Lift Kit

As I mentioned I'd decided to undercoat the pan with MasterSeries. I did consider removing the pan from the body....again...and having it media blasted and powder coated...while the price was right ($500 or so) it turns out that my pan is welded to the body. Don't ask me why the Schirmers did this, it wasn't my plan. But I think it's a bit too much work to cut the welds and try to lift the car off the pan again. Instead I procured some extra heavy duty (and height) jack stands and raised the car up for easier access.

There are some nice homemade wooden dollies created just for this purpose which you can find on the Samba, and if I were removing the pan I would have made one, but in this case it was faster and cheaper to use these jacks.

At this point I've already pulled the front suspension (H-beam) to access the frame head and front wheel wells.

Tunnel Done

Here's a pic of the welded up tunnel. You can see the indentation in the pan which is for the cable for the heater flap in the rocker panel. This channel was not original for a 1970 car, it's for 72 and later models.

It is what it is.

Oh yeah those are my powder coated rear trailing arms (spring arms) in the background.