1967 Pontiac Lemans #2 - budget build - episode six, rust repair, the fenders, inner fender **updated 12/30/24

October 5th, 2024:

October 6th, 2024:

Episode one, introduction, here.

Episode two, disassembly and assessment, here.

Episode three, rough body work, here.

Episode four, quarters, here.

Episode five, toe panel and rocker, here.

Episode six, fenders, inner fenders, here.

Episode seven, the doors, found here.

Episode eight, tail light panel, found here.

Episode nine - Hood, windshield gutter, back glass gutter

----------------------------

This episode will focus on the fender rust and the inner fender rust.

Driver's Fender

I have already devoted a ton of effort to the passenger fender, below. It had been crushed and hit and abused. So I decided to move over to the driver's side and fix this one. The passenger side repairs will be documented after this below.

This fender is perhaps the best old car fender I've ever seen, going back to my very first car projects decades ago. 

It does have the typical rust behind the tire:

I wirebrushed the inside and POR15d the surfaces:

Cut and shaped a patch:

Welded and ground smooth:

This fender also had some damage to the headlight peak. So I took a blunt chisel to the inside and hammered the peak forward. The damage was not as bad as the passenger fender, however (see below). Here's the initial results:

I perfected the edge with some weld. I ground it smooth and did a test fit:

I'm happy with that.

Here's what the full side of the car looks like now:

There were a few mall dents in the fender, so I stripped the door and worked the dents:

Then I sprayed some primer:

There's still some work left to do here, so this primer is pretty much just a lifter of my spirits. The evidence more work is needed.

Sanded and touched up with glazing putty:

That is the process, sanding the primer until it has gotten me to the point where no more filler (or primer) is required. This is how the surface get corrected to perfection, with applications and sandings of the primer.

Passenger Fender

As mentioned in Episode three, I turned the fender over on the ground and stepped on the dent, which did a lot: 

At this point I began thinking I might be able to actually fix it. My big old foot worked surprisingly well, and may have saved me $600.00. But you can see there's a lot of misshapened metal remaining.

I started bringing it into proper shape. First I stripped the fender and then I spent a couple of weekends hammering:

It turns out the headlight area also had damage I hadn't noticed before. 

It took a hit there and the area was pushed back at the edge, and bulged out in front of where the "326" emblem is located. 

I've been working that area too:

It's a little hard to see, but you can just make out the remnants of a vertical ridge line to the left of the headlight lip. This was a pushed up area, which I've been working back down. The lip of the headlight still needs to go forward. You can also see that the flange where the headlight bezel mounts is folded back.

I put a stack of three short 2x6s on the floor and turned the fender up on its nose:

I hammered on the interior with various chisels, pry bars, blunt screwdrivers, etc, to push the front lip down (forward), checking my progress by fitting the headlight bezel:

This is getting closer. Considering how misshapen this area was, the fit is very nearly a miracle. 

I added some weld to key areas and dressed them out:

Very pleased with this.

I then got the front edge of the fender pretty hammered out close and gave it a thin coat of filler:

Blocked it out and primered it:

Next I needed to fill the trim holes along the top of the fender. Maybe this trim was an option on the Tempest? I shaped a piece of scrap with my angle grinder, leaving the piece attached, which gives me a handle:

Test fit:

After putting on a spot weld I cut off the "handle" and welded the rest of the perimeter. 

After I got all the holes welded I did some more dollying on the panel, and also used the shrinking disk in various places. 

I used a straightedge to check the progress, and once I got the panel close I started adding filler:

I blocked and filled until it started looking pretty good, then sprayed a couple coats of primer:

 

Honestly, the pictures look better than it actually is. The basic shape is there, but there's a lot of uneven filler and surface flaws. It is about to the point now where if I were to go out and buy a fender, this would be the starting point. That means I've invested all this work to get to the place where I'm actually going to work this fender. Wow.

After the primer dried I sanded it out and put some glazing on the flaws:

Like the driver's fender, the lower area was rusted out:

I waited to fix this until I was absolutely sure the other damage was fixable. 

I cut out the rust:

There were a couple of rust perforations to the brace, but it was pretty solid otherwise. I wirebrushed as much as I could reach, welded the perforations, and brushed on some POR15:

I cut a patch:

Welded and dressed:

Driver Front Inner Fender

11/9/24 My inner fenders are surprisingly good, requiring only one repair to the front corner of the driver's side panel:

I figured I could fix this with two pieces. First piece:

And second piece:

That wasn't terribly hard. 

More to come.