I think the original question in this thread has not been addressed.
Part of what Tjfennel was asking (at least the way I read it) was the quality of the job throughout.
Now...
I know Archie does nice work, and there is proof of that, but the question is much more complex.
Sure... you can do a fantastic job on the welding of the frame, and a beautiful job on the re-body procedure on the roof, and the car is put back together properly because they know the cars, know what their doing, and been thru it many times.
But the question I have and I think it was part of Tjfennel's original question that was never touched on is...
What extensive care is taken to the persons car during this procedure?
When you take my interior apart, how is it done? Where do you put it? Do you do the interior work with clean clothes and clean hands? Let me explain... My interior is show. It's a 9.9 out of 10. It looks like a 2003 with 9,000 miles. Do you carefully remove each panel, not nick anything with a screwdriver, and place it in a seperate room, placed on a blanket, and seperate each piece with a blanket, cover it all up with a tarp during the choptop procedure? Or does it get tossed in a corner? Does it get put back together with care & precision? Are all the proper screws used in the proper locations, or is it a rattle trap when it returns? What about the steering wheel in that photo? My wheel is mint, not a mark, almost flawless... will it be returned to me that way? Same goes for the exterior?
Am I a Fiero Purest that Archie so often refers to? No... I am a Fiero owner who takes pride in his car and wants to keep it in the show conditon that it is currently in. And mint steering wheels, seats and panels are not cheap to replace.
I think these are the types of things Fiero owners who have very nice cars and have a strong interest in getting their roofs choped are mostly concerned about. They are valid concerns.
That is a lot of work and hats off to anyone who has done it. We have done it to several 1940's cars. But they were our own cars and not a service job.
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"...the car is beautifully balanced and almost refuses to do anything but go where you point it. In it's tenacious stick and ability to go very fast over a mountain road with a minimum of driver effort, the Fiero GT feels more like a smaller, tighter Corvette than a direct competitor to any of the import 2-seaters. It feels solid, strong, fast and it's a little bigger than it looks. It looks racy and exotic, sticks to the road like glue, sounds good and gets you from one side of the mountains to the other quicker than all but a few cars on Earth." --- Road & Track on the 1987 Fiero GT
[This message has been edited by Skybax (edited 09-16-2003).]
