I have not had much time to work on the car since I got it painted. However, I have set the body back on the pan so I can get an idea of the ride height. The front is not too bad, but I'll have to lower the back a little. I guess the 18 degrees was not quite right. 
It's been a very long time coming, but it's finally painted. The body work turned out near perfectly. There are more than a few runs that will need sanded out, but there is plenty of clear to scrape a little off the top. I'll post more pictures tomorrow when I can get the paper off the window and open the shop up to get some different angles.
I finally got the entire car coated in buildable primer. I found a few more little dings as I was spraying it, but they shouldn't be too hard to fill. I did have a real problem with fish eyes, which I have never had with buildable primer before. I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the kerosene heater I have running in the shop? I wound up doing a really light coat over the whole car to give the heavy coats something to stick to. It seemed to work fairly well.
After several weeks of filling, sanding and pounding, the car is finally all in primer. It's only been 1286 days but who's counting? At this point I have only covered the fenders, doors, hood and deck lid in epoxy primer, but I'll get the buildable primer on them tomorrow. The pieces all fit together very well. I really couldn't be much happier with how the whole thing is coming together so far.
In case you don't recognize it, that ladies and gentlemen, is a driver side top hinge that has no threads for a mirror on top of the pin. This hinge came from an early 60s door but the pin came from the bottom hinge on the same door. Big thanks to Troy for the inspiration and tips on doing this and to Eric for letting me cut the hinges off his door.
Since the top hinge on my driver door is shot, I decided I'm going to replace it all together. First, I found the replacement hinge and drilled the rivets to pull it from a donor door. I plan on replacing the mirror mount hinge pin with a standard pin so I don't have those ugly threads on top of my hinge. I built a hinge pin press based on a design I found on the web. It really worked quite well, I have to admit I was surprised. I expected the whole thing to explode under all the pressure
After nearly a year off, I have finally gotten back to working on the bug. Some time back, I put a patch in the driver side door where a bullet left its mark. The results were anything but pleasing. After spending quite some time searching for a 57 door, I decided to try working the miss-placed curves out of the door. It has taken close to 8 hours but the door is now somewhere approaching usable. There is still a little "oil can" in one spot and it will take a skim coat of mud to smooth it all out. Being the original door for the car though, the time spent will be worth it.
