The only reason they priced it high is because they don't want to do it. If they did they would make a killing on it at that price. Lots of times, welders or other trades bid to cover there butts.
Well I am a wielder and I'm afraid you are correct. There are some projects that we will overprice because its not a standard item of us. Most of what we do is railings, so if some one wants a complete staircase out of aluminum we will price it farily high because it would cut into our normal bread and butter and we are not well tooled for that. Machine shops around here act on the same principle, but can take it to an extreme.
We don't mind doing small odd jobs and battery trays are not a big deal for ANY metal shop to make unless there is lots of sheet metal involved but even then its not that big a deal. Large out of the ordinary jobs I like to avoid when ever possible though, in the case of that staircase, he was expecting something comparable in cost to wood construction, which was not going to happen.
There are the exceptions to the rule though, and I was able to find a backyard machinist when I needed some custom machining done on an engine rebuild earlier this year.
Look for smaller shops that do lots of local work and are not snobs when it comes to dealing with smaller local customers. The problem is often they will charge an hourly rate, so if its the first time they make something like that up, they will take longer and might even drag their feet on purpose. Worst part is you have no idea what the price will be in the end. Ask for a writen price quote
before letting them do the work and do not give a deposite. If the shop is worth its salt, those terms will not be a problem for them.
) motor. Also remember that the harder you push the car, the more voltage drop you will see. There's nothing wrong with anticipating that drop by using slightly higher system voltage and its common practice to do exactly that.
