Front Fender Work

Break time is over, time to tackle my screwed up fender. This crack had been repaired sometime in the past, maybe a few times. I found three vertical welds from the wheel lip up towards the top middle part of the fender. The crack wasn't this bad until I started beating on it to get the fender back into shape. I then found some very thin places that broke free while beating on it. The center weld then broke free from top to bottom. The rear weld on the right then started to break free by the time I was done beating on the fender. The bead around the wheel opening has been messed up pretty bad during these repairs and will need to be straightened out too. This was a truck, it needed to be functional not pretty. Well times have changed, I want this truck to look good and be used as a light duty truck if needed.

Since this area has been fixed up to three times that I can tell, or three repairs at once, I decided to replace this whole section. I would have liked to find a section from another fender to patch in here but I was not able to find one. That meant I would need to make my own patch section to replace this area.

To keep the wheel lip aligned after I cut the bad section out I decided to weld a steel bar inside the rolled wheel lip to hold its shape and to give me something to work around. I gave the steel bar a slight bend to match the wheel opening by bending it by hand over a tire near the size of the opening. This was then welded in place inside the lip giving it strength and holding it in shape. I ended up cutting a pretty good section out of the fender to replace the bad section and the steel bar gave it a lot of strength back. I think I'm going to leave the bar in place after the repair for a little extra strength in this area. If anybody knows if there should be some kind of brace here please let me know. If there is not a brace here it is a good place for one.

From here I decided to make my repair in two sections starting at the wheel lip and working my way up. By starting on the inside working a little at a time I was able to weld and roll the sheetmetal over the steel bar to get the shape of the wheel lip. Originally I had planned on working the top section down to the roll but I was able to hammer and bring the sheetmetal up into the fender. It may not be pretty but it is close to the correct shape and a thin layer of putty will smooth things out.

With the lower section done I cut out a larger piece to fill in the large upper section. Using the fender as a mold I bent the sheetmetal to shape. It was then placed over the hole and the cutout shape traced to the new section. Once it was trimmed to shape and fitted for a good tight fit I welded it in place.

Here we are, the repaired fender that looks a whole lot better than what I started with and a lot stronger. Hopefully my repair holds up over time better than the old one. I know it looks better and will not need all the putty it had in it before. Time to see want my passenger fender has hidden under it's putty.