Transmission out

I decided to finish removing the rear brakes and the transmission. I found out that I made a big mistake here. A week or so ago, I removed the rear drums. On the passenger side, I removed the springs and clips that held on the brake shoes. A bit later I needed to move the car, so I put the drums back on and reattached the wheels. I moved the car and put it back on the jack stands. Well, today I tried to pull the passenger side drum off again and was I in for a project. It is very difficult to get the drums off when the brake shoes are not clipped in! It took me an hour to get the one side back off. I ended up drilling holes in the brake shoe and prying it loose from the inner edge. Nasty! Lesson learned.
Here are a couple of pics now that the transmission out.
(Remember, you can click on the pics to see them larger.)

Pan replacement.

The pans in the Beetle were pretty much shot.  They really needed to be replaced.  I found a pair of pans from one of the guys in our local club and picked them up pretty reasonable.  I started out by cutting out the old pans.  I left about a half inch lip all around the inside of the tunnel and front and rear support areas.  This will allow me to set the new pans on top of this lip and weld them in for a nice professional job.

The next thing was to get the new pans trimmed to fit onto the chassis.   I measured and trimmed and got the pans fitting really well.  These must have been really nice pans.  They are well shaped and the holes are all in the right places.  Great to work with nice panels.