If you cant do it yourself go buy a finished truck. It sounds like you ran into a very honest guy at that shop. Todays most regular repair shops are in the 75-95 hour range and thats not calif which is way more. Today if you drop a nice truck off to a body shop its costs about 8-12 grand for a streetrod show paint job. Maybe more if it needs a ton of body work.
I myself just bought 2 repop rear fenders for the same reason. 10 hours a fender to fix does not make it even at 45 bucks and hour. Repop was cheaper and they really did look pretty good. Think i would look to buy a nice built truck. Pay the guy to look at it for you.
