Its hard to believe that over 15 years have passed since ECR began, but time flies and its time to expand again. We are moving the bulk of operations from the current shop in Warren and heading to our new much larger and more modern facility in Rockland. The Warren location will now be used for large part storage and for other things that we have in the works that we can not announce just yet.
In the past couple of months we have been not only working on customer cars as usual, but after hours we have been moving vehicles, tools and more to the new shop, along with building almost everything ourselves.
We have been setting up the work areas, installing the new offices, a new parts storage area and even a brand new state of the art paint booth, so needless to say things have been a bit hectic this Fall at ECR.
Customers and web site fans have asked for some information about the new shop, so here it is:
Located at 13 Merrill Drive in Rockland, Maine the new shop is in the Rockland Industrial Park. This location will serve us better as it is next door to all our local suppliers, ranging from our PPG paint supplier to our tire supplier. So trips that used to take 15 minutes each way are now almost within walking distance. This alone will speed up projects, but there is even more good news, we are now next door to UPS, so parts deliveries will come earlier and shipping items out will be a breeze. There are numerous small details that make the new shop many times better than the Warren, Maine location, but the biggest and best change is more space!
The old shop was about 2500 square feet of vehicle repair area with about the same in parts storage. The new shop is 10,000 square feet of vehicle repair space with about 4000 square feet of parts storage. The new space means we will be able to work on more projects at one time and stock more inventory to make sure projects go smoothly. The added room means we have also been able to add on two new crew members, both well versed in all things Rover and now the project speeds should more than double as soon as things are up and running. The image above shows the side wall of the new shop. The wooden platform is being removed and a new second floor will be added that covers 1/3 of the buildings footprint. The 2nd floor will house parts storage and office space. The area where the wooden platform above is shown will be the location of our new state of the art Global Finishing Solutions paint/bake booth that will make our paint work even better than it is today.
The rear of the building will house numerous vehicle work areas as well as a dedicated fabrication area with new tools and full fabrication ability for all materials from stainless steel to fiberglass, MIG and TIG welders, computerized pipe benders, plasma cutters and much more.
Outside we are done with gravel and weeds. Black-top and new secure fencing is now the norm and the customer's cars will now be protected and secured away from the public. Luckily we have had little to no theft at the old shop, but its always nice for a customer to know his prize Defender is truly safe and sound behind barbed wire while awaiting its turn at ECR.
Looking toward the office section, most of the existing office space you see above is being fully gutted and brought up to our standards to make ECR a nice place to visit, with a proper lobby and offices for the staff. To the left there are 2 full size loading docks.
This now makes container unloading a breeze (image above shows our Nov. 07 container being unloaded) and allows us to import more parts to have on hand so that delays due to container shipping will be a thing of the past.
Work continues on the new shop. The electrical work is now done and the main structure of the office areas is now complete. The rough plumbing work is also finished and as you can see the old offices have been ripped out and everything is brand new.
The work stations are taking shape with all new electrical service and a new state of the art air system. The new welders have arrived as well as numerous other pieces of new equipment.
The new office and employee areas are taking shape and things are starting to come together.
As work continues getting the sheet rock and paint done in the new office areas the new parts storage area is starting to take shape. The footings have been cut into the floor and the new concrete is going in. These footings will form the base of our new second floor parts department that will, in itself, be bigger than most independent Rover shops entire workshop.
Here you can see the steel structure for the second floor going into place.
This image shows the flooring going in on the new parts department floor. The heavy steel structure and the flooring will mean that we can store anything we desire up there, not just small parts. Soon our parts department will be fully up and running with room for four times the inventory we used to house. That means faster turn around time due to no waiting for parts. If it goes on a Defender we plan to have it in stock.
As work continues in Rockland, we are fully operational for day to day operations at the new shop and we have started altering the Warren location to fit is new role in ECR's future plans. We've moved all the trucks and all the tools to the new shop now and we are now turning out projects.
There is still plenty to be done at the new shop to make it perfect, but it feels great to be finally up and running and once again. We look forward to showing you all the new shop as we update the web site with project photos.
The "green" factor of the new facility:
ECR has always been at the leading edge of being as "green" as possible. The new Rockland location takes this a few steps further. Not only do we recycle vehicles that most would say are ready for the junk yard into jewels that anyone would be proud to own, we "go green" in lots of other ways too. The waste products from ECRs operations are mainly recycled. The coolant we drain from vehicles is given to a local repair shop where they revitalize it and use it again in their repairs of local vehicles. The waste oil that we generate gets collected by the Town of Rockland and is used as a heating fuel in the city's buildings. Old items removed form the Rovers (rusted steel, bad engine blocks, old batteries, etc) are collected, melted down and recycled into raw materials for new products. We even sell off used parts that aren't good enough for our work, but are fine for hobbyist projects, so those parts can see continued life so they don't end up in a land fill somewhere. Our paint products and tools exceed EPA requirements and soon we will be switching to the new water based PPG paints, meeting new EPA requirements long before we are required to do so.
Land Rover Defenders and Series trucks are the ultimate recycle vehicle as well. They can be infinitely rebuilt and kept on the road, unlike other uni-body vehicles that get junked and put aside as soon as they are no longer in fashion. ECR has all the bases covered to not only offer the best Defenders in North America, but we offer something you can own and feel good about as well.
Update:
As we work on Rover projects at the new shop we are still making improvements to make the shop better. The latest phase of the new shop project is the addition of a brand new state of the art paint booth. Our new booth will allow us to offer even better paint finishes while staying way ahead of the curve with EPA requirements, therefore keeping the new shop as "green" as possible.
Our new booth should be up and running in a week or so and then we will move all of our paint operations from the Warren facility (where they are still done now) to our new facility, thereby getting the entire process back under one roof. This will help speed up project completion times and again set ECR apart as the only dedicated Land Rover restoration/custom shop that operates its own in house professional quality paint facility.
This image shows our new paint/bake booth nearly completed (we still need to paint the floor and do some minor details) and now up and running! All of us here are very excited to have a brand new facility for our paint work. We are still the only Land Rover specialist that does everything "in house". Mechanical, fabrication, custom items, paint and body work, upholstery, even sound systems are all done right here at ECR. No need to look around for different shops of varying abilities to do your Rover work, we do it all.
Now that the new paint booth is up and running it is time to get the new paint shop set up. The image above show the new entry door into the paint shop. The new paint department will be "a shop within a shop". This is being done to keep the dust down in the mechanical areas of the shop and to also keep contaminates out of the paint shop. In both sides of the shop we will be installing state of the art air filtration systems that will not only keep projects cleaner, but keep our crew healthy as well.
Another view shows the other new walls going up around the new paint shop.
Inside the new paint shop we are getting the newly arrived blast cabinets set up and installing the new materials cabinets, that this time are made of static free alloy for a truly clean work area. This new "clean room" will make for even higher quality paint work from ECR, and its all done in house.
For those customers that are waiting for their projects to be done, hang in there. We heard your voices and we have decisively addressed all your concerns to make ECR even better, from our new office manager Holly, so that you can always reach us, to our new 10,000 square foot facility and larger staff so we can get more projects done more quickly, but to the same standards. We are now not only the best Land Rover Defender custom shop in the USA, but the largest as well.
UPDATE:
It has been over a year of working to get the new facility up to where it needs to be, but we are finally done!!
Take a tour of the new facility here!
