Central Valley, California - Advice needed

[Lugnutt]

I live in San Jose, California and need to find a body repair shop to fix some rust damage and re-paint my 72 Chev 4x4. I talked to my regular body repair shop that fixes my two cars, but he and others say they are not interested in working on older vehicles.

My regular "car" bodyshop owner recommended that I find a shop in the central valley of California close to the bay area like Tracy or Merced to get the work done. He said that bay area shops are going to need to charge between 12 and 15 k to do the work I discribed where a central valley shop may only charge about 7k to 8k.

The problem is that I don't know which shops are good and which shops are not-so-good out there. Price is important, but so is the quality of workmanship, knowledge & experience, and most of all, the "time element". I don't want the repair process dragging on for months.

Can some of you that have had body/paint work done in this area of Califonia recommend some good shops. And also if you've had bad experiences; I'd like to know of them too. Any feed-back would be helpful.

Thanks