After far too long sitting in the garage, waiting for a multitude of plans and time to come together, the car has been taken in for a whole bunch of elective surgery. Pictures are not available at the writing of this so this chapter will require the use of your imagination to some extent.
Kurt, the lucky guy doing the body work, is enjoying himself cutting the bug to pieces and putting it back together. He doesn't get to do projects like this too often and is having a grand old time. The largest piece of body work is the roof chop. It's about a 4 to 4 1/2 inch vertical chop with no rake. The side windows are just about 4" lower, the windshield is about 4 1/2" shorter and the rear window is working out to be about 6" shorter in height. This chop doesn't involve a rake of any kind, I plan on doing that with the suspension. Flat chops look better.
The suicide doors are going to be fun too. The hinge kit will probably be one of the "hidden" kits, where the hinge is a weird setup of flat sliding panels. The latch may also get reversed so that the post is on the door and the latch is on the A pillar. This will take the locking mechanism completely out of the door and hide it in the body. That leaves plenty of room for the power window kit inside the door cavity.
Other work includes the replacement of the front clip, filling the exhaust holes in the rear skirt, fixing the rust in the passenger floor plan, pulling some dents, welding the gas cap flush (and filling it) and, or course, paint.
Ah yes, the paint. Well, some people may remember a car named "Cadzilla". Cadzilla was a very customized Cadillac that the band ZZ Top had built, probably for no other reason than divine inspiration. If I recall correctly, it was originally a '49 Cadillac. It was chopped, channeled and a whole bunch of other stuff. The paint on it was a mettalic gold base, eggplant next, then at least three coats of clear coat. Beautiful. Bugzilla may get the same treatment, or at least a similar one. I haven't completely decided at this point.