My first car was a '66 Belvedere. 10 years of winter driving on the heavily salted roads of upstate NY turned it into a major rust bucket. Front fenders flapped in the breeze, and the rear fenders were so badly gone you could see through to the trunk! I didn't care, I was 16, it ran, and I had visions of freedom from depending on someone else for a ride.
My Dad had other "visions". He thought I should learn some good old "body and fender repair techniques" from him. One day he comes home with a big used five drawer filing cabinet and a gallon of roofing tar. "What's that for?" I ask
. "That" he says pointing to the filing cabinet "is what we are going to make your "new" rear fenders and trunk extensions with" (I'm not making this up!). I'm 16, I don't know any better so I say "okay, if you say so."
Over the next few weeks, he makes a template of what he thinks the wheel opening and lower fender from the back of the wheel opening to the bumper should look like. Then we cut "new" fender skins out of the sides of the filing cabinet using the template and then did the same for the trunk extensions. Next he has me cut as much of the rust out of the rear fender and wheel opening as I can up to the pronounced horizontal body crease line above the wheel opening but "be sure to leave an inch for riveting." We then coated the inside of the "new" fender skins and trunk extensions with roofing tar, mounted them up, and began riveting them on being sure to use a lot of them "cause the metal we're attaching them to might not hold." Once we had them mounted he had me use about a gallon of Bondo to "blend" them in with the horizontal body crease line. When I was done and they were primed he exclaimed "good as new!" It was pretty obvious that they had been fabricated being that they hung straight down instead of curving under the car. The good thing was that at least you couldn't see into the trunk anymore and I didn't have to worry about my jack and lug wrench falling out by the roadside!
The picture below is a close representative of what my rear fenders looked like before the "body and fender repair" exercise but mine were actually worse. Unfortunately, I can't currently locate any pics of the before and after actual job. Once again, I got to tell you, I'm not making this stuff up, this is how he had me do it - my first personal "hack job" and it was a doozey!
