Body panel replacment hours

[70chall440]

The standard Mitchell allowance on most old school 1/4 replacement times was in the 14-16 hr range, but that did not include any pulling or patching, but did allow for rear glass R&R as well as the bumper and taillight if applicable. The outer whlhse would run from 2.5-4.0 and the inr would be 4-6hrs depending on it's complexity. Those were times for new, OEM panels in a straighr R&R situation. If you want ot spot welded all around to duplicate the factory welds, I'd add another couple of hours and you'd need to find a shop with the proper equipment as well. These times are hard to correlate with what we're now working on 40 years later and the mentioned 20hrs for a 1/4 would not be out of place in my opinion. These times do not also include time to fit the A/M parts most of us use and you can spend a lot of expensive time doing so. I had my AMD 1/4's and inr/otr whlhses in and off a dozen times chasing the nice fit. Don't know if this helps, but hope it does. 

Excellent information.

[torredcuda]

The standard Mitchell allowance on most old school 1/4 replacement times was in the 14-16 hr range, but that did not include any pulling or patching, but did allow for rear glass R&R as well as the bumper and taillight if applicable. The outer whlhse would run from 2.5-4.0 and the inr would be 4-6hrs depending on it's complexity. Those were times for new, OEM panels in a straighr R&R situation. If you want ot spot welded all around to duplicate the factory welds, I'd add another couple of hours and you'd need to find a shop with the proper equipment as well. These times are hard to correlate with what we're now working on 40 years later and the mentioned 20hrs for a 1/4 would not be out of place in my opinion. These times do not also include time to fit the A/M parts most of us use and you can spend a lot of expensive time doing so. I had my AMD 1/4's and inr/otr whlhses in and off a dozen times chasing the nice fit. Don't know if this helps, but hope it does. 

As Jimmy said those are good estimates for straight r & r on a newer vehicle, usually for collision estimates but of course doing it for restoration work due to rust is a whole `nother story. Depending on haw rusty and how picky you want to get I would estimate around 20+ hours just for the quarter r & r and then you`d have to add for all the other stuff needed and wouldn`t include all the hours to straighten/skim the panel to as good or better than factory because we all know these aftermarket panels are not the best.