Fender Problems!

[MrMagoo]

Help!

I'm a novice doing some rust repair on a 72T. My front fenders were to far gone for me to repair, so I bought some LWB fenders to replace mine a while back. I got them from a fellow Pelican. Used, expensive, no rust, and great condition. The fender lips have been slightly rolled.

Fast forward, and I'm currently replacing both the passenger and driver joining panel. They've got rust also. In order to locate the fender joining panel, I mocked up the passenger fender. Seems like every thing is OK. When I get to the drivers side, things fall apart. It appears to me that the drivers fender mounting lip doesn't have the same curve as the body. The only way I could get it on the car was to start a bolt on the tip of the fender (angle plate for the front wheelhouse) with the back of the fender jacked up in the air. Once the bolt was fastened to the tip, I put a little muscle into it and got the back of the fender mounted to the cowl. All the mounting holes line up perfectly; however, I've got problems where the dog leg meets the rocker. I probably have door gap problems also, but have not verified. The doors are off the car. I can push the dog leg into place; however, it causes the wheel opening to bow out and it wants to spring back. By the way, my car is straight.

I was thinking the drivers fender may be a reproduction or possible altered when inner lip of the fender was rolled.

Any recommendations by a pelican on how to deal with this is appreciated.

[962porsche]

i would guess that the used fender is bent ?
you have to find out were it's bent and fix it if you can .
to start with lay the two fenders face down and see were they differ from one another .
i'm sure you did clean up any crap were the panels bolt up that may stop the fender from sitting as it should to it's mounting points ?

[MrMagoo]

962Porsche -

Thanks for the response. Your idea about holding the fenders together may have revealed the problem.

The fender isn't bent along its length. And there isn't any crap on them, they were media blasted and epoxy primered. They look new. There is a difference on the fenders where the fenders lay on the body. Near every spring nut location the sheet steel lip on the fender is bent slight from 90 degrees to 60 degrees or so.

Pure speculation - it looks like someone wanted the fender to sit higher on their car especially near the front of the fender. I can see someone bending this lip if they were trying to adjust the fender by themselves (eg without a second set of hands).

I going to bend these back this weekend, and see it this is the real problem. I let you know how it works out.

[962porsche]

it sounds to me like thats the trubble ?
just because your car is not bent does not mean the car the used fender came off of was not ?
we run into crap like this all the time with used parts in my shop .
it could also have gotten bent from the person that was taking the used fender off the car it was on .
you also have to remember our loved 911 porsche's are a hand built car . the panels them selfs are stamped but they are put together by hand .
so when frits is building your car he may at times have to trim , hammer or swist some to get the gaps of the car he is building at that time . so by doing that the panel may fit great in one car but not the another .