Once the electrical work was done, it was time to deal with cosmetics. Originally the StinkBug was blue and at some point a previous owner had painted it black (with a lot of bondo underneath). After I dovetailed the back end I repainted it once again in it's now trademark green. Well I made the mistake of using rattle cans to paint it and the color didn't last long. After the second round of sawzall work, this time removing the roof, I gave it another coat of el cheapo paint. For the last couple years this paint has been gradually deteriorating from the sun, and just plain poor quality. I decided it was time to give it a decent paint job so the neighbors would stop complaining, and I could be proud of this thing again.




The first step was to sand all the old green paint and primer off. With the poor quality of that paint I knew the new stuff wouldn't stick well unless I got rid of as much as possible. I got some help with this part of the job from my buddy Mikey Foster. He worked with both Blue Torch Fabworks and Team RedBull helping to build the RockHer2. He's now a student at The Fab School in Riverside, CA and works with me as pit crew for the RedBull team. I dont know how I talked him into helping on this crappy dirty hot tedious job, but I sure appreciated it.






Here you can see all the bondo on the B-Pillar. Originally I had cut the body for the dovetail right at the back edge of the roof. Later when i chopped the top off I ended up welding the pillar back together. It's kinda scary how many layers of modifications are in this thing <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" />



Since pretty much every body panel on the truck is removable now the only thing I actually sprayed on the truck was the small section of roof above the windshield. Everything else was pulled off, and put on tables or sawhorses.




Dallas