Much better

Fresh out of the paint booth the car looks pretty good. It is ready to go back to the owner for the installation of the interior and all the extra bits … like door handles, bumpers, glass and the like.

Round and true

After sanding the high build primer we could tell the body needed a little work. The areas with a greenish tint are thin coats of body filler that we applied to take care of any slight dents and waviness in the metal.

The body filler is then sanded to make the body smooth and ready for paint. Since there isn’t a straight line on a beetle you can’t say the body is straight and true, but it is smooth and without waviness or dents.

In case you are wondering, the right front fender was damaged beyond repair and a replacement was obtained and is being painted as a separate item. It will be installed on the car after the car is painted.

This is bugging me

This 1964 Beetle arrived at the shop in need of some help. The paint was in such poor shape that we had the car media-blasted to get back to bare metal to prevent problems in the future.

Media-blasting is used to remove paint, rust and crud from a car by expelling tiny plastic beads with high pressure air against a surface. As the beads impact the surface they chip away the paint without damaging the metal underneath.

After the car was media-blasted, we cleaned it up and rolled it into the booth for a coat of primer.