Working on odds and ends before I get it on the rotisserie. Today I started messing around with the fenders.
I have two sets of fenders: the originals from the car, and another set of originals that I acquired in Dallas along with a matching hood. They have issues, but I got them cheap. The original fenders have issues as well. The passenger side is mostly in good shape; I will probably use it for the final product. The original driver's side fender is pretty beat up from an accident. It would take far too much filler to use.
The other set of fenders is a similar story, except the passenger side has some damage while the driver's side is in much better shape. It still has issues that need to be addressed, though. It has an old repair on the front that wasn't done very well. I will likely take a section of the original driver's fender from my car to replace the original repair.
You can just see some of the damage to the passenger fender I acquired in this picture. It's bent where it meets the door.
I knew this old bondo was hiding bad body work.
The original repair was made by cutting out a portion of the headlight bucket. There was far too much bondo used along with bad metal work. A very mediocre repair. I'll be using the headlight bucket from the original fender. I'll swap it onto the replacement fender after I've repaired the metal. I'm probably going to cut the front corner section out of the original fender and butt weld it into the replacement fender. Seems kind of dicey, but I seriously doubt it will turn out any worse than what I already have. I'm determined to avoid using reproduction fenders.
I'm going to do a junkyard run in the morning. I'm not sure I'll be able to finish this tomorrow. I'm looking forward to tackling this.