We Go Behind The Scenes At Overhaulin' - Lights! Camera! Action!

With all repairs and modifications complete on the body, the SportsRoof is shipped to Mascar Autobody & Paint. Notice the side-marker lights have been filled in, along with the door-lock mounting hole and pin lettering.

AJ shows up for some video taping at Mascar. She spends a few minutes with Kenny discussing the car, and then more footage is taken of the car being rolled into the booth. During the parts of the show where a host talks to a vendor or builder, it is ad-libbed, and often more than one take is put on tape.

Kenny Maiseno and his talented crew at Mascar go over the body, grinding welds, cleaning and prepping seams, and generally getting the entire body ready for the paint booth.

The crew varies in size with each show. There's the A-team, who are the main fabricators, while the rest of the crew is often made up of employees from the show's sponsors-in this case, people from Baer Brakes, YearOne, Ford Racing Performance Parts, and others. The show provides lunch and dinner on the set each day, plus there's a room filled with snacks, drinks, and other sundries right off the set for in-between pick-me-ups. Many crewmembers put in 18- to 22-hour days.

Dutch Miller from Baer Brakes is often seen on Overhaulin' since Baer is the official brake provider for the show. Dutch not only installs the brakes on the car, but he jumps right in and does whatever else needs to be worked on. Here, he installs the third member into the 9-inch in Unique Performance's coilover rear-suspension package.

Back at the set, while there's no car to work on, the Overhaulin' team gets busy with all the subassemblies that will not be replaced. As a rule of thumb, just about every car gets a new drivetrain, suspension, brakes, wheels, and tires, whereas the interior is usually kept mostly stock with fresh trim and carpet and some paint. Of course, this can vary depending upon what Chip wants to do with the car. Wiring harnesses, hinges, brackets, steering columns, and so on are usually cleaned, painted, and prepped for installation. Cherie Westrich handles much of the interior parts on the overhauled cars.

The guys from J&G Customs, who install the stereo and alarm systems on all Overhaulin' projects, get a head start with a speaker enclosure that will replace the rear package tray. These one-off enclosures are made from wood and fiberglass and take a few days to complete

The car is not back yet, as Mascar is finishing up the paint. But that's OK, since there's plenty of other work to do on the set. The guys from Calypso Water Jet are shown here setting up the machine to make some spacers the team asked for. Water-jet cutting is a highly accurate and clean way to cut materials, and the machine is used for everything from spacers and brackets to ornamental trim for speaker enclosures with the Overhaulin' logo.

Interior trim was either replaced, or refinished. All painted to color match, as well as freshen up the look of the interior. Here are many of the dash pieces.