Yeah, I'm not sure what Mike is seeing. Based on his post I blew up the screen to 400% which pixelates it a bit, but it actually looks pretty clean to me. It's the late '31 firewall with the teardrop indentation where the fuel outlet/filter hangs, but other than that it looks pretty normal, but I could be missing something I suppose.

As for your other thoughts, they're reasonable. The trade off in my eyes would be the quality of the chop if it's the amount you're comfortable with. If it's well done then it saves you a bunch of your own labor or cost if you hire it out. The flip side is buying a more complete car that you can sell off a bunch of parts to recoup your money. Depending on what you start with, the quality of the disposable parts, and your marketing skill/patience, you could end up with a body for close to no cost..............but that's the ideal, not necessarily reality. That's where I am with the '30 coupe in my shop. It was a fairly complete car, the parts were just okay, not nice or real nice, and I should end up with a complete coupe body for roughly $1500 once I'm done. But, sales of parts will probably end up taking up to a year by the time the last stuff leaves, unless I get "lucky" and some guy does a lot buyout............a somewhat rare occurance. However, Model A coupe bodies have been hot the past couple years and I've seen a few sell for upwards of $3500 (just the main body, none of the rest of the car). So in that context it's worth the effort to me to jump through the hoops to sell off the un-needed parts. To each his own.