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Previously I wrote how the body was painted in two very different steps: the "jambs" and "undersides", then the outer skin. The first painting process involved painting it while it was hanging in the special Karmann Ghia Body Hoist seen earlier. This permitted getting paint underneath the new rocker sections to ensure that the whole structure has good paint. It also helps ensure that there's no shadow areas where the paint just didn't go as is so common in lesser-quality paint jobs. Only then was the body set down on the body-dolly-chassis (also seen earlier) for a more traditional paint job. I took photos of these processes but most are out of focus or the light's too dim.
In the last steps, of course, the body was hoisted again and then set down on the chassis previously prepped, as seen below:
In the images immediately above and below, we see the body after final painting. (Note the lids and small pieces hanging in the background.)
Below, we see the completed chassis has been rolled underneath.
First, a little centering with the floor jack...
...then lower it down!
The next thing you know, the body is mouned and we're moving on to assembly. But, not so fast! Not photographed here was the two-person job of lowering the body while someone inside oriented the chassis to body gasket to just the right position. On earlier vehicles, the gasket gets nailed into position, but on younger ones it's up to the caulk to hold it. But in our case, for some reason the caulk wasn't setting up fast enough for our tastes, so we did it as a team - and it wasn't as easy as it might sound!
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