When I had removed both front fenders, every single bolt was rusted in place so badly that I had to cut them off with a high speed cutoff wheel. Almost all of the clips the bolts screwed into were rusted so bad they had to be replaced. At the front of each fender there were two holes where nuts had been welded in place, so that you could screw a bolt into them from below. These had both come loose in the process of getting the fenders off the car. They were in a place where you could not get a hand into while the fender was on the car. I had to come up with something to screw a bolt into from below to hold the front of the fender in place.
Here you see a close up of the front of the right fender. The black gooey stuff is caulk. You can see the hole just above and below it. There are supposed to be threads on the back side of those holes.
Here is my solution. I cut out a piece of metal and drilled two holes the correct distance apart. Then I pushed two J clips onto the piece of metal over each hole.
After placing the piece of metal where it needed to be, I put two pop rivets through the fender to hold it in place. You can see where I had the bolts installed to hold it while drilling holes for the pop rivets. The pop rivets are aluminum, so they won't rust.
Since everything had been so rusted when I took the car apart, even screwing a bolt back into the old holes was a challenge. I took the time to chase the threads on the few remaining original nuts.
Along the top edge of the inner fender, ribbon caulk is used to seal the engine compartment from road grime that is thrown up by the tire.
With all the clips in place and ribbon caulk laid out, the fenders went on and were aligned.
Oh, how sweet it is!!!
It is finally starting to look like a car again!
Seeing the front sheet metal all together made me realize I had not worked on a small piece. Here is the filler panel that goes in behind the front bumper.
Here is the backside, showing a lot of rust. This will be removed with a wire wheel on an electric drill, then treated with phosphoric acid and painted with self etching primer.
Here you can see the many colors this car has been painted over the years. The dark color is the original Burgundy Red. On top of that is an Orange Red, then White, and finally a lighter Red.
Another detail that had to be taken care of was the rear floor pans. I had welded in patches on the front two, but not the rears. There was just some light surface rust, but the owner asked that I treat it and paint it with some special rust preventative paint he had found.
Below you can see the shinny paint on the rear floor pans and the black on the fronts where I had welded in the patch panels.
He didn't tell me to do it, but I went ahead and painted the top of the dashboard while I had the windshield out. Fortunately there was a line just below where it curve under, so I didn't have to mask off the gauges or anything. Someone had tried to paint it while the windshield was in and it was very rough and just hadn't looked right. It only took a couple of hours and will make a world of difference in the appearance of the car.
Another small but important detail was transferring the small brace from the bottom of the old battery tray to the new one. You can buy a new battery tray, but not the brace. Go figure.
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