Frenching & Shaveing Bodies,& Suicide Doors

[SB1303s]

"Thanks to Sharkey for this information"
SHAVING = The concept of "shaving" is simple. Just imagine taking a sharp straight razor and carefully shaving off the factory front turn signals, front hood handle, or the chrome trim along either side of the car, leaving a perfectly smooth surface remaining. This almost always involves welding in new metal to fill the resulting holes, which will mean fresh paint as well.
Shaving *door* handles is more involved. The stock handles are removed and the mounting holes are filled with new sheet metal. The sunken area behind the stock handle also must be cut out and flat metal welded in in its place. The result is the same as above-- a flat region of sheet metal that shows no sign of ever being used to locate the handle.

If you shave the hood handle or decklid handle off, you'll need some sort of internal release to open them. This isn't a problem with regards to the hood, and fabricating something for the decklid latch isn't that hard. Shaved door handles will require either hidden pull cables (not a good idea, for security reasons), electric solenoids with magnetic switches behind the glass on the quarter windows (better), or electric solenoids connected to an actual keyless entry system or quality alarm with features for multiple button commands (best).

FRENCHING = "Frenching" is another term you might hear when it comes to custom bodywork. Frenching involves forming a metal "pocket" behind an object like a rear tail light lens or decklid license plate area so that it sits "in" from the surrounding sheet metal. IMHO, frenching is a *real* artform and there are a lot of bad examples out there.

Suicide doors open along the leading edge of the door instead of the trailing edge like most cars today. The third door on those Saturn coupes could be considered a suicide door, except that the driver's door *must* open first before the third door can. Same goes for some of the newer quad cab pick-up trucks. The term "suicide" is based on the scenario of opening such a door while travelling at great speed... the air would literally snap the door backwards and quite possibly damage the hinges to such an extent that you couldn't close the door properly afterwards. Suicide. Kits are available through most shops that specialize in selling stuff for American Hot Rods. Installing them takes a lot of skill and isn't a job for a novice. Expect to pay big bux for a quality job (I've seen cheapo attempts and it just isn't worth it). Shaved door handles are a *must* with suicide doors.

AFAIK, there are no kits for gull wing doors... certainly not specifically for Beetles that's for sure. Personally, a car with flat vertical doors like a Beetle doesn't lend itself to gull wing doors anyway.

[This message has been edited by Sharkey (edited 08-02-2000).]

[Tarnx]

These are early Hot Rod concepts to improve change, or lighten the bodies. Other concepts were chopping the top. I think that came out of Bonneville for streamlineing, channeling where you raised the frame rails up into the body to lower the car. Most early cars the body set on top of the frame rails. This was before perimeter frames. This is not really applicable to bugs unless you are thinking of lowering the body such as on drag bugs. And another concept was sectioning where you cut a, for example, 6in slice out of the body all the way around to lower the body down. This to was used to stream line the body. I have never seen this done to a bug but it would create an interesting look. Probably way to much work. Just a short history lesson.