Fender Fitment

[dz1087]

Trying to get my truck back together after taking it down to the frame for rust mitigation. I'm using repop doors, fender, rad support, and cowl panel. Now, I know that the repop pieces can have fitment issues, but I need some advice on how to proceed. My doors are aligned with the rear of the cab and the door gap is more or less consistent/centered. Both fenders are adjusted down as far as the holes will allow and there are no shims on either side, and no shims between the door hinges and the A-pillar.

Here's the top of the driver fender. It's pretty close.


However, the alignment right here where the two sheetmetal bends are is atrocious.



The passenger side top is farther off, sticking up and out quite a bit.


And once again the two sheetmetal bends are way off.



Now, this is the first time I've ever fit body panels, and I know I've got my work cut our for me by using all repop pieces (the old ones were too dang rusted up). I've also had to remove and replace the A-pillar bottoms, and I replaced the entire floor. Absolutely possible I've tweaked something in doing all I've done.


So, what can I do to start getting things to line up better, especially on the passenger side? I;m thinking about boring out the two top mounting holes in the fender to allow it to adjust down farther, but I don't think that will take care of how far it sticks out. Could I possibly get away with placing shims between the door hinges and the A-pillar to get the door to come out a bit?

As far as aligning the sheetmetal bends - only thing I can think of is cutting the fender and adding some metal. Not sure if my metal working skill or my tools are up to that task though.

[Trash]

Did you remove and replace the whole cowl? Looks like it’s sitting too high. But can’t really see in the photo. I’m no sheet metal expert maybe others will chime in.

[michael bustamante]

You're going to have to walked out the holes to give you more room to drop that fender to make the body lines match...
I've worked for lkq selling aftermarket parts for years and this gen. Fenders never fit right. Also to get the fenders to fit closer you'll have to at with the mounting locations to somehow bring em closer to the fender skin.

[dz1087]

So I need to work that mounting flange a lot more to get it together rather than shimming the door out at all?

I was thinking about reaming out those holes a bit to start off with, but I wanted to make sure that was the correct avenue of approach for these. I'll start playing with them that way a bit tomorrow and see how it goes.

Anyone else got some pointers?

[Tupper81]

with that gap i wouldnt be surprised if you had to do work on the mounting holes, and shim doors a bit put the cowl on there and see what it looks like before you get too deep small tweaks here and there add up

[LS short box]

As you are fitting the doors and front sheet metal I would put the hood on to see all the sheet metal fitment.

[dz1087]

Gonna throw the hood on today. Yesterday I was able to work the holes and trim the welded parts of the inner cowl and get the fenders pretty darn close. Threw the cowl on there and it was looking decent.

One thing I'm noticing is that as the are both repop parts, the curves for both (Fender and doors on both sides) do not match exactly. Even the little trim detail has a different radius bend in both panels. Since I'm looking for a cruiser and not a show truck, I'm probably not going to be doing hours and hours of body work to get those to match up perfect. However, are there any tricks I'm missing about getting those to match up better? BFH and a block of wood, perhaps?