Considering that this is easily my busiest week of the year with catering, I decided that a shop night was in order to help ease my mental state. Chris was on board so we decided to tackle the fender modification. The front axle will be moving forward (really soon) 8", so the solution to the fender lip problem is to do what most guys did in '65 and just slash away the offending area or move the whole wheel opening. The first option is quick and easy but I think it looks like shit. On the plus side it does leave lots of room for fender well headers but I just can't get over how half-assed it all looks. Moving the entire wheel opening is what the factory AWB cars got and if you look at cars like Landy's Dodge, the Melrose Missile and many others then you can see how clean and proportionate everything looks. This is what we're doing.
The wheel opening itself will only get moved 6" but this will still be plenty of room for the 8" axle shift and also leave enough room for some nice looking dumps behind the wheel. The fender is of course not a perfect square but tends to taper and curve in various places so the car doesn't look like a shoe box. These obstacles took some careful measuring and planning before we decided to slash and burn.
Once the entire opening was removed including the front 6" section that would be discarded, we could commence tacking in the now new forward arch. The rear section gets filled with new sheet metal and the whole thing will be made pretty (some day) with a good dose of Bondo.
Here you can see it with the wheel mocked up in it's new proximity. Now who's the clown car?
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