Rear fender repair

jopat86 · 02-26-2010, 01:00 AM

Have a '60 with a rear passenger side fender that bulges out at the top of the wheel opening.
Looks like it might have been hit in the rear bumper area and tweaked the body a bit.
I've seen in books to fix you cut vertically up the center of the wheel opening 6 or 7 inches and re-form panel back to orig and make a bonding strip at the cut.
Is this a good idea? Don't want to cut anything unless I have to.
Car is stripped of paint, orig, no flares or anything, just a noticabe bulge and only on that side.
Any ideas?

jrm747 · 02-26-2010, 09:29 AM

you might wanna have the rear checked to make sure its not still pushed in. i am new to corvettes really. i have done paint and body for awhile, so i am not sure what is behind the fiberglass panels as far as support. but if any of it is still pushed forward, it will hold the outer panel with it. and some of the bulge may go away if that is the case. if thats not the case, then i would say that cutting thru the center of the bulge and getting it back in the right shape, then glassing it back together from the inside and out would work.

zwede · 02-26-2010, 12:48 PM

I would think a hit that was strong enough to bulge the quarter like that would have caused quite a bit of other damage. Here's a picture of my '71 after such a hit. The left quarter had a bulge above the wheel.

My point is that if there's a bunch of other damage that was repaired badly, you probably have stress on that panel causing the bulge. Remove the stress and it should return to its proper shape. That would probably involve separating the panels at the bonding strips and then re-bond them.

Pictures of the car would help.

DUB · 02-26-2010, 07:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwede

My point is that if there's a bunch of other damage that was repaired badly, you probably have stress on that panel causing the bulge. Remove the stress and it should return to its proper shape.

.

If you have it stripped down to bare fiberglass...and the body panels appear to look the same as the side that does not have the "buldge". And by that I mean no evident panel replacement with different adhesive, etc. I would have to say that you have a frame issue...possible causing the panel to "bunch up" and create that "buldge"...but yet not be so severe that you have serious cracking. Inspect your trunk area carefully for seperation, cracking or delamination of body panels. A careful inspection of bumper brackets and body mount bolts from the good side to the "buldged" side would possibly further gain you information on what is causing this issue. Sometimes you can detect a shift in these mounting bolts from an impact.

You could...possibly loosening the bolts that hold the body to the frame may help in relaxing this condition. IF you find that you can loosen these bolts...and the body does not go right back into position immediately...and the buldge is still there (but has lessened)...then you may need to apply some heat ( heat lamps) to the rear area so it can further relax back. the press molded fiberglass of your era of Corvette can be shaped with heat...just as long as it is not to HIGH of heat. I have done this in the past...and know that it works..instead of trying to adjust problems when the body is really cold.

Once again...without good photo's...all I am doing is throwing out ideas of what it possibly could be...seeing how I (we) have no way of seeing how bad the buldge really is. But a buldge is usually stress related ...that is still under stress and has not yet been released.

"DUB"

DUB · 02-26-2010, 07:06 PM

zwede,
Photo's of damage like you posted just makes a person wanna cry out and bite nails in half. Hopefully no one was in the car when it was damaged.....and I hope you got it all back together again.
"DUB"

porchdog · 02-26-2010, 07:45 PM

there is a lot of steel behind the bumper on a 60. if it is bent and the bumper snugged up it can cause this bulge . unbolting the bumper is the fastest way to check it. there can be shims in there that are left out on a redo. hope this helps.

zwede · 02-26-2010, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DUB

zwede,
Photo's of damage like you posted just makes a person wanna cry out and bite nails in half. Hopefully no one was in the car when it was damaged.....and I hope you got it all back together again.
"DUB"

Yeah, it wasn't one of my better days when that happened. I was in the car, no injuries. I have high-back C4 seats in it which I think helped prevent whiplash.

It's being put back together. We ended up replacing the entire body behind the doors. Then while we were at it (!) the front surround and left fender (old damage badly repaired in back in the 70's-80's).

DUB · 02-27-2010, 06:34 PM

zwede,
I am glad to read that you did not get hurt. And from the photo's ...it appears that you really got into getting everything fixed all at the same time. I have been there before( repairing one extensively) and I know that nothing feels better when the job is all done and all of that hard work shows in the final end product. NICE JOB!!! In one of your photo's...you just gotta love the person who invented the "saws-all".
"DUB"