anyone familiar with a decent body shop in the MD area?

[mdsuave13]

I'm looking to have someone take care of the major portions of body repair on my 72 280se. Anyone have a good recommendation? Also the rust damage isnt terrible, i'd say its about average for the car's age. What do you think i should expect to pay for a decent repair job of the body to get ready to paint? i know thats a broad question, but im hoping it would not exceed 2k dollars.

[Todd Miller]

Do a search back on ebay from about 2 weeks ago when a set of cognac 111 seats sold. That shop (who sold the seats) is there in MD and the guy is supposed to be very good with them. Apparently has a couple 111's in right now.

The Buyer of my '67 is in Frederick, MD and he bought those seats and the guy's seen the Coupe and bid $3,800 to repair the rust, remove the front fenders and paint the entire car.

[wcelliot]

I'm Todd's friend... and moved back to the Frederick area a couple of years ago. One of my buddies here is a VERY, VERY high end bodyman... way in excess of what I will afford or what I need for my cars, but I asked him for recommendations. Even though he is very knowlegable with shops from Rockville to Frederick, he could not come up with a single name for me of a shop that would do non-insurance repairs involving rust for anything approaching a reasonable price.

I got a list of body shops in the region and visited and/or called a couple dozen, asking the same question. I got the same answer. Apparently a few of the shops had guyd that also ran a home shop on the side, but they were backed up for months and/or weren't interested. I got so frustrated that I bought my own MIG welder (though I don't yet know how to weld) and a fresh air hood for urethane paints (I already had an HVLP setup) and planned on doing the work myself. I used to do some bodywork, but I knew the first few cars I'd do would be sorely lacking as I redeveloped the "touch".

The guy that I lucked into via Ebay in Cumberland is just getting started with the goal of being a "White Post" type shop, but doesn't yet have the capital to invest in the higher end equipment, so his work is done to a high quality but using some low end stuff, so he can't charge the high end rates...yet.

The examples of the guy's work that I've seen are very, very nice and he asked all the right questions when talking to me and examining the cars... and had all of the right answers to my questions.

I currently have a car in there now... might be finished this week. If the quality even approaches that of the other examples I've seen, I've got several cars I'm going to run through the shop before he gets expensive! I'll report back on my findings.

I just got a new family next door... almost all deaf (we have one of the top schools for the deaf in the country here)... he was very excited to see all my old cars... though he's a computer programmer by vocation, until recently he's always had a side company building custom wood and wrought iron furniture... once he found out I had a MIG he offered to teach me to weld in exchange for getting to use it himself... so maybe I can at least patch my own floors soon!

Bill