fender gaps/alignment

[gono]

I'm doing a pre-assembly of my front end of my 55' 3100 and was surprised how bad the gaps appear to be. Any suggestions or comments? As a side note, I'm pretty sure that neither the door or the front fender are the originals. I've gone through several donor trucks and pillaged the good sheet metal to get where I'm at.


So this picture is sideways but the bottom of the front fender is touching the rocker panel and just above, there is about a 3/8"-1/2" gap. As it gets towards the top of the fender, it just about touches the door. Ahhhhhh!!

[OKGMC4]

Those are normal gap problems on these. I had to add metal with bar stock and a welder and then grind it smooth on the door gaps, and the fenders I cut the bottoms and then shotened them to get them right. I had one guy tell me sometimes the fenders are too flat and that rolling them helps (bowing them out at the bottom). These trucks just never fit right from the factory. Any of these trucks you see that fits "right", thats what the owner had to do to get it there.

[Kim57]

What OKGMC4 said.
It takes hours of work to get the gaps on these old trucks right.
Kim

[Chevette]

What OKGMC4 and Kim said. If I remember correctly, I think Kabwe did a real good show and tell on that subject. You may want to view his build. I have seen some TF's that look incredibly good, but only after many hours of work. Too bad the factory hadn't taken a bit more care. That being said, the were considered "utility vehicles" back then ......fit and finish was not an issue, I suppose.

[OrrieG]

I can help with the top pic. If you are not using the fenders that came with the truck you may need to massage the cowl under neath where the inner vertical bracket sits. When they started assemblying the TF trucks they found that the bracket stuck out too far and hit the side cowl at the top rounded part. Rather that retool the doors or cowl they jus issued the assemblers a big hammer and had them dent the cowl until the fender fit. My fenders had never been off of my truck and I wondered why that area was so beat up. Luckily I found a thread from a guy that had taken a lot of trouble to fix his, even though you never see it, only to have to beat them back to pull the fender in. I have a photo but could not find it. If your fenders came from a different truck they may not of required as much relief or the guy on the line was feeling lazy.

As for the rest of the gaps all the farmers cared about was the doors staying shut. It seems you can get three good and there is always the fourth that is bad. I don't worry about it but there are plenty of threads about grinding, cutting, adding material to get them right.

something else that will show up is the back of the lower front fender is longer and mounts below the sill that it is supposed to line up with. If you shim up the fender, the top is out of alignment. Some repop fenders also have the wrong radius, you have to notch and re weld the inner brace to get it to fit.