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RESTORING CARS

“Cars is Cars.” – Paul Simon

“Oh no they aren’t.” – Randy Booden, B&B Collision

One’s a songwriter. The other takes the approach of many famous sculptures who said the statue was already done; he merely had to remove the marble around it to reveal it to the world.

“You look at that and see so many boxes of parts, dinged up pieces of metal, torn sheet metal. I look at is, and so does the owner, as the 1968 Camaro is once was, and will be again, in about nine months.”

“I have a rule,” Randy said, “And don’t get me wrong, I’m not being a snob or anything. But restoring a car is a labor of love. People bring them in here in milk crates, literally, and we put it together.

“But if someone asks me three times in the very first conversation how much it’s going to cost, I politely send them packing. It may take us nine months to restore a car; it may take us 18. Real car buffs know that, and they help us out by shopping for the hard-to-find parts. They’re out there, but spending an afternoon on the phone doesn’t get the car done.”

“Restoration has always been high on Randy’s list of favorite things to do,” said Wendy Tomassi, Randy’s sister and B&B’s accounting manager. “The regular day-to-day is our bread and butter, but this is what these guys live for,” she said.

Andrew sands down part the left rear quarter panel that came into B&B Collision in a box.

“It may not look like it to you, but that came out of the bunch of milk cartons,” Wendy said, walking back to the paint area where Andrew was lovingly, there just isn’t any other word for it, sanding down a gentle curve on what was taking shape as a ’68 Camaro.

“You have to have an eye for it,” Wendy said. “People just can’t come in off the street and do this kind of work. You’ll notice Andrew isn’t wearing any gloves,” and indeed he wasn’t. His hands were calloused from doing prep work like this before, although he’d only been and B&B for about a year and a half.

“You have to feel it,” Andrew said. “It’s almost – not quite – but almost a job where you have to feel the curve of the car, and then it’s like your hands

RESTORING CARS
RESTORING CARS

have memories. When I get over to the other side, I’ll remember what that side felt like, and I’ll be able to duplicate it. This isn’t a job where you can ‘eye it in.’ You have to feel your way. No too many people can do that.’

The team’s finished product: From a several boxes to a perfectly smooth Camaro. Some of these restorations can take up to 18 months.

Wendy said between jobs, the workers vie for time on the restorations. “It isn’t often you literally get the experience of building a car from the ground up with your own two hands,” she said. “Every now and again they’ll come in here on a Saturday morning if Randy is going to work on a customer’s car. It’s like a workshop for them. They’re all into it.”

If you’re waiting for a ride someday, take a look at the pictures on the walls. The GTX belongs, or belonged, to Randy; the Mustang is John’s; the ’41 Coupe and the ’65 GTO belong to Rob; and the 1960 Continental you see parked out front that’s half as long as a city block, and in near perfect condition, is the proud property of Bill Booden, who started the business 27 years ago and has won a truckload of awards with that car.

If you take a look at it, you’ll have to admit it’s pretty cool, and must feel like you’re driving your living room around (the hood alone measures 16 feet), but those aren’t the award-winning factors.

Open your eyes. It only has two doors for a car you could play touch football in without disturbing the driver. If you stop by one day when it’s parked outside, Bill will let you look at it and might, no guarantees, let you sit in it. Bill Booden stands about 6’17” – if he says “no,” don’t push it.

Another team restoration project well on its way to completion: a ‘64 Plymouth Savoy. All it needs now is an engine.

Wendy says they have eight or nine cars on the list to be restored, because they like the meticulous way Randy, Nick, his co-manager, and his team go about it. “They might find a grill that’s close. Really close. Chances are the owner wouldn’t know the difference. But Randy would. To him, there is no substitute. It’s got to be THE right part, and he’ll spend hours, days on the phone, checking his email, heck, my dad just got out of the hospital and Randy’s already got him flipping through a copy of Hemmings Motor News – that’s the Bible of car restoration.”

She went over and pulled if off Bill’s desk. It was already yellowed, corners bent, with torn sheets of magazines and newspapers marking spots for further investigation. “And this copy was white when he got it,” Wendy said, smiling. “But that’s what he lives for.”

RESTORING CARS

NEW CARS ARE BUILT FOR SAFETY

If my 2002 Toyota Echo hit Bill Booden’s 1960 Lincoln Mark V, he’d probably turn to his wife and say, “Whassat a bug or something?”

Bill Booden, who started B&B Collision, bought this two-door Mark V in the early ‘90s. It was made in 1960 of solid steel and iron.

The car weighs 5,200 pounds. It is 19.8 feet long. That is larger than many dining rooms in and around Royal Oak.

It has a V8 engine that develops 460 horsepower.

As noted, it is a two-door hardtop. There are only about 60 of these cars still believed to be in existence in the United States.

Originally, only 1,400 were built, period.

There are two things my car has in common with Booden’s. It is black and it has two doors. Other than that:

Without anyone in it, it weighs 775 pounds. It is 163.1 inches long. It has 4-cylinder engine that develops, ah … I’d rather not say how much horsepower. About 300,000,000 Echo’s have been made. What does all this matter? It matters a lot because over the years, the dynamics of your car have changed. Bill Booden’s car was not made to absorb a shock. It was made to stop one and at almost 20 feet long, the chances are fairly good it will.

postimage1My car, and yours, were made to absorb a shock, and fold up like a Venetian blind. The idea, according to manager Wendy Tomassi, a manager at B&B, is to “walk away from the accident. “If we didn’t have shoulder straps and seat belts, and air bags, plus cars intentionally designed to collapse under impact, you’d be on your way to Beaumont – if you were lucky,” Wendy says. “But I’ll tell you – the kinds of stuff (the car companies) are using to absorb the shock can be just a little frightening.”

As an example, she held up a piece of Styrofoam sculpted just like a bumper. The problem – it was a bumper, made to fit inside a piece of sheet metal about half an inch thick, if that, to go on the exterior of the car. It even came painted. “We have to be really careful putting these cars back together,” Wendy said, gingerly leaning on a small car. “You can put a dent in them like that,” she said, snapping her fingers, “and we can’t bump it out. The metal’s too thin. We have to order a whole new piece.

“This is what people don’t understand,” Wendy said, walking among cars waiting for parts or to be painted. “They still have that mentality that their cars are like my dad’s car. ‘It’s just a little ding, they can bump it out.’ I wish we could. On his car, we could bump it out. It’s made of steel with 15 coats of paint on it.

postimage2“On today’s cars, we have to order the part, and once it’s painted, it looks nice, but you can scratch if off with your fingernail and get down to bare metal.” Which of the two kinds of cars would Wendy feel more comfortable in? “I hate to say it, but I want a car I can walk away from if it’s in an accident.”

QUIZ ABOUT CAR KNOWLEDGE

How are you at your knowledge of cars these days? Things have probably changed a lot since you’ve poked your head under the hood. Want to find out? Take this little quiz. The answers are at the end, Five points for each correct answer; four points for each second-best answer. Beyond that, well … our moms taught us if you cannot say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

How much actual steel is put into an average car today?

  1. a) Twenty-five percent
  2. b) Fifty percent
  3. c) 60 percent
  4. d) 65 percent

Airbags are set to go off when the car hits an object dead on going:

  1. a) The rate of deceleration
  2. b) 5-8 mph
  3. c) 5-10 mph
  4. d) 10-15 mph

How many coats of paint are put on a car today, particularly one that’s being fixed?

  1. a) one
  2. b) two
  3. c) five
  4. d) 10

Cars today are made to:

  1. a) Crumble up and absorb impact around the driver’s cage
  2. b) Absorb impact with the front, steel grill
  3. c) Have a front, steel grill, which absorbs impact

A new bumper on a Toyota Echo, the smallest car Toyota makes, will cost this much to replace.

  1. a) $75
  2. b) $150
  3. c) $250
  4. d) $300

What percentage of used parts, to hold costs down, is a bump shop likely to use to fix a car in what most people would agree is a medium-type accident?

  1. a) Depends on the bump shop
  2. b) All of them, but some will charge you for all new parts. And how will you know, anyway?
  3. c) They try to use as many as they can find to help recycle
  4. d) Not many – the mark-up on brand-new dealership parts is just too much for any one man to resist

At what point will your insurance company total your car?

  1. a) Ha ha ha , oh, this is good, ha ha, total the car, get a load of this
  2. b) When the damage approaches or exceeds 50 percent of the car’s value
  3. c) When the damage and value equal the value of the car
  4. d) When the damage simply exceeds the value of reassembling the car?

Long ago, when a man was a man, he carried a tool box in his car to fix problems on the fly. Today, that toolbox:

  1. a) Is as good as it ever was at fixing the same problems
  2. b) Due to computers, ballast
  3. c) Unless you have a particular computer, the right software and carry it around in your back seat, nice to pull out and have a good cry over

Means the dealerships have a hammerlock on your you-know-what’s

AUTO REPAIR TIPS

Gentlemen, start your engines.

Now, turn them off.

You’re not only wasting gas at nearly eight bits a gallon, but you have been emasculated. Sorry you had to hear about it here. Perhaps telling you how this happened in anecdotal form would have eased the blow.

I have a friend, Austin. He drives an old pickup truck and carries a tool box in it, behind the seat. He could drive something else if he wanted to.

He can use the tools, in his tool box, to work on his truck. He can change a water pump, replace other parts, and basically fix everything under the hood. Austin says the Army taught him everything he needs to know about fixing machinery, and he likes it that way.

But that way is that way no longer.

The mechanics – top-flight people who have to put your car back together at B&B Collision after you’ve spun out playing “Don’t Hit the Telephone Pole” have news.

The only thing under the hood, today, is computer chips. As Wendy, who manages B&B with her brother Randy Booden and Nick Olsoyw, says, you might, if you’re lucky, still be able to change the oil and windshield washer fluid.

The engine in a week-old Subaru. Toss your tools, light up your laptop. Just what you want to do on the shoulder of I-696.

The V-8 engine in a gorgeous, candy-apple red Olds Cutlass. Tools work here.

But you are no longer qualified enough to work on anything else under the hood, unless you have about $20,000 in computer diagnostic equipment and know how to use it. That tool box is ballast. Over the side she goes.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Nick says. “Take the Mercedes new 500 series. The computers help the seat belts and air bags work together.

“Let’s say you have to slam on the brakes. The computers measure how much pressure is on them and transmit that information to the seat belts, which determine how tight they need to get, and then to the air bags, and they tell the air bags if they have to deploy or not and if so, exactly how much they have to deploy, so it just doesn’t blow up in your face any more.”

Nick and Wendy also said the computers on high-end cars send messages to the side door airbags, telling them to or not to deploy, and if so, how much. “Cars are much safer today, but soon, very soon, you’ll just have to accept the fact that you cannot work on your own car any more.” B&B always sends employees to seminars to keep the company current. It’s literally changing the face of how B&B works.

“All the computers work as a team now,” Nick said, and he agreed with Wendy that yes, most of this stuff is on the high-end cars – now.

“But you’ll see it trickle down real shortly,” Wendy said. “Some Fords have the side airbags now. If they’ve got them, we’re not far away from everyone having them.”

“People really don’t know about all the new technology that’s come out lately with these new cars,” Nick said. As an example, he mentioned an airbag called a trim curtain, which comes out of the trim (duh) to protect your face, and side airbags wedged between you and the door. “They deploy so fast, and so hard, that they can keep the car that slammed into your side from breaking your ribs,” Nick said.

Now all this doesn’t come without a price.

Talk to the professional mechanics in B&B’s back shop, and they will just scratch their heads and wonder why a battery is under a back seat, and other design idiosyncrasies that make it a miracle to just find the part, much less run a diagnostic on it.

What are the hardest cars to work on? “Jags, BMWs – the European cars, just because of the way they have things positioned. They’re not body-man friend. They’re not collision friendly. When you want to go in and do something simple like change a battery, it’s almost always behind this other stuff that makes it impossible to work on.”

“They’re building these cars with the safety of the driver in mind, but not the caring of the vehicle,” Wendy said. “Ease of assembly is not their concern.”

Wendy was leaning on a week-old Subaru that had been smacked good on a test drive. The front end is a mess. Want to know what they dread most about fixing the Subaru?

“You have to take off the entire front assembly to change the bulb in the headlight,” Wendy said. “Now you know why so many people are driving around with one headlight.”

And then there’s more fun. For example, Nick said it’s necessary to disconnect the battery to work on some cars, for some reasons. When you reconnect it, it isn’t unusual at all for the radio not to work. “Customers come back and say nice job, what did you do to my radio? We didn’t do anything. It’s now necessary to call the manufacturer and get a code to punch in so the computer will recognize it — and then the radio will work.

What’s the best car they believe delivers everything the driver expects, is safe, rides nice, doesn’t rust, is durable and one of the best cars every made? “The Grand Am,” was the simultaneous answer from mechanics Brett, Carl and Tom.

TIPS ON BUYING A NEW CAR

Let’s say you’re in the market for a new car. The best place to research the safety features before buying that car is:

 

Consumer’s Report, a nationally known, objective resource about everything from cars to coffee pots;

The manufacturer itself. By law, manufacturers are required to file safety, along with other statistics, o the government for the public’s review.

By heading down the street to your neighborhood car fix-it shop and get the lead mechanic’s take on the car you’re considering purchasing.

These are all good options, but there’s a better one – the people who put the cars back together after an accident – if they can be reassembled at all.

B&B Collision is an excellent place to start your research.

“People can write anything they want about cars and their safety standards,” says Wendy Tomassi, business manager of the family run shop. Randy Booden, Wendy’s brother and shop owner, practices what he preaches. As time allows, he builds cars, from the tread up, and then races them in events across the country.”

“We get to see what they’re really made of when they’re towed in here,” Wendy added.

To an individual, Wendy, Randy and Nick, the shop manager, all gave a thumbs-up to Saturns. “They’re well engineered, the parts are easy to get and they’re pretty much a perfect fit right out of the box,” Wendy said.

“Plus, they have a lot of kid safety features already installed, which tells you something about what the designers are thinking about,” she added, referring to the half-door that allows easier access to the back seats. “Those seats also make it easier for a child to get out of a car.”

Another car in the safety category is like hospital wallpaper. It’s always the same color, no matter where you go; after a while, it becomes synonymous with comfort and relaxation; and finally, it becomes invisible. Your eye doesn’t catch it any more. It’s become part of the landscape.

That’s because it’s a Ford Taurus. “We don’t see many of those in here, which means Taurus drivers are very good drivers, or the car is built to take quite a beating and keep on going,” Wendy added. “Here again, parts are easy to find and often we can get them overnight.

“We’re very aware of that sinking feeling customers get when we tell them we can have their car assembled and on the road inside of a few hours – but it’s going to take two weeks to get the parts,” she added.

Nick, the shop manager, said Kia’s may have some cute designs for the market they’re after, but there’s nothing exceptional under the hood and no reason for kids to have Kia or GMC pickups.

“What’s kid that age going to do with a pickup, anyway?” After everyone winked their way through the obvious, Nick continued. “They’re horrible to drive in the winter. Now you’re talking not only about a car that’s automatically difficult to drive in rain and snow, but it’s a car with no weight in the back.

“You’ll never convince me that was a bright idea when all of, say, Kia’s designers said, “OK, let’s make a car with all the weight in the front. Everyone will overlook it when we hit it with our new sparkle paint series, available in every color.”

 

Which takes us back to our last story, about B%B’s new paint shop, which can paint and make the paint dry inside of an afternoon (a job like that used to take a day). “I can write up an order that will give you the prettiest car on the road. It might have a hole underneath the paint and Bondo that you could send a cannon ball sailing through, but geez, will that car look good.”

“We don’t do thing that way around here,” Randy said. After more than 20 years in this business, you learn that a car must be reassembled right, or not at all. Some cars are built to take a small “bang” every now and then, but they’re easy to be fixed. Then there are others, like that Kia out there on the lot that looks like a pita roll-up, that was designed to be a one-hit wonder.”

POLISHING AND WAXING TIPS

So, did you hear the one about the guy who really wanted to put a polish on his car? He bought one of those $49 wheels you attach to a drill and on a nice hot Sunday, in direct sunlight, and put all he had into pressing down on that wheel. He was going to get a nice shine, that’s all there was to it.

He was also going to get a good look at bare metal because he bore right through the wax, the clear coat, the paint, and finally had buffed himself a nice, shiny spot where all of that used to be. Moral of the story: If you want to learn to wax your car, don’t be anywhere near a phone at 2 a.m. with a credit card when those commercials come on.

He was at B&B early the next morning, asking if they could help him out. “Those things are nothing but sanders,” says Wendy Tomassi, a manager of B&B Collision. “And they seem to forget that you want to leave a little product on the car – that’s the whole point of waxing it.”

For those who don’t know, we asked the expert; Wendy says if you’re going to wax your car:

Wash it.

Do it in the shade,

“and never when it’s really, really hot out.”

Using clean soft clothes, you put the coat of wax on and you gently take the coat of wax off. You must leave some product on the car to protect it. You’ll normally see some people standing there with a six-pack using all their muscle to try to rub that wax off, and they’re sweating, and you walk up to them and ask ‘What did you do?’ and they say ‘I waxed my car.’ And I say ‘No you didn’t. You didn’t leave any protector on there.’” “People in general don’t know how to wax a car, and make the fatal mistake of thinking just because it’s clear coated, it doesn’t need to be waxed.”

 

“Wrong,” Wendy says. She says you don’t have to do it every weekend. Twice a year is good if you know what you’re doing, but it’s a good idea to run your car through a quarter car wash to get the bird droppings off. They’re acidic and will eat right through the clear coat and the paint in no time at all, Wendy says. Makes you wonder what the birds are eating, doesn’t it?

Then there’s the problem of overspray. You’ve probably noticed it in traffic. The person next to you will hit their sprayer button and miss their windshield completely, hitting the top of their car and if you’re in position behind them you can just turn on your wipers and clean your windows.

One day a customer drove in with two streaks of overspray hitting her trim and it was all over the top of her car. “She asked if we could get it off,” said Randy, and while we were talking, a porter came out and already has started to get it off using a triple fine steel wool.

“Well, when she got home and saw some more overspray on the windshield, she went in the house, got some steel wool out of a drawer and needless to say she scratched the s— out of the windshield. So she called and wondered why we’d used steel wool and it hadn’t left a mark and she’d used steel wool and it had just scratched it up worse. We told her to come back in and we’d show her.”

“The best in my mind is when we paint a customer’s car, sometimes they ask us for a little touch up paint. So we put some in a baby food jar and we always ask them if they’re going straight home. There’s a reason for that.”

“We warn them – don’t leave it in the car. Take it straight home and put it in the garage or in the basement or in a shaded area like that. So she says OK, leaves, needs something for dinner, stops at a grocery store. The paint was in the glove box.”

“She was in the store for 20 minutes, which was long enough for the temperature in the care to rise and she came out to see it pouring out of her glovebox all over her black carpeting.”

Sometimes, it is easier to let a pro do it, even though you can. I can make pasta, but not as well as Mario’s – that sort of thinking. Getting a good coating of paste wax on your car now, before the bad weather hits (which could be any minute given this is Michigan) isn’t such a bad idea. It’ll carry you through most of the winter.

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