We may not exactly be going into space, but preparing to lift the body of your Beetle off the pan can still come with its own complications.

It's been 22 years since the initial "restoration" of this car. In fact... it was probably more of a patch and repair job than a full restoration. We worked with what we had and that didn't include a whole lot of proper VW restoration experience. Just a whole lot of pop rivets, self taping screws, body filler, and undercoating. Never the less... all that work in 1996 paid off. The car is still with us today and that makes it one more classic Beetle that didn't get scrapped at the junk yard. I will call that a win any day.

With that said, we now have to remove all that bad patch work in order to be able to separate the body from the pan. That is extra work on top of everything else that has to be removed or unbolted from the Super Beetle before we can have lift off and separation. Most of the bolts came out without a problem, but there are still a few that decided to put up a fight. No worries... We will just grind off the bolt heads and that should to the trick.

While we were removing the bolts and bad body work on the bottom of the car we noticed a great deal of sand that was coming out of the heater channels. This must have been trapped in the car when it was sand blasted over 20 years ago. We never knew this because the channels were in pretty rough shape back in the day so we just patched them up and filled what was left with expansion foam. Repairs from the previous owner already included a good amount of filler. We found large chunks inside and the forward section was / still is completely filled with body filler. Don't worry... we already have new heater channels and replacement metal for the entire lower section of the car. The only question now if the true condition of the floor. Once the body comes off we will have a better idea what additional replacement metal we will need to order or fabricate.

So we will keep plugging away at this project. We are excited to get the body and pan separated. We should have it done in the next day or two. We will be sure to record it and we will follow up with how it all went soon.

That's all for now!