One of the best resources I have had access to during this whole project was a friend of my brothers who owned a powdercoating business. Sean's business had a very large "oven" where they could powdercoat things as large as a car body, and often to large things for companies like Boeing.

Sean insisted I bring everything down to him which could be stripped down to bare metal and we would powdercoat everything so it would look top notch and also be protected for a long time.

Well, the pan of the VW was in fairly good shape, except for the areas beind the rear seats which are the low spot and always seem to rust out. At this point I had shortened the pan, so replacing the rusted out sections with OEM type sections would have been sort of a pain, because you would have to shorten the replacment pieces. Instead I decided to just cut out the rusted "lower" section and replace it with a flat section of sheet metal. There didn't seem to be any reason to have a lower area of the pan because there was not rear seat or reason to have anything under the seats.

So with a little cutting and then MIG welding I had replaced the rusted out floor sections. Then it was off to find someone who could sand blast all the old paint, and nasty tar undercoating and protective stuff from the pan so we could powdercoat the whole thing.

Luckily I was able to find a shop not far from me would could do such a large part. Bothell Way Sandblasting and paint proved to be another valuable resource. For a very resonable price I was able to get the pan back to bare metal. Then I hauled the whole thing down south to Auburn to Sean's shop and a few days later I went back to pick up the completed pan. It looked awesome! With that complete I could start the process of putting things back together again. Up until this point it was really all about destruction.

Next up, Brakes.