Looking to buy a General Lee? STAY AWAY FROM BK AUTO!! It's almost over!!!

[Old Moparz]

[tan top]

 

[jb666]

I removed the images of the "BK BADGES" at Sickdawg's request. Apparently since this thread went up he's been getting pranked on his home phone and he thinks it's to do with this.. It had his name on the tag, so I agreed to pull it.

I really don't want him to be harassed -- I think we know who's responsible. Maybe the heat from the dome lights they installed in the past did some long term brain damage??

[SFRT]

lol. I better make sure im wearing my welding mask next time I fire up my 20KV domelight.

[hemi-hampton]

If the previous owner paid $70k & let it go for half that at $35k only a year or 2 after having it or buying it then he must of know of the problems to do such a thing. Seems to me BK Should owe Brian $35k for his loss. Also BK Said they paid $25k for body shell & 20k in Parts. Why would anybody spend $25,000 on a rust bucket basket case. Add the $20k parts & what do you have? A $45,000 rust bucket peice of crap & all this still minus Motor or anykind of Drivetrain. What a joke.

[69bronzeT5]

That's brilliant!

[jb666]

If the previous owner paid $70k & let it go for half that at $35k only a year or 2 after having it or buying it then he must of know of the problems to do such a thing. Seems to me BK Should owe Brian $35k for his loss. Also BK Said they paid $25k for body shell & 20k in Parts. Why would anybody spend $25,000 on a rust bucket basket case. Add the $20k parts & what do you have? A $45,000 rust bucket peice of crap & all this still minus Motor or anykind of Drivetrain. What a joke.

Exactly, and in I come, willing and able to buy the thing without a care in the world.. It's a big circle of fun.

I have to say, the car is very clean from the middle of the rear frame rails forward. Now that those hack sub-frame connectors are history, I don't foresee any problems with the rest of the undercarriage. It checked out fine. It was the back end of the car that was really hurting..

With the exception of some MAJOR hack weld work on the floor pan, they are fine.I'll have more pictures of those things later this week.

[dodgecharger-fan]

I have tried to stay neutral in this but this is the biggest crock of shit I have heard in a long time.....I cant believe you actually typed this without shorting out your keyboard from all the shit spewing out of your fingertips

Let's look at this picture.. All looks good, right?? WRONG. The steering column had no guts and swiveled around about 6" in a circle. It wasn't bolted to the firewall and had one bolt barely holding it under the dash. The center console has nothing securing it to the floor. The shifter isn't bolted down and there's no wires running to the lights in the console.. In fact, there are no interior lights PERIOD. They buried the dome light when they did the headliner..

-I know it didnt leave that way. the column was bolted down. I cant say that the column was in mint shape, it was whatever came with the car, but it was bolted in.And no, we don't install interior lights in the base-models. And the dome light in a general lee is a bad idea. the heat radiates off the rollbar and makes for a very hot rollbar, and at best melts the padding, at worst burns someone. In almost all cases, it melts the new lens. We havent put domelights in those for 8 years. And unless the car was a console shift, I don't run wiring for the console lights, they are there fr looks only on base-models.

Please put the crack pipe down...drugs are bad

Ah ya beat me to it.

I was staying out of this, but that made me really want to pipe up and say something.

My first thought: how hot does a dome light get? Even then, how long does your dome light stay on?



Oh and the whole fibre glass filler over the frame rails makes me wonder if I know the guy that did the work. 

[NHCharger]

  Damn, this is better than watching Dr. Phil.
So from what BK is saying he has all the new inexperienced guys work on the cars that the owners don't have an unlimited budget. Maybe a little supervision might be in order next time.
Did I read that right? 15 THOUSAND to blast the shell

[skip68]

Damn, this is better than watching Dr. Phil.
So from what BK is saying he has all the new inexperienced guys work on the cars that the owners don't have an unlimited budget. Maybe a little supervision might be in order next time.
Did I read that right? 15 THOUSAND to blast the shell

My thinking exactly! Inexperienced= Bad Job! IMO Do you smell that? Stinky to me!
Mrs.kip68

[joflaig]

I have to say, the car is very clean from the middle of the rear frame rails forward. Now that those hack sub-frame connectors are history, I don't foresee any problems with the rest of the undercarriage. It checked out fine. It was the back end of the car that was really hurting..

With the exception of some MAJOR hack weld work on the floor pan, they are fine.I'll have more pictures of those things later this week.

I don't want to discourge you, but I would be shocked if once you had the motor pulled (which you should do) that you didn't find similar problems with the front frame rails and the transmission cross member. There are a lot spots you can't get to very easily to judge with the motor in there. At least based on the condition of the rest of the underbody it would seem not too surprising. Have you seen the entire floor pan exposed from the inside with all the carpeting and insulation removed?

[jb666]

I have to say, the car is very clean from the middle of the rear frame rails forward. Now that those hack sub-frame connectors are history, I don't foresee any problems with the rest of the undercarriage. It checked out fine. It was the back end of the car that was really hurting..

With the exception of some MAJOR hack weld work on the floor pan, they are fine.I'll have more pictures of those things later this week.

I don't want to discourge you, but I would be shocked if once you had the motor pulled (which you should do) that you didn't find similar problems with the front frame rails and the transmission cross member. There are a lot spots you can't get to very easily to judge with the motor in there. At least based on the condition of the rest of the underbody it would seem not too surprising. Have you seen the entire floor pan exposed from the inside with all the carpeting and insulation removed?

Yes, I've seen the entire floor pan from inside the car (with no carpet) and underneath. We've also checked out the K-frame and entire from frame section. That was done when we realized the suspension was falling out of the car.

I'm beginning to wonder if HLPAG is a  franchised organization??

[joflaig]

I have to say, the car is very clean from the middle of the rear frame rails forward. Now that those hack sub-frame connectors are history, I don't foresee any problems with the rest of the undercarriage. It checked out fine. It was the back end of the car that was really hurting..

With the exception of some MAJOR hack weld work on the floor pan, they are fine.I'll have more pictures of those things later this week.

I don't want to discourge you, but I would be shocked if once you had the motor pulled (which you should do) that you didn't find similar problems with the front frame rails and the transmission cross member. There are a lot spots you can't get to very easily to judge with the motor in there. At least based on the condition of the rest of the underbody it would seem not too surprising. Have you seen the entire floor pan exposed from the inside with all the carpeting and insulation removed?

Yes, I've seen the entire floor pan from inside the car (with no carpet) and underneath. We've also checked out the K-frame and entire from frame section. That was done when we realized the suspension was falling out of the car.

I'm beginning to wonder if HLPAG is a  franchised organization??

As I mentioned I went through something similar as you, though as this is turning out -- sorry to say -- your situation is much worse than mine was. At any rate, I continually got my hopes up as the car was torn apart and time passed, but none the less new problems continued to be found (as you've seen yourself so far). You might not want to set yourself up with the expectation that the folks doing the work have really uncovered everything so far. It's truly amazing what can be hidden.

[69charger2002]

good lord what a sad story this is.. $50k without motor and tranny?? are you kidding me?? i could find a real 69 R/T SE in awful shape, pay for everything to get done to the body and interior etc, and not be NEAR $50k still needing a motor and transmission.. that is INSANE! so sad that someone padded their pockets at an unknowing owner's expense
trav

[skip68]

  

[Ghoste]

Don't laugh at the dome light heat.  It's a well known fact in the industry that the 66-67 Chargers with the dome lighting placed on sides of theinterior just past the rear window caused numerous horrible burns to nearly every passenger who sat in the back of those things.  Each time the car went around the corner, rear seat passengers were in real and imminent danger of being scarred for life or possibly killed.  In fact, the problem from the massive disfiguring burn problem is the reason that so few 67's ere built, it isn't that they couldn't sell them, Dodge just didn't want to make any more of the rolling electric napalm drops for fear the general public would eventually figure it out and sue them into bankruptcy.  That was the entire reason for the redesign going into 1968 and moving the dome light to the center of the roof.  The government would not allow them to eliminate it altogether for fear of people banging their shins in the dark and creating a nation of hobbling limp people.  Not funny when you remember this was the era of the draft and the Vietnam War.
Now you know... the rest of the story.

[dodgecharger-fan]

Don't laugh at the dome light heat.

Sorry. I couldn't help it.

[jb666]

Not to beat the whole "anti-freeze" story, but I remembered something funny this morning...

The first week I had the car, I called the # on my BK Tags.. I told him I had bought the car and what we had discovered with it, up to that point. I explained the water situation and he said "We run all of our cars here, in Texas, with straight water, it's better for the motor. If you're in a cold climate you may want to change that".

Now they are saying it's a 50/50 mix..  :lol:Which is it?

BK continues to email me and tell me that I "blew my chances to have them fix it", that I could have "shipped my car to them to fix these problems". PLEASE,    , isn't their method of FIXING things what got me into this in the first place??

I wouldn't send a dead lawn mower to them to have them freshen it up, I have no confidence in their skills, and so far they've done nothing but defend their crap work. I have no place for them!!

This has to be one of the funniest quotes from a recent BK email:

Now every time I sit down I have one email from someone defending me and three others pointing out weird stuff from the forum. Who said a blast alone costs $15k? I said blasting adds $15k to the resto. Blasting alone here costs about $1500 to do a complete car. It is actually true, since I followed several cars through with and without blasting to be able to quote the difference. And who said i spent $20k on the car to start with? we spent around 4 I think. And I hate to say it, but you could cut the trunk off a charger and still have it run and drive fine.

Can these people make up their minds 

[jb666]

  Does Warner Bros. get the royalties from these guys?  Did BK's get permission from W.B. ? 

Does Burger King know BK is making their name look bad??

[1BAD68]

Its apparent that BK is a BS shop full of corner cutting tactics and slick lies but jb666 started this thread to warn people about the work they do which I think he succeeded in doing.
What bothers me when reading all this is the previous owner that sold jb666 the car must have known about alot of these problems, regardless if you never turn a wrench and are just a check book muscle car owner. You cant have a car and not notice the steering wheel is sloppy loose, the driveway or garage floor is wet from all the fluids leaking out, the gauges aren't working, etc...
It just makes me think that the previous owner got railed and figured he'll try and pawn this wreck off to someone else without addressing any of the issues with the car. Someone said he's a member here?

[jb666]

Its apparent that BK is a BS shop full of corner cutting tactics and slick lies but jb666 started this thread to warn people about the work they do which I think he succeeded in doing.
What bothers me when reading all this is the previous owner that sold jb666 the car must have known about alot of these problems, regardless if you never turn a wrench and are just a check book muscle car owner. You cant have a car and not notice the steering wheel is sloppy loose, the driveway or garage floor is wet from all the fluids leaking out, the gauges aren't working, etc...
It just makes me think that the previous owner got railed and figured he'll try and pawn this wreck off to someone else without addressing any of the issues with the car. Someone said he's a member here?

Yes, he's a member here.. It's how I found out about the car (see my locked HLPAG thread on this forum).
I talked to the original owner last night, and his response concerns me. He said he's been getting harassing emails/phone calls and is changing his home phone # and dumping his current email address. This tells me he's tired of dealing with this issue, wants to put it to rest and will make it so that he CANT hear about it.. Which is obviously not a good sign. He was not a moron-- In fact, he was very nice in person, but he was definitely no mechanic.

With that said, did he know about these problems? I'd have to agree with you, there's no way he couldn't have, but his last email to me he said "I can't believe the car was as bad as those pictures in the forum"... Telling me 2 things..

1. He's here watching, and will not comment. WHY I have no idea, because there's no one here waiting to jump him.

2. He may have known about some of these issues and doesn't want to deal with it. He's got his $$, so there's nothing in it for him.. He doesn't HAVE to help me and knows I'm 10 hours from him.

So, besides passing the word around the net, creating videos on YouTube and making sure a web page gets circulated, there's not much I can do unless I pull the trigger and make this a legal issue. I WILL start researching past buyers of his cars though, because I'm SURE they have stories to tell.

[The70RT]

I agree, Brian probably is a nice person. Too nice it seems if he let them screw him like they did. Maybe he paid with a credit card. It seems to some people it is not like forking over cash till it all comes to a head. Those invoices are hidiuos....200 bucks for tierod ends.....no mention of ball joints bushings etc. A very loosly put together list of parts to cover their ass. It also showed new springs? You said you had to buy new ones 

[jb666]

I agree, Brian probably is a nice person. Too nice it seems if he let them screw him like they did. Maybe he paid with a credit card. It seems to some people it is not like forking over cash till it all comes to a head. Those invoices are hidiuos....200 bucks for tierod ends.....no mention of ball joints bushings etc. A very loosly put together list of parts to cover their ass. It also showed new springs? You said you had to buy new ones 

Indeed I did. The springs were original & painted...

[skip68]

I find this sad and yet funny at how BKautomotive is handling this.     Mark my words, I think that Bkautomotive is going to be made an example of the last few years of HLPAG.    Keep all of your emails jb, all photo's and make copies of all of this and what they said.    I have to say that this gentleman at Bk is dancing into an area that he IS NOT trained for and is doing just what I expect him to do.     Pride and emotion have no place in business.  All he is doing is showing you how powerful he is and flexing his muscle.    And make sure you let him as this has importance down the road if you should choose to go there.    Try not to get drawn into anymore talk with them. I think that you and Sickdawg need to become friendly combatant's and put all this together.  I think you will find that this will be well worth pursuing in a different arena.       I don't know you jb666, nor do I know Sickdawg or Bkautomotive but it is very clear that this shop (BK) has a storm brewing and he is not smart enough to see it.  "VERY BAD BUSINESS"    This shows his level.    I'm sure the fine folks at BKAutomotive will read this and I have to ask you is this worth it ?  Do you really not see what's going on here ?  Do you understand that this is bad for your company ?     Chuck...........

[moparstuart]

wow you have a great story to tell , at a great cost