pearl white '66 (part 2)

[exprof]

There’s a line from one of Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” movies: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” I know what mine are, and one of them is that I don’t know how to weld. I’ve also read enough VW restoration horror stories about burn-throughs to discourage me from trying to learn welding by the trial-and-error method. Some things are best left to the pros.

I asked Wally to recommend some body shops, and the one that I finally settled on was the Sharon Center Body Shop. Sharon Center is a little wide spot in the road just south of Iowa City, and the body shop is located right at the crossroads that mark the center of Sharon Center.

The place is run by a friendly fellow named Steve Yoder. If you live in this area, and you need body work done, I would strongly recommend that you look Steve up. Wally told me that Steve had quite a bit of experience working on VWs, and sure enough, when I went to see him about working on my ’66, he was just finishing up some work on what looked like a ’68 or ’69.

Steve didn’t seem to mind my dropping in on occasion to see how the work was progressing and to snap a few pictures. That was a very good sign, I thought. His methods seemed a bit unorthodox, but I couldn’t argue with the results--or the time it took to achieve them. He was done in about ten days, and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Once I’ve saved up the money for the paint job, I’ll take the Beetle back to Sharon Center. That should be sometime in the summer of 2008, if all goes well.