Passenger Front Fender Work
It is time to start tackling the passenger side front fender. While it doesn't look so bad it is in worse shape than the drivers side. Along with the mounting hole damage, dents and dings this fender had the same stress damage as the left front fender, only worse. Before starting this fender looked better and was holding it's shape pretty well for the damage it had. Looking on the inside it was painfully obvious that it had been cracked and repaired many times.
Grinding the area down revelled a lot of putty that was filling in the area from previous repairs. The cracks on this fender started from the wheel opening and extended up and over the top of the fender, a much farther distance than the drivers side.
Once again the grinding and hammering I did on this fender broke the old welds free making this fender very weak. By time I had it close to straight I had several cracks, a large hole and many smaller ones. I had to clamp some bracing in place to keep the fender from kinking. I decided once again to do this in separate sections. Doing it this way I was able to keep the fender in shape with out spreading or closing the large cut out area I needed.
With the wheel opening clamped in shape I started by cutting out the narrower upper section. On the left is the upper section that I cut out showing the hole and part of the crack that opened up to the wheel opening. I stopped my cut here as I needed to cut a much wider area below this point. From here a piece of sheetmetal was cut oversized and placed over the opening. The new metal was curved to shape until it laid smoothly over the fender. From inside the opening I marked the new sheet, trimmed to fit and spotwelded in place.
Once the upper section was taken care of I started to tackle the lower portion. Once I trimmed out the wheel opening area I found a previous repair much like what I am doing now. The problem with one was it was to short and not shaped to the fender very well.
Once every thing was trimmed out to the upper patch and this old rod removed the fender was once again clamped to hold it's shape. A new section of rod was formed to match the curve of the wheel opening, clamped and welded in place. The wheel opening was once again formed around the rod and hammered to shape. From here the remaining section was filled in as the top section was.
After grinding the welds down, much more hammer and dolly work I finally have this section of the fender in pretty good shape. There is a whole lot more to do on this fender as you can probably see but it is in much better shape than what I started with. It has been a pretty big job but I think it will be worth it in the long run.
