Bluegirl77

I think I'm starting to develop a hairline crack along my rear fender. Anyone have any suggestions how to stop it and how to prevent any new ones? The car was painted by the previous owner about two years ago, so a new paint job wasn't really in my immediate plans!

The car is and always has been garage kept, so I don't think the crack is caused by weather/extreme temp changes.

Thanks for your help!

vettfixr

Hi Krista
What you're seeing is the seam that runs along the top of each fender separating where the bonding joins the two panels. I wish I had better new for you but the only way to fix this is to grind the seam in a V shape on both panels and bond the two panels together with fiberglass and resin. The joining compound that was used on these cars gets old and dries out and cracks. If you're seeing it on one fender it's probably going to happen on the other three soon. A lot of people think they can fill these in with bondo and then shoot paint over the car. This only hides the problem. I learned this the hard way. I stripped and painted my 74 and repaired the cracks with filler. Sure enough two years down the road all the cracks showed up again and it was back to stripping and bonding with fiberglass and a repaint. The good new is that was about 8 or 10 years ago and the cracks haven't come back. Wish I had better news for you. :(