Today, we're going to be looking at Paisley.
She's a 1960 Euro Beetle.
And this car was built for our charity Beetle promotion.
And this car was probably one of the worst
that we've ever tried to restore.
We'd call it more of a resurrection than a restoration,
because we very rarely put anything back to stock.
This particular build was 1,200 hours in total,
and that was done over 105 days.
So, the first step, really, is the design phase,
and that's all me.
I usually sit down
and decide exactly how I want the car to look,
what size engine's going in it,
all that sort of thing.
And then I work with an artist
to create a rendering, so we have a visual
of exactly what the car's going to look like
once it's done.
Once we have a clear idea
of what we're going to do with a car,
first it goes to blast, so we can get a really good idea
of how much metalwork needs to be done.
We normally strip the car down
to just a bare shell of a car,
no wiring harness, no glass, no anything like that.
And then we have a person come in and media blast it.
Usually it's walnut shell or some kind of plastic media
to take all the paint and body filler out of the car
and get us back down to bare metal.
And then from that point, we put it in a sealer,
which seals the metal, keeps it from rusting.
Cate: Once it comes back from blast,
we make sort of a full list
of the amount of metalwork that needs to be done,
so any replacement panels that we need to purchase
to go into metalwork.
Rodney: We're cutting out the old rusted sheet metal,
and then we're welding in either the replacement panels
or panels that we've made ourselves here.
What we're trying to do is make it as flat as possible,
make the curves as smooth as possible.
We use sanding blocks.
We use a couple different ones.
We use a Dura-Block, which is a brand that we use,
and Big Kid Blocks. We use some of those.
And they're perfectly flat, perfectly straight,
and that gives you all the nice curved lines and everything.
Paint process can be pretty lengthy depending
on how many colors you have and that kind of stuff.
But we mix it according to what the manufacturer uses.
Normally it's four parts paint to one part of a hardener
and then one part of a reducer
to kind of thin it out so you can spray it.
We usually spray two to three coats
of the base color on it, and you let it dry between coats.
Normally it's 15 to 30 minutes between coats.
And then once you do that,
then you start applying your clear coat.
Cate: The exterior color is Volkswagen blue,
which is actually an original Volkswagen color,
but it didn't come in until, like, '66, '67.
And we've just put it over a black base,
so it looks a little bit darker
than most people would recognize the color.
After it's painted, we usually do
all of our wiring and that sort of stuff,
and then we'll go into assembly,
putting in all of the lights and fenders,
running boards, everything else goes on.
The interior process is more
of an evolving process as I do it.
So I have a basic idea of what I want to achieve.
There's a lot of time that's spent
finding the correct material
so that everything is cohesive.
Everything in our builds, interior-wise,
is full custom.
So I will pattern everything out
and construct everything from scratch.
So no two cars that I do, interior-wise, are the same.
Door panels are actually probably my favorite part
of the interior, because they're very easy.
There's not a whole lot of sewing involved in them,
so it's basically just cutting a panel to fit the door
and then covering it.
The ones that went into Paisley
had a very cool little pocket design on them,
which I hadn't done before,
so there was a bit of a process
trying to work out how to engineer that.
And this steering wheel was actually really basic.
It was a half-wrapped steering wheel,
so the outside, the front part just comes off,
and we can just wrap the front in leather.
The center for this steering wheel
we actually sent out to have engraved.
We sent that off to a man in Washington state,
and he hand-engraved all of those details for us.
Headliner's probably ...
I always say it's my least favorite part,
but when I'm actually doing it,
I find it quite enjoyable.
It's really just a matter of getting in there
and starting to glue the leather into place,
and then meticulously wrapping
and undoing it when it's not right
and stretching it to make sure
that there are no wrinkles in it.
The embossed leather was done at the tannery,
and then we just wanted to carry that through,
so it seemed like a good idea to get the engraving done.
And then we also have the Paisley design
on the side of the car,
which is a vinyl wrap in the trim line.
So that sort of flows through from the exterior
to the interior and also into the engine bay.
Probably the one thing that most people
will sort of say stands out most about what we do
is the amount of attention to detail
that we put into them.
So, with the charity builds,
all of the money that we raise
helps to keep kids in school.
We have an orphanage in Indonesia.
We sent 182 kids to school this year.
And all of the funds that we raise
from our charity builds goes to that education fund.
Rodney: It went to a gentleman in north Georgia.
He's already drove it a bunch
and taken it to its first show,
and it won three different trophies,
and it won promoter's choice and all that kind of stuff.
So he's pretty excited about it.
When it's all done, I like driving them.
So that's the best part for me.
I enjoy taking something
that somebody would've crushed or thrown away,
and then we built it into something
that's back on the road again
and everybody can enjoy it and appreciate it.