Body & Paint Restoration from November 2002 to May 2003
Lee had done some searching for quality painters in the Southern California area and when he asked Hot VWs magazine editor Dave Cormack for advice Dave simply said "if you want a show-quality job then you'll want to call Jimmy Braxmeyer in Vista". So we did and convinced Jimmy to tackle the color-change from Bermuda to Sea Blue as well as some very minor bodywork. By early November the T34 was at Jimmy's shop. When the body was media-blasted Jimmy had found a couple areas of rust that we had not seen. The right drain area in the rear air duct was rotten but we were fortunate to have Larry Edson send us a fresh metal section from a parts car. Then Jimmy took care of straightening all the fenders and prepping it for paint by February 2003. Also had the door hinges rebuilt by John Copello & prepped by Jimmy.



Since I wanted to have the original Sea Blue body & Blue-White roof colors we decided to find a paint supplier that could use the original VW paint codes to create our colors. Finish Masters in San Marcos was able to punch-in the color codes and pull-up the original German recipes for single-stage PPG urethane. In 20 minutes they'd mixed the paints and even prepared a two-tone paint lid with our colors to preview. Heaven, just heaven! The paint went to Jimmy and in March we got to see the first paint job! (I'll explain in a minute.) Jimmy's hard work on the body was amazing, super-straight panels, mirror-clear paint, and perfectly original colors. I was overjoyed to see my dream T34 transformed over just a few months.



After the 1st paint settled Jimmy announced that it had flaws and would need to be repainted. Ugggghhhh! We were trying to get it reassembled in time for the VW Classic record-breaking attempt, but now meeting that schedule was out of the question. So Jimmy took the 1st paint off completely and spent another two months perfecting the body and painting it a 2nd time. This time the results were up to his standards (we couldn't tell that the 1st one was flawed!) and it left Jimmy's shop on May 15th, only seven months after it arrived. But it was a perfect body & paint job!