It has been long said that a GMC will cost you $20,000 to $50,000. it
just depend on if you drop it up front or get there $1,000 at a time.
--
Jim Mills KD0NPU
Greeley, CO

It has been long said that a GMC will cost you $20,000 to $50,000. it just depend on if you drop it up front or get there $1,000 at a time.
--
Jim Mills KD0NPU
Greeley, CO
1973 CanyonLands 260 TZE-063V100731(under renovation)

That's the "if your time is worth nothing" school...

The other side of that is "Can I build and support a shop full of equipment plus pay a decent wage to competent mechanics with bennies and insure the whole operation on only $80 per hour charge to the customer?"
Which then to you or me boils down to 'Do I need the resources $80 per hour buys me to correct whatever's broken?' Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Frady down at Southland has a service pit, beucoup equipment and test gear, and a shop full of experienced motorhome mechanics. He can do stuff I can't do on the slab beside the house with hand tools, compressed air, and a test meter.
Looked at another way, if I wish, I can get substantially more than $98 per hour (current rate here) to go heal somebody's transmitter. If it looks like I'll have to pay Frady et all for a major repair, I'll blow two or three days doing so.
You pays your money and you spends your time and you takes your choice.

--johnny

Johnny Bridges wrote on Mon, 20 April 2015 08:16

The other side of that is "Can I build and support a shop full of equipment plus pay a decent wage to competent mechanics with bennies and insure the whole operation on only $80 per hour charge to the customer?"
Which then to you or me boils down to 'Do I need the resources $80 per hour buys me to correct whatever's broken?' Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Frady down at Southland has a service pit, beucoup equipment and test gear, and a shop full of experienced motorhome mechanics. He can do stuff I can't do on the slab beside the house with hand tools, compressed air, and a test meter.
Looked at another way, if I wish, I can get substantially more than $98 per hour (current rate here) to go heal somebody's transmitter. If it looks like I'll have to pay Frady et all for a major repair, I'll blow two or three days doing so.
You pays your money and you spends your time and you takes your choice.

--johnny

I understand that the hourly rate is necessary to stay in business. And it is in alignment with the realities of the universe. Another reality is that it takes me at least 3 - 4 times as long to do stuff as a professional, but when I am done, I have some dollars left for gas money. Not everyone here retired stupid rich. If I worked full time and made more than $80 per hour, maybe I could afford the luxury of hiring it done, but that also costs me the satisfaction of doing it myself. I might also not have time to do it myself.

Know your limitations. There are a some things that I can't do on a GMC. Wheel bearings need a tool that costs about the same as hiring it done, if you can even find a bearing tool for sale. Bogey bushings are a bear that are best done with a 10-ton press and I might be willing to buy my way out of doing that myself. But brake shoes, cylinders, pads, calipers, cables, lines, bearings, joints and all things engine are shade-tree mechanic level. And interior stuff is just handyman level.

"shade Tree" here in the South means 90 plus degree Heat, 100% humidity, Fire Ants and Mosquitos for 2/3 the year......So for a Ex Pat Scot more used to a Temperate climate, working on a GMC also means having Workshop with AC and Heat
or it simply is no fun at all.........
Possible not not cheap. In fact its likely one could easily spend more on the "barn" than the GMC....but at least the Barn depreciates slower and it saves on paying for covered storage elsewhere.

Pete