OK, I have a 2000 Toyota Camry that has admittedly been beat up, abused, and neglected for the last year and I am sick of looking at it as it is. So, being proactive I took it in to several body shops to see what it would cost to fix it up.

The first told me it would not be worth fixing because its’ Blue book is too low. (I checked the Kelly Blue Book, trade in is about $3500, private sale is about $5500, and retail is about $8500, and that is listing it in its’ current condition of fair.) I really do not think that the repairs are more than $3500.

The next guy said to would take him a week to source the parts and then would call me with an estimate. OK, but a week to source out the parts? Let’s see, it took me about 15 minutes to look up all the part I would need on the car (assuming replacing parts as opposed it fixing) and with that I had compared three different vendors. Why the excuse? Did he not want to bother with my repair job?

The last guy was just plain to busy to be bothered. I don’t get it, maybe he looked at my job and immediately decided there was not enough money to be made. But to simply turn away business, that is beyond me.

So that leaves me with two interesting options, find another mechanic willing to do the job or to do it myself. That latter option is really starting to appeal to me.

Before I started the quest for an auto body shop I had a good idea of how much the repair should run because I talk to an insurance adjuster and he gave me a quick ballpark. Knowing that the repair should come in between $2500 and $3000 did not phase me. Now all I needed was a mechanic to do it hence the search. Then my eyes opened.

Remember the guy who would not give a quote because he wanted to source the parts? Well I know how long it takes to source the parts because I just did it. In the process I learned something… Auto part are not as expensive as you may think.

Two companies want about $1100 for all the parts I needed and a third wanted about $900 (all with truck shipping). Now these are all the parts for replacement and not repairing the old ones. That is a hell of a lot less than I expected. It is so much less that I am considering doing the repairs myself and saving about $1500 or more. With the extra cash I could even pay off the car completely. Now that is a deal.

But it has been a long time since I undertook to do any body work on a car. In fact it has been 25 years and the cars were simpler than. But I suspect that if I purchase a good Chiltons or Hayes I could pull it off. I may have to rent some tools and a couple of jacks, but how hard can it really be?

Still, it could be a lot harder than I remember because there was always Mr. Gilbert in shop class to help out and check everything over. I would be willing to pay to have it done, but man, good help is so hard to find.