Job pricing help

Thomas E Westfall - Deceased 1970 - 2017

July 7, 1970 ~ June 10, 2017
I need some input pricing an electoral job I’m doing. I’ve been out of the body and electoral business for a very long time and honestly have no clue what to charge. I am completely rewiring an H2 limo that had a catastrophic failure on its motherboard that controls everything in the back. I have fished over 300 feet of wiring and fabricated a fuse box and relay link to run the rear accessories and control the HVAC in the rear. Now being a perfectionist it is as close to perfect as I can get and the rear passengers again have control over the rear of the car. I’ve tied the fuse/relay into the solenoid of the original motherboard so the driver still has a functional control panel in front. I’ve run 7 different circuits, 2 HVAC blower controls and repaired a few minor things in the car. I’ve got around 48 hours into it so far plus a quick fix so they did not have to cancel any bookings. I should have it done this Thursday. Now it was a good friend that was in a bind so I’m not looking to get rich, but I don’t want to give it away. He shipped it to Columbus Ohio for work, but that shop said they could not fix it, so I told him let me meticulously plan this and rough out a schematic and I will help. He has covered all the parts so this is just an idea on labor.
 
I think I paid about $70.00 an hour to have some electrical work done on a old 66 VW. And I supplied everything, so no parts just labor.
 
If you were a shop with overhead expenses, such as heat, lights, insurance, etc. , then $70 an hour would be reasonable. I have done a lot of work for friends and don't charge anything for my time. Sure, the job might be worth $3500 in labor if it was in a shop, but you are not a shop. I say that if you charge $20 - $25 an hour, it would be reasonable. Also keep in mind, that this is "tax free" money.
 
Had the same thing about a year ago on a Town Car Limo the mother board failed and the back went dead. In this case Limo co wanted 3k to repair it IF they could get a new board. The owner a long time friend and customer came to me with his tail between his legs. I pulled the mother board found a burned PC band from overload replaced band with wire bridge and removed some items from board to separate fused line that I made. Took about four hours to do the job Charged the happy guy $400.00 told him $200.00 was for the time and $200.00 was for knowing how. This motherboard thing is going to be an issue on all these fancy stretch jobs as they get old a replacement boards will not be available and to repair you will need to reinvent the wheel literally.
 
The fact that you did a better-than-most-would-do-job, took time to make it right, knew what you were doing and helped out the friend in a rather odd job,
20.00-30.00 per hour would be fair for sure.

Sounds like it would have cost him 2 or 3 times that at a shop that still may have not done as good of a job as you did.

It is worth getting a guy to do it right and well and pay the going rate than get a patch job and pay the going rate to have it fail again.

Be proud of your work and get some play money for your efforts.
Also be proud of your work ethics of doing it well the first time and being a perfectionist.

Darren
 
you got 6 days in it but what kind of days are the 20 year old days or 60 year old days. seams like a get about half as much done now as I did when I was 40. cover your materials and toss in a token amount if it's a friends car. think of all the fun you had. he brings you another one double it then.
 
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