using through out the bus.

We fitted door handle seals, we even tried some of our own stock, once the rubbers are on , the door handles don't fit right the bolt holes don't line up, often on buses they don't fit, especially if there is a little bit of body filler on a 50 year old door and adding the seal causes the holes not to align, so we leave them off instead, unless you are doing a concourse or Show quality restoration and fit complete new front door panels with absolutely no body filler.

We fitted the Deluxe trim in the existing holes that were drilled By Leon,the holes had been pre drilled on the nose section on both the body and on the trim.
We have have fitted many deluxe trims , If you get it better on the rear corners, Leon please let me know how you managed.
Leon Had driven the Bus on quite a few occasions both down at the coast and everything seemed to work well. The only complaint was that the bus had run out of petrol.

We don't rebuild our brake cylinders , we replace them with new ones imported from Overseas. We have never re-built them , other than replace the seals. Leon brought it to our attention on the 24th of Nov that he didn't supply new front cylinders only rear, there was no time for us to import new ones at this stage, we had in stock but for a later model bus , so we checked his front ones and they seemed to still be ok and re used them.

We fit all standard restoration quarter vent top's with pop rivet's. No problems as yet.
Steering wheel crack are unavoidable, we have tried epoxy, prattleys etc. , but with time it cracks again, we are now looking at fiberglass repairs as we have seen done overseas on a recent trip.

in an email from Leon on the 24th of November he advised me that the following parts are not supplied by him :
Exhaust
Wiring harness , fuel gauge with sender
Rubber for front suspension
Brake drums are old and brake shoes need to be reconditioned
Front brake cylinders need replacing or reconditioning
no spare wheel for the bus
Horn button plastic cover missing
Battery straps
Brake lines

This shows that the time management on this build was not only from our side alone.



Costs :

We charged for 8 days assembly (including engine rebuild) and ended up doing 13 Days (including Sunday) and mostly till 10 / 11 pm.
We lost R 19 200 in labour.
We charge R11 500 for Electrical according to our work schedule ( excluding semaphore installation on a separate switch system for show and indicator bulbs fitted in
the headlights) , We only charged Leon R 5000 for electrical. He did supply some parts and should still have paid R 7 400.
We Lost R 2400
When we did our agreement with the Paintshop the cost of prep and Paint including materials were R35k. we charged leon R30k.
We lost R 5000
We did put all our staff on Leon's bus in order to get it done, so all our other restorations came to a standstill over this time.

Outstanding invoice for parts :
R 3069.00
Payment for Paperwork ( Leon suggested i pay for this and the outstanding parts invoice, Then he will be happy to sort out the issues with the bus himself)
R 7500

Total loss R 37 169.

based on this loss i suggested to Leon at the time that if He paid some of the money we have lost ( in fact i suggested He only pay R 11 700)
I will then get the Bus back to our workshop and sort out all the issues that he had listed in His email and return the bus to Him.
This included a new Hood lining supplied and fitted,
all paint issues repaired including the hail damage on the rear roof, engine lid repaint, valance repaint , Sort out any electrical issues that there may be.
i did think this was a very reasonable suggestion at the time.
In the Meantime Leon was busy Playing me and had his own ideas , i was very serious to come to an agreement with Leon to resolve the issues and get the samba
looking good and all the small things fixed , after all it was our name and reputation at stake.

In Fact i was trying to get it resolved before Fig's camp-out so the bus looked great and would show case our work, i mentioned this to Leon and how important it was
for Me to have the bus looking right at the Camp out....

well that was obviously not to be......instead Leon did what i least expected someone like him to do....without any further negotiations or correspondence went all out to
name and shame us so bad that it will take years to get our reputation repaired.


Since this post made it's debut ...


We have had at least 3 restoration cancellations as well as other work taken elsewhere due to this tread on the forum. These were confirmed restorations.
Loss R ?????

What have we done to prevent this from happening again ?

We take on less work and focus on quality rather than quantity. We will now only do 6 restorations a year.
We do not work to any deadlines.
We do not complete projects over December.
We have checklists in Place for every item on the bus during assembly and they checked get signed off by the workshop manager.
We have put quality checks in place on each restoration at each stage of work completed.
We have left the previous Paintshop and moved to a better Paintshop with better staff and no partner issues and offer detailed work, at a higher price of course.
I do not take the bus from the Paintshop unless i am 100% satisfied with both the prep the finish of the Paint job.
We only fit good quality Deluxe trim imported by ourselves (Pierre Bugger can testify to this effect)
We replace a lot more worn parts with new ones(this unfortunately pushes the price up)
We will continue to add things to improve our workmanship and finished product, because we love what we do.

We are a small company run by 8 staff and myself, we are not a corporate company with massive systems in place.
It is very easy to pic out all the mistakes , i am very surprised that Leon couldn't find one good thing to say about all the work we did on His bus.
if you are a perfectionist then rather do the restoration yourself, as it will never be like you want it to be if someone else does it !
We do only buy from Reputable suppliers and have fitted many TUFFEX exhausts on other buses and had no problems with them at all, no we are not an aircraft company
but we don't buy shit parts.

The complaints no doubt will go on and on , as they have been. I have had my say.

[calooker]

I'm no expert, but, some of your practices, explanations, leave me amazed, wow!!!!!

Seen many a shop think that quantity rather than quality brings home the bacon, yes it will initially, but as word spreads, things will blow up in their face sooner rather than later.
If a business has a loss, you can't blame anyone but the person running it, bottom line, incompetence.

Loosing work now means you can concentrate & carry out the work you have with more care & quality.
Total loss R 37169??? School fees....

[JonnoDub]

Total loss R 37169??? School fees....

Paid??

[Hloni]

Like some on the forum, I watched this showdown with interest as I was awaiting the return punches. Well, an official response has been tabled - clear that the supplier made some badly calculated mistakes and pins them on the client. Client too seems to have not taken ownership of his signing off of certain work (if indeed the thread of emails do exist), and I suppose NOT sorting parts systematically created issues which could have been avoided.

Would I have made noise on the day I came to pick-up the bus seeing all the faults? Maybe not. Maybe I too would just have wanted it OUT of that shop. The big question now is "what next?" as both parties have put their side to us.

[ST Man]

Well as expected there are different opinions on this but its only fair. Well I think I will now start posting in other post about my bus as I am really getting there on fixing bus and starting to enjoy it. Planning a trip to Kruger in June
So regarding the losses Vintage Kombi made.
1. Labour is calculated on a overtime basis that was worked on the bus. If a project is late and a company has to pay over time to make the deadline it is not my problem. No loss due me
2. Electrical.... what? I paid what was invoiced..... no loss due to my fault
3. Paint... the price of paint job went up after original due date of bus and quote provided to me. So I only paid the amount I was quoted.no loss due to me
4. Paper work and outstanding invoice, yes I agreed to not pay this in exchange for cost of respray so Jacque won a huge amount here. I sent bus back for all the repairs they would have lost more.

My losses
1.Estimated 100 -200 hours repairing my bus so far you do math
2. Will respray bus at some point . strip and paint R50 000
3. New roof lining messes up to buy sam one and import R7000
4. New Samba trim R5000
5. Paying for a fully assembled bus and not getting one...not sure
6. JOY Priceless

And then I will add that I emailed Jacques every possible problem to help him plan so the nov 24 email is in below. I realised they are struggling and made a point to help them plan. This email is one month before delivery. Don't see problem with this. I complained about leaking brakes in a previous post and in this mail Jacques referenced I warned him about possible brake issues on front. There is a email trail.....
Hi Jacques
Alles wat ek nou kan onthou wat julle kan terug hou op die bus
• Exaust bestel
• Wiring harness die kar was 6v ek het reeds alternator/generator na 12v en alles wat nuut gekoop is is 12v maar fuel gauge is nog 6v
• Rubber in voor suspension sien onder op heritage page
• Die briek dromme is nog oud en brieke blokkies moet weer oorgedoen word.
• Briek silinders vir voor. Die briek units voor moet oorgedoen of of vervang word. Ek het nuwes gekopo vir agter en ook nuwe master cylinder.
• Spaar wiel is daar nie p
• Horn button plastic surround
• Battery straps
• Brake lines

LEON POTGIETER

As mentioned before I only started getting irritated with the process when I pointed out mistakes and Vintage Kombi wanted me to pay for their bad calculated labout etc to do repairs. If it was not for that I would have sent bus back.

[calooker]

Vintage Kombi wanted me to pay for their bad calculated labout etc to do repairs. If it was not for that I would have sent bus back.

You did the right thing, not to send it back, as they would then have held the bus as ransom until you paid whatever they felt was due to them to make up the school fees.

[ST Man]

Over the weekend I found biggest issue on the bus so far. THIS IS REALLY ALARMING
I am busy fitting sound insulation so removed inner side panels. The long side panel was replaced on the bus. I was told that the skin will be bonded on onto frame and welded around the edges as this is better and you get a straighter panel afterwards. I didn't get a straight panel.
So here is some images of the bonding, Seems skin is double sided taped to inner structure. This means that the side skin is not really attached to bus structure and if the bus suffers and impact it will not be as strong as I should be. The skin is now only attached around edges which is really dangerous and will cause fatigue in the structure. The side skin is now able to buckle under movement and move independently of structure. When VW build the Sambas they realised that the sunroof causes a major weakness in the structure so all sambas has a double floor panel. So for the next few nights will be bonding the frame onto the inner structure. This is a really bad idea to do it like this.

In the image you can see inner rib, outer skin pulling away from rib and double sided tape that is half attached to inside and outside and the gap between inner rib and skin. Note also the damage where old panel was not drilled loose on the spot welds but broken out.

I think I will now do happy posts about bus in another thread.