My front bumper came with the bubble wrap markings on it in the paint, like the ebay auction. Nate must wrap them about 30 minutes after painting them.
Bottorf Fabrication
- Thread starter MATT223081
- Start date
wooderson said:
He says it is on his website, he has on his invoices that it is, but It's not registered with the State of Pennsylvania as one. I looked it up when I was having issues with him. The state of PA lets you search all registered corporations. Just to make sure the state website works, I looked up Trevor, and the Roverlab is registered as an LLC.
https://www.corporations.state.pa.us/corp/soskb/csearch.asp
I got my bumper winter/spring '09 from casey. It took a little while (~ a month) but it has some of the best powder coating I've ever seen. It doesn't flake off around any bad spots and is easily touched up with rustoleum. He even told me he didn't want to charge me for the bumper until it was shipping because he didn't want to get into the old groove SG had been in before he got it.ptschram said:
ptschram
Well-known member
mbrummal said:
He wanted me to buy a bumper display rack for $800 and stock it with $5K worth of bumpers.
Shortly after I told him there was no way I was gonna do that just to be able to pimp his stuff (people do not come to my shop to shop for such things!), AFIRover got a very heated text message complaining about not having received a bunch of parts in a shipment from Casey. Turns out someone in Casey's organization had given out Gary Grey's phone number instead of Casey Grey's. I was getting nasty texts and nastier voicemail messages until we got it straightened out.
I'm not here to bash anyone, but there are plenty of examples of how not to run a Rover-related business.
Every vendor is gonna have somebody who's less than excited about their relationship. The thing that sets the successful folks apart is how they resolve those problems. Do they fix it, or do they lie and try to cover their ass, or worse yet, try to make the customer look like the idiot?
When Mary was answering the phones for $afari-Gard, she resolved silly problems right quick. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be Nate's strong point.
varova87 said:
Not really great lengths... you just click the checkbox next to 'Protect my info' when you buy the domain, and pay $9.99/yr for it
ptschram
Well-known member
rmuller said:Not really great lengths... you just click the checkbox next to 'Protect my info' when you buy the domain, and pay $9.99/yr for it
Well, yeah, true. I guess I didn't mean the effort put forth so much as the reasoning behind doing it. Like PT said, I think it makes him look shady. What is there to hide?
ptschram said:
Not necessary, you were a Corporate Man before, when Parent company or a NoNo Corporation come in play, you do not want to have a Parent Corporation owning your LLC, you showing a Managing Director but yet , have your name as the Internic registered owner...
ptschram said:
Neither am I. That's why I powder coat those things.
When done properly, this process is wonderful. The various components have different properties, and understanding the interactions between them is critical. Surface preparations is equally important, but goes far beyond blasting and phosphate washes.
Everything works together. The goal isn't simple encapsulation. It is a very complex and reactive chemical encapsulation process during which every component involved undergoes changes that force a unified set of interactions both before and during service use.
Until you find someone to work with that understands the nuances of the science and applies them to a practiced art-form, you are going to get a common result.
Common results suck. You may as well use conventional paint and get it over with.
I am very selective about the methods used to protect and finish things. I'll spend weeks with a person working out the best ways to combine, tailor, or perfect practices. After that, sometimes I'll spend months testing the various results before allowing the item to be finished in the best proven manner and entered into service.
Screwing around with coatings is a waste of time, and, at the very least, will reduce the service life of your expensive gear.
Those big places that run things through in large quantities generally don't give a shit about top performance. They run by the book, and it's a thin fucking book. No worries, though. That's their game.
Often, the shop around the corner simply doesn't know what they are doing, or is working only by education or by methods outlined by suppliers. They may be running by the book as well, but they don't really understand it.
Sometimes, you find the best quality in the most unlikely of places. These are people who actually have an interest in the process. They are educated, but they are also practiced. On their off-time, they might waste countless hours and quite a bit of their sometimes meager resources experimenting. They will work with you to test new processes and ideas.
Essentially, if you make something and simply send it off to be coated wherever is closest, cheapest, or the most convenient, you aren't getting a quality product unless you just got lucky. Even if you do get lucky, you need to tailor your production just as carefully as he needs to tailor his coating processes. If you aren't working closely with the owner, that's not going to happen.
Most of the time, it's all going to be shit. Look at that grimy, thin, flaking mess that RTE uses on some of their parts. It's not only bad, it's actually kind of disgusting, in a way. I don't even want to touch it, for fear it might be more biological in origin than the average polymer... Their finisher can't even decide whether he likes cross-linking or not.
If you really work at it, though, you will get all the benefits powder can provide, with a greatly mitigated set of drawbacks.
Yup. I agree with you. Powder coating sucks. Powder coating, however, does not suck.
Cheers,
Kennith
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