Now we got a front end, time for fenders. This was not going to be easy, maybe the hardest part of the entire build. One day I got up and was like, it’s time to cut off the fender. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz went the angle grinder and gone went that nice $50 fender
. I only kept where it mated to front doors. I started all my metal fabrication projects with card board templates I traced onto the sheet metal and cut out. I made the front fenders in 3 pieces. One giant piece from bumper to Ford part. One down to what I thought would be the bottom and finally the fender flares. How did I make them? Milk crate. Milk crate?
I put the flat piece of sheet metal I had cut out to look like the fender on the ground and set a milk crate on the part I needed the bend to be. I put all my weight, 165 lb, on it and simply bent the 16 gauge sheet metal by hand until I had the shape I was after. I also used a hammer and dolly set for finer details.
The lower piece was easy to make, tricky to weld with my fledgling skills. I actually had to come back to some of my welds later. I ground off bondo down to welds and redid a bunch. Oh well
Second hardest part was those tricky fender flares to cover my big ol 18” tires. It took me forever to figure these suckers out. Like it’s curved on both sides! Once on the car I simply trimmed one side to match the other. Speaking of the other side, that wasn’t easy making it all match! Passenger side came first so I could do the best job on the driver’s side or the one I would see walking up to car. Getting them to match wasn’t nearly as hard as making it all look correct and perfect later…