Wordy post, sorry in advance!
My friend talked me out of selling my EBD (it was slated to be my next hardtop, and given the nightmare my high speed has been, I'm just not feeling it now) because he volunteered to do all the work on it without completely gouging my eyes out from a cost perspective (eg $300-400). It's got a decent cab, but it's not perfect. It doesn't need a full on repaint, but a light touch on 'refreshing' it could do wonders. Anyway, I'm not planning on doing anything with that, at least right now.
So, scenario time:
I've got $1015 in it as it sits (machine+hardtop cost) so clearly I've got some leeway in bringing it back. It has the following issues:
-backglass is delaminating in BIG sections; thinking this is likely past any sort of reasonable repair. The Shay backglass is the best I've seen and will run me about $375.
-plastics are junk and need replaced. CPR set is $150, Shay is $170. No idea which is 'better' as Shay doesn't have any pictures
-already has an Alltek board but the other boards are stock and likely haven't ever been worked on. Probably need to send those out to my board guy to check out/repair any issues. I want to LED anyway so I assume the lamp driver board will need attention.
-Everyone knows the '81 lamp sockets are heinous, so those will be replaced also. I was planning on going with bayonet, unless there's some reason not to?
-several wiring hacks soldered directly on to the boards to undo/repin with new connectors etc
-Legs are gross painted black; I could have my powdercoat guy make them beautiful.. Should I? Anything else I should have him do while it's apart? Rails, lockbar, etc?
-I'm sure there will be various parts that need ordered to replace worn or non working components. Figuring $100-200 here.
So with the backglass, plastics, misc parts, and labor costs I'll be around $2000-2200, and more if I do board work, powdercoating, etc. I definitely don't mind being invested in this game for "what it's worth" but I always worry about going overboard and being way upside down. Say this were to stretch out to $2500 or so but at the end of it I had a hardtopped '81 EBD with new plastics and glass plus nice powdercoated accents, fully LED with sockets swapped and fixed/reworked boards... $2500 isn't bad at all, right? I mean, it's certainly 'up there' by pinside historical numbers but iirc none have been recorded sold with hardtops yet.
Thanks for reading my ridiculously long post