Trimming fenders the right way....

[Chief34]

Well,

My fender trimming project is finally complete now that I got everything painted. lol.

Anyway My front tires where hitting my fender under full stuff. I ended up hitting and bending both fronts while jumping my truck one fine day.

So I got a couple of fenders off Ebay and I decided to do a nice fender trim.

This is what I started with... The damage was worse than it looked like in the pics....

 

[Chief34]

Next, I decided on a line off of the radius of the fender to follow down toward the bottom of the door. After drawing a nice line with a good sweeping curve on it, I cut the fender with an air dremel.

What I did next was use the inner fender well lip and weld it back to the fender. This has to be done with alot of patience. You have to spot weld it every few inches and let cool while doing so. The cooler you keep the fender the less warping you will get. Once you spot weld it a few times you can go back between those spots, splitting the difference, each time and keep spotting.... Until it is completely welded. This takes a while. like I said you have to keep letting it cool.

Since the cut line was a lot longer than the original piece because it sweeps back toward the door, The "lip" of the fender wasnt long enough. So I had to make some new pieces to finish the lip all the way down.

Since I cut So much of the fender off on mine, I also cut off Both the mounting holes of the fender where it attaches to the truck.... So I had to extend the lower section and re-enforce it to re-mount the fender.

After all of this, you can see in the 1st pic that I needed to cut some of the floor out in order to get the clearance I wanted... this pic gives you an idea of how much clearance was gained.... Also, in the 2nd pic if you look at the Black inner fender well you can see about how much was removed...

 

[Chief34]

One side of the floor board was worse than the other, but I had to cut some of the outer layer off the floor boards.... This did not effect the inside at all...

Here is a couple of shots , when I was cutting it out. I wasn't done yet in the pic, but you can see the Marker of where I needed more cutting... You get the idea. After I got it all cut out, I made some plates and welded them back in to cover up the holes and strengthen the floor back up....

 

[Chief34]

Here are some shots of it almost finished... This is where I got real lucky. I didnt even expect this one. I was planning on making some Stainless steel inner fender wells and rolling them to fit nice in there. When I was finished I realized when I pushed the black plastic inner fender well back it flexed right into position. I just put a Screw in the bottom to hold it back and it Looked Factory!!!

 

[Chief34]

I had very minimal warping... A little bit of bondo and painting and blending the front half of the truck and it looks Up to my standards again! Let me know what yall think...

I hope this helps someone. It is possible.

 

[Chief34]

2 more

 

[SVO]

Clean, I really like that, nice job!







Jeff - :navajo:

 

[DeRocha]

Very nice... One of these days I need to do the same to my X..

 

[Chief34]

Thanks guys!!

My plan is to 4 link the rear and 3 link the front with my full width axles that I have. I am going to lower the truck as much as possible while keeping the uptravel that I want. Thats why I went as far as I could with the trimming. The back will be easy, because I wont have to worry about paint since its a chrome trim panel back there.... This will help alot getting the center of gravity back down.