If there's one thing you never want to hear when someone is working on your car, it's "Well I've never seen THAT before!" But it's more common than you might think, especially when shortening a Type 1 pan for either a Manx-type body or a 356 Speedster kit.

Most dune buggy and 356 bodies use a shortened version of the Type 1 chassis — some with up to 14.5 inches removed — and there are as many ways to do the work as there are styles of dune buggies. Some folks cut straight across the pans while others adopt a chevron or angled cut. The dune buggy has been around for 60-plus years and has been designed and crafted by dozens and dozens of builders, so there's no standard measurement that will work for every 'glass body made. That goes for the 356 also.

Brian Washburn is the 33-year-old owner of Washburn's Metal in Orange, California, and that lack of standardization really rubs him the wrong way. He developed an automated chassis jig that allows him to customize the shortening of a pan within an accuracy of one millimeter. And he uses laser sighting to keep things straight. All he needs to know is how long you want the pan to be (based on the measurements of your buggy or Speedster body).

Washburn has been doing pan replacements for years, but one advancement in the manufacturing of pan halves has allowed him to build what can be called the perfect pan (i.e., one without any welds or modifications discernible to the naked eye).

Flat Out Customs in England now stamps their own short-length pan halves, so all one has to do is break out all of the factory spot welds on the old pan, shorten the chassis' spine, then spot-weld the new halves in place. It's more complicated than that, but that's the condensed version. Trends watched over Washburn's shoulder to see how he does it. This installment covers the prep stage of the job. A future story will cover the cutting and welding.