Front end repairs

I forgot to take shots of these before I started.    

My old fenders have more fibeglass than steel so over time I found replacements.  The passenger fender was hard to find but I finally got one that had a fair amount of surface rust and was a little dinged up but otherwise solid from NJ.  The passenger inner fender well was very rusted and there's some spots that I'll need to replace.

Does anyone know a good place to buy rubber strips to replace some of the rubber shields?

Time to get back to work.  I tacked in replacement pieces on the inner fender.  While I was at it I spot welded a bunch of pin holes which was a lot easier than replacing the sheet metal.  I thought this was going to be harder.  Maybe I'm just getting better.  Heaven knows I've been getting a lot of practice the last few years!

This looks much better!

On to the next step... time to repair the lower fender mount, the creased lower panel, and a few pin holes here and there.  The passenger side fender was hard to find but I finally settled for one from a scrap yard that was a little dinged up but otherwise pretty solid.

Good enough for me.  Now to put in the replacement panel I made and fill those pin holes.

That is bad ass

Finally I've been getting some free time to work on the car again.  With a lot of parts sandblasted down to bare metal, my priority has been to get any metal repairs done to them so they can be primed to protect them from surface rust.

For a primer I've been using Dupli-color's self etching primer which I've been getting from the local NAPA store.  It's acrylic based, covers well, and for an acrylic paint it is hard enough to hold up to minor scratches while test fitting the parts back together.  I've found it bonds very well when used over the POR-15 (with proper surface preparation) and I have been it using over POR-15 for about 2 years now with no problems.  As an added bonus the color resembles the cars true color and gives me a good feeling when I see the car coming back together.  :-)



I fabricated a repair panel for the passenger side fender and welded it in then repaired a few pin holes on both fenders.  Then on to getting them painted.

I used POR-15 on the inside of both fenders and on both sides of the passenger side inner wheel well.  I know it's not OEM style paint but the way I look at it as much as I'll probably show it off my main goal is to have a car I can drive when ever I want rain or shine.  So the POR-15 will hold up better under those driving conditions.

Once the POR-15 had time to cure and dry thoroughly I used the self etching primer over the inside of the fenders.  I'll do the same to the inner fender well later.

Here's the passenger side fender



The passenger side inner wheel well coated with POR-15



I'm getting WAY ahead of myself here but the driver side fender is done too...