Tuesday started out with me deciding if I removed the old headlight I'd have a better pick-up point for lifting the fender into position. How hard can that be? I found out! See those little screws? Well, two of them came out no problem. The third was obstinate! Multiple applications of PB Blaster and various tools (finally a long-nosed vice grips) got it out. By the way, anyone know the specs on those little screws. I probably should replace them. I got clipped on the driver's side front fender many years ago and I replaced the fender but not the inner fender. Apparently that inner fender had been damaged in the collision. Notice the gap between the inner and outer at the front? Notice how the lower lip of the inner fender is bent up and also the crease near the front? I had to take a hammer and dolly (consisting of an old mallet and a big old hatchet head) to straighten it out a bit, but I still needed a longer bolt and by threading the nut tight managed to pull everything together. (I think I'm going to have to get more hammer and dolly practice on it, no?) I had another challenge in that the mounting point on the body was puckered out. I had to have my wife/assistant mechanic sit in the car and hold the hatchet head in position on the inside while I used a tack hammer to slowly pound the pucker flat (this is another item that will have to be addressed when paint-time comes - including welding that tear): So, then I mounted the fender and decided to check how level it was. Maybe if I held the camera level, the car wouldn't look out of level... But level it was: So, looking at the front tire in the fender opening I am not sure it is centered and may need to move back? That fender does look pretty rough doesn't it? But here is the passenger side: I've ordered a pair of front fender brace panels from Drake. I'll have to install them and see if they change the shape of the fender. Any comments on the CW Moss hardware? I need to get a new hood ornament and handle as mine got broke many years ago (they were in perfect shape until some moron decided he needed to open my hood to see my engine.)
I think your front wheel placement looks good. If anything, I prefer the front wheel to slightly favor the leading side of the fender.
The radius of Ford fender arches is not constant. It can create eyeballing confusion. I think you are okay. I should add, the amount of rake either way also effects it. Rough fender? You obviously haven't looked at my build thread!
I appreciate your comment. I find myself second-guessing everything I do since I would like this to come out really nice. And I don't quite have the skill set to do that. So, feedback from you guys is a critical component of my build.
Actually I have. Your work is great! But for me this fender is rough since it will be a challenge for me to get it right.
I just bought a good used pair of inner fenders because I needed a passenger side. I will have an extra driver side if you can't get the one you have back in shape. Let me know
Deluxe hood ornaments are hard to find these days. Drake been out of stock a long time. Recently saw a Vintique new in the box for $450 at a swap meet, I passed. Sometimes replacing the broken handle is the best option.
Thanks much! I'm going to see what I can do with this one to get it into shape, but I might take you up on that!
Turns out that the CW Moss hood ornament and handle are out of stock when I tried to order them. Someone had tried to jam the handle shut on mine and ended up breaking the ornament above the handle joint. Happened many years ago. Some people just can't keep their hands off other people's stuff.
Happen to run across this ad looking for 39 trim. He has a couple handles. Might be worth a try... https://www.facebook.com/marketplac...h&referral_code=null&referral_story_type=post
You can change the door gap by changing the shims under the body mounts. Less under the cowl brings the back of the up. It’s kind of a tea totter effect. I am glad you are still working on it. I had a knee done the 4th of April and its 109 here so this old man is staying in the AC.
Ive been wondering how this works. So do you only fit the shims under the cowl or the b pillar, or do you have to even it out all the way along. So if you fit them under the b pillar, you have to continue all the way to the back of the car? And how tight do you torque these body bolts up, because surely as the mounts are rubber, you just compress the rubber more where the shims are?
I too was skeptical but it totally works. My drivers door was off, 3/8" at the latch and had to push it down to get the dovetails to mesh. Messing with the hinges did not fix it. Jacked the body up, put a 3/8" thick 4" long chunk of plywood under the b-pillar only, set it back down and wallah the dovetails matched up and door closes easily. The bodies are really that flexible. I will have to do something more permanent like a stack of large washers on final mounting.
I also got looking at the lip of the wheel opening on the driver's side fender and found this. The blue arrow points at the nice, original rounded edge of the wheel opening and the red arrow points to the piece of steel and weldment that some knucklehead welded to almost the whole circumference of the wheel opening. You can see the weldment running all along the inside lip of the fender Really bad here: So, it was "grind-time!" This replacement fender from the junkyard was never nearly as nice as my original fenders, so it's not a surprise that I'll have to do a bunch of work on it to fix it (or maybe buy a better one if I can't get this one up to the quality I want.) Also, at the front of the fender you can see the light blue body putty exposed with a little grinding. You'll notice that I drug the fender out into the yard since I was going to be doing a lot of grinding. Once I started grinding on it, you could really see the welding mess that someone made. I assume that there was the start of a crack in the fender edge and they just decided to "fix" the whole wheel opening. I know to be wary about welding sheet metal and heating it up and warping it. I'm not sure if you can do the same thing grinding, but didn't want to find out. The area being ground on would get pretty warm, so I made sure to move around and also took frequent breaks (to chug Gator-aide) to let the metal (and me) cool down. I positioned myself so the prevailing breeze kept the debris out of my nose (and lungs). Here you can see the remnants of the strip of steel they had welded on to the lip of the fender. This went most of the way around the circumference. Making progress after much grinding. I used the flap disc on my angle grinder. It gave me pretty good control. I got most of it off by the end of the day, but it is obvious that there will still have to be a "Round 2". So, more grinding coming up and I might try some paint stripper on that fender to get a better look at the bare metal.
Since I was working on the driver's side front fender I figured I might as well continue. At some point I'll need to strip it down to see what kind of shape it is actually in - get all the paint off of it so I can see the metal. This is sort of a side-track, but it needs to get done at some time, so why not now? But first, take a look at my new toys: I hope I'm not going to be too dangerous with them.... So, I drug my fender out to underneath the tree along with my other accessories: This stripper cleans up with paint thinner, an important consideration as I didn't want to get any water on the bare metal when I was cleaning off the stripper. Even though I was in the shade the stripper seemed to be drying up before "working" the paint, after the second coat of stripper I had my wife bring out the saranwrap and we covered it so it wouldn't dry so quickly: That seemed to do the trick and I was able to get quite a bit of paint off it. I noticed that in some cases where the paint didn't come off it was due to body puddy beneath it. There are three spots on the top of the fender evident: It looks like it took a good bash on the lower corner of the fender here: I'm not sure whether the paint on the side of the fender just didn't stay wet enough to strip or that I have more body puddy there. I'm going to have a second stripping session to get all the rest of the paint off. Happily, the rear part of the fender looks pretty good. I'm thinking I'll pull the headlight bucket and apron (inner fender) off and strip them separately. Yes, I'm going further down the side-track, but better now than when it's 30 degrees out. Obviously, I need to find a good Youtube about banging out small dents. Any suggestions?
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPwxVM7Kly7O3serfIyE-yJZH_EMMJiXS Check these out. He has a lot more good ones. The earlier ones are more "how to" the recent ones are more "watch me work" but still interesting to watch.
Sorry, more paint stripping since the first rounds didn't quite get it all. First thing I did was separate the apron from the fender so I could get at the paint in the seams. I also removed the headlight bucket. That way I don't have to worry about any paint stripper remaining in any seams and later on affecting the paint job. I put a coat of stripper on just the remaining paint and it cleaned up pretty well: The numerous dents are revealed by the areas of green-blue body putty: Compared to my other front fender this guy has a lot of dents. For the most part it looks as though no one tried to pound them out, they just grabbed the filler and puttied away. I suppose typical use of one of these cars in Montana in the 40s and 50s could have been on gravel roads, and if owned by a farmer may not have had the most gentlest of use. I also stripped the paint off of the apron. And now I'm down to mostly bare metal. I'll take the rest of the paint off with some Scotch-Brite Rolocs on my angle grinder. For reference, I'm using this stuff. It is mineral spirits clean-up, not water clean-up as a lot of these products currently are.
I've gotten a little behind in my updates on my Ford. This front fender progress has been tedious and slow, but I'm getting there. Last Tuesday I did a bit more clean-up with the paint stripper and it showed pretty well that there are a bunch of areas where this fender has been body puttied. Mostly dings and dents. I just have to assume that this fender was off a Montana car owned by a rancher or farmer who drove gravel roads. and.... So, last Wednesday I took the ScotchBrite pad on my angle grinder to it to get any remaining paint, rust, or putty off. I set up in the drive-way in front of my van to give me some shade. You can also see I set up a box-fan behind me to blow any dust away. What you are looking at here is the fender laying on its inner side and that is the lower front with all the damage The rectangular opening is for the bumper mounts. Looks like that area also got beat up a bit. After all that, there was still some pitting left by the surface rust on the front of the fender: Here I am just about done. The bare metal is nice and shiny with the rust and putty gone. The light reflects differently dependent on the direction I was moving the ScotchBrite Roloc in any particular area.
I have five front fenders total, all of them have cracks around the holes for the bumper irons. Must be too high stress an area to have the openings without a reinforcement ring on the reverse like the tail lights have.
I have not gotten that far yet. My plan is to weld up the cracks and make a sheet metal ring like the tail lights have and plug/spot weld it in. A ring of 3/16" rod certainly could work too. The area is obscured on the front by the bumper iron gasket so a little grinding and the weld penetration should not show. It will be a water trap right in the splash zone of the front tires so it will have to be seam sealed. 39 Guy did a similar repair to cracks on the inner fenders where they have the U shaped cut-out. Half my inners are cracked in the same spot as well and I plan to make one like he did for that area; even for the ones not cracked yet.
So, I wanted to protect the fender after removing all its paint. I used AfterBlast. I would spray in on and scrub it in with a scotch-brite type pad and then wipe it down after a few minutes. A big difference between this and the picture in one of my previous posts. It actually continued to "grey out" to become more uniformally grey. I don't recall how I ended up with two fender aprons, but I did. Unfortunately, both are in rough shape. Typical dents like these: Which I pounded out: Not sure how I'll fix these cracks: And:
The re-pops are out of production. These look better than yours: https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/1939-1940-ford-inner-fenders.1299201/
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