Anyone in need of my oem exhaust? I had 30K on them before I replaced it with FABspeed exhaust and piggy back chip.

It has been sitting in the corner of my garage and I want it gone. Make me a reasonable offer. PAS has them on their website for $500 ea side.

Preferably in the SF Bay Area since I am too lazy to ship it. Thanks.[X(]

 

lol, i would find a dumpster and toss it. I have about 4 of them at the shop, they aren't worth 500 bucks unless you cut them open and modify them and weld them back shut to a free flowing exhaust, and even then getting 500 bucks for them is pretty tough. I throw one away about every week or so, lol. For some reason the stock exhausts from boxsters always sell though...don't know why.

 

Doc Wilen...
yeah...that's funny...I was laughing too when I read that you thought I wanted $500 big ones for them.

I would be happy if I get a small fraction of that.

BTW, your shop looks awesome. If only everyone takes pride in their shop as you do.

Britt's McTammanys TT in atlas grey is something else. WOW!

 

Lol, yea large paper weights is what i call them, haha. Thanks for the kind words about the website and shop, the site is still under major construction, and actually Britt and Stephen are the ones who have designed it....the old site was.....well....old. We do like the fact that you can walk through our shop in a suit and tie and not worry about getting any form of grease on it If you are ever in the KC area on a friday, come by and hang out and have a beer with us.

 

Yes! You never know...beer and Porsche is always a good mix in my book....especially on a Friday night. If I am ever in the area, I will make a point to drop in.

Damn, I like the look of that shop. It screams professionalism, pride of ownership, attention to details, etc. It says something about an owner when you walk into a place like that.

I stopped by my buddy's shop where he is the mechanic. We got to talking and he says how fed up he is with the owner. David is way underpaid (less than $30K/yr) for his good work and the owner pockets the fat profit (and even drives a new GT3) while treating his EEs like crap. No benefits, no heat in the shop, no music, just a paycheck.

The shop is so abd that I wouldn't even bring my wife or kids in there.

Dave and I considered finding a good location to open a shop for David. I might even consider quitting my stable job at Paychex to help him get it started. We are going to do some preliminary research to see if it is feasible. More importantly, with $100K in starting capital (75% from me), I want to know how long it will take to break even.

2 questions for you Doc:

1. Why is the best thing about owning your own shop?
2. What is the worst thing about owning you own shop?

 

Without a doubt the best thing about owning the shop is the pride of doing what we do, in an environment where someone can walk through in a suit and tie, and not worry about getting an ounce of dirt on them. It takes a lot of work to clean the shop everyday, and Stephen (Stephen and wife Roxanne own the company)and I are by far here more than home, so it does take a lot of time away from home. On the other hand, every member of the team and their significant others are all part of a big family here. They will drop in throughout the day and just hang out with us for awhile, which is unseen in any other work environment. We all work hard together and we all play hard together, and wouldn't have it any other way. And of course there is nothing better than having freinds over every friday afternoon for a beer, we wind down the week and relax, and those few hours are worth a day of vacation in itself.

I guess from a financial standpoint, the worst part of owning a shop of our size, is of course the huge overhead. Stephen (PorschePhD) makes sure everyone gets a paycheck before he does, and I think there have been a couple weeks in the last year when he didn't get one, so to be able to work for someone like that really says something about the company's values. It takes a lot of business every month just to be able to have the shop we do. But that is all part of the growing pains. When we expanded, we knew it would be a huge bill every month, but we also wanted the image of being who we are now, that was more important to us than anything. We skipped the middle step, and went straight from small to large, so that instant gratification isn't always there like you would want. The other independent German shops in town are quite honestly frightening to have your car worked on there, let alone having to stop by and see a dirty shop, or getting greasy from just sitting in their waiting room. A year ago this month, we were across the street in a space about 25% of what we have now and had a total of 4 people working for the company. We had 2 cars at the shop that were currently getting worked on. A year later we have grown to 6 people and have 20 cars in the shop having something done to them, so sometimes while it feels we are just spinning our wheels, we take a hard look at where we were and where we are now, and we realize that the company is growing leaps and bounds. They say that if a company can make it the 1st 2 years, then it will survive the future. When we switched locations, we basically started over, including a new image. At the other shop, we turned away maintenance customers because all we had time/room to do was big hp engine builds, etc. Now that we have the larger facility, we want to be doing the maintenance side of it as well, so it takes time to shed that previous image, as it is the maintenance side that will help pay the bills. So while the company has been around for 7 years, i consider this the end of our 1st year of growth, and it is looking good.

I think the key is to start small, work your way up (IA was started literally as a hobby blown out of proportion). Try and keep the overhead down, but make it nice. You don't know how much business we have taken from the other places in town, just because you can eat off our shop floor. And it isn't anything we actively do to get their customers, they usually get referred here by another customer, come by, take one look at the shop, and we have their business. Obviously you need to be able to do great work as well.

Karl