11830133 Gets A Fender!

[68911USA]

Okay, I thought I would post up a little project. For background, my '68 911 is a very original car, except for the uh...fiberglass front fenders. From the condition of the metal all around them, it has escaped me as to why they are fitted. I would think that if the car was once rusty enough to need them, there would be evidence around the area where they were fitted. Same for crash damage, I have not seen evidence of anything serious in the front end other than slightly bent brackets for the front valence. It doesn't seem that would cause enough damage to wipe out both fenders. So, all this being said, I have been on the fence about taking it apart to really see what was under there. A little while back I found and purchased a set of used early "need a little work" fenders, mostly to know I had them if I ever really needed them. I have spent the past 8 months getting the car in really nice driving shape, and I've put several hundred miles on it in the past month or so at least in some car club rallies and that kind of thing. So, of course it's time to take it apart again. (Some kind of sickness?)

So, tonight, my confidence fueled by a couple of fine lagers, I decided to just see what was going on in there. It was really very simple, the bolts holding the fender came right out, same for the various trim screws for the rocker deco. Thankfully, the rockers are solid as I had hoped, as for the inner lip where the fender mounts.

So, here we go.

Pic 1 is the fender I removed, the drivers side. The fender is still in good shape, and has the right metal box to hold the turn signal and horn grille, which is strange.

Pic 2 is the car after removing fender. nice and clean, no rust! Huge sigh of relief here.

Pics 3 and 4 are close ups of the inner fender flanges (?) that I thought were in really good shape.

Pic 5 is my original antenna, that has been hiding in the space behind the door for about 25 years. Why? Nice to finally be able to get it back up where it belongs, I guess nobody wanted to drill a hole in the fender, or they forgot and didn't want to go back.

I have hit my max on pictures already, so I will continue on...

[68911USA]

Pic 6 is a close up of one of the fender mounting studs on the body of the car. The "new" fender does not seem to have holes for these, so I will need to mark carefully and do a little drilling when I refinish the fenders. Is this strange?

Pics 7 and 8 are of the "new" fender on the car, with the antenna temporarily mounted just for fun.

The fenders will need some work before painting and installation, but I think they will work. I'm just monkeying around a little here, and will probably put the glass fender back on it while I'm getting the steel one worked out. I still need to find the cover/tube that hides the wiring from the body of the car to the fender, but there were original horns already attached to these, so that was fun to find also.

[Fritter]

Lookin' good. I had the driver's side front fender off my '68 two winters ago, and my antenna was just stuck in the door cavity also. Mine was missing the mounting hardware, so I just mounted a repro antenna from appbiz, after drilling the hole in the fender.

Someone also "caulked" the fender to my '68's body, so I cleaned all that up and used the proper black 3M strip caulk when I remounted it.

My driver's side was replaced at some point in the past, my passenger side one looks original/never been off the car.

Always a breathless moment while taking off body panels, you never know what clusters lurk under the surface! Glad it turned out OK.

[edmayo]

The early cars, I think to end of 68, used a dowel that was installed through the body flange into the fender after it was fitted so that the fender could be removed and replaced while maintaining the proper fit.

[Richard]

The reason your front fenders may have been replaced with f/g fenders is rust. There are two areas that front fenders often rust without affecting the chassis much. Either along the top edge where they bolt to the chassis (moisture gets in there and for some reason the fender lip usually rusts before the chassis) or down the rear just in front of the door opening where there is a drain channel that often gets clogged up with dirt resulting in water being trapped and then rusting a hole out a couple of inches from the bottom of the fender. I replaced the fenders on a '67 several years ago with these rust problems and almost none of the rust transferred to the chassis. When reinstalling used fenders be sure to coat this area well on both the fenders and chassis with paint or something like POR-15 to prevent future problems. Also, be sure to clean out the drain channel at the rear of the fender. Ed is correct about the alignment dowel near the front top of the fender. If the hole in your chassis doesn't line up with it you can either drill a new hole or remove the dowel. Finally, although any '65-68 SWB front fender will work fine on your car the '68 fender is slightly different from the earlier fenders. The fender lip (where it angles in toward the tire) is narrower than on '65-67 fenders. This was done to allow more clearance for the wider 5.5" wheels used in 1968. If your replacement fenders don't have this narrower lip you can trim yours back until it is about 1/2" wide to make it like a '68 fender...or you can ignore it. Another idea if you aren't worried about originality is to roll the fender lip for added tire clearance.