Fender Patch (1500 Project – 17)

More progress to report – this time the fender patch on the passenger fender. As I am sure that many of you know, 1500 front fenders are very difficult to come up with. The original fender on this car was straight and clean other than the lower corner which had previous accident damage under the reinforcement rib, as well as rust issues in the lower corner.

After dipping, the fender came back a little lighter than when it went in! The tell-tale pin holes and heavy pitting on the backside needed to be repaired before the car goes to paint.

As part of putting the rocker and A-pillar on the car, we hung all the sheet metal on the car and Guy got busy with the hammer and dolly to get the fender as straight as possible before we cut everything out. He wanted to be sure that it fit properly on the car before we changed things again. With the dents pounded out, the edge now looked like this:

It was straight now, fit the door gap correctly, but the rust still needed to be cut out:

Guy got busy with the die grinder and cut out the rotten portion of the bottom of the fender:

We cut the fender just short of the inner fender lip. 1500′s have a very pronounced crease around the lip of the fender and we did not want to disturb it, especially since it was not damaged by rust.

Then over the course of a couple hours, the patch panel was reworked (the edge did not match the profile of the backside of the fender) and tacked into place, allowing the sheet metal to cool between welds to prevent warping:

Weld, cool, grind, cool, hammer and dolly. Repeat until completed!