66-67 Dodge Charger Source Guide
Fenders
Replacing a Quarter Panel
| Posted by Bob C. on 04/04/06
Last year I purchased JCW quarters for mine. Auto Body Specialists literally talked me out of getting theirs. The guy I spoke to there said they wern't very good. Call them, they're happy to explain. As for JCW, at the time, Whitney had a shipping special, so I got some off there. But the alternative was $500 each side, used from Texas or Arizona for quarters he was only going to use a piece of anyway. Mine were $99 each, I "think" the total was something like $230 to the body shop. When they arrived they looked fine and my guy said the thinkness was, in his words: "pretty darn close". Were they perfect ... no. There was some cutting and shaping he said but overall, they came out great. As always the key is getting a good body guy to make sure they fit. You can see all that he used below.  |
Putting the Body Parts Back Together
| Posted by Andy
on 06/10/03
When I put mine together I set up the doors first. Got them to close real good and hold an even gap. I put a strip or two of masking tape along the edges of the panels for the preliminary fit to offer some nick protection. Run the tape over your jeans to get it full of lint so it doesn't stick real good. Don't want to lift any paint. When removing the tape, pull it backward over itself, not straight up off the panel. Next I put the fenders on and lined up the backs of them with the doors. I left the fronts of the fenders loose. They ended up fitting closer to the cowl than the doors did. I had to loosen the hinge-to-door bolts and slide the doors out away from the car to get the door skin to line up with the fender skin. The cowl gaps ended up smaller for the fenders than the doors, but that's the trade-off I took. If the gaps are even, the body skin wouldn't line up. The next thing I did was to install the hood. I measured the gap at the backs of the fenders to make sure I had room for it. Then installed the hood and SLOWLY lowered it time after time until I found a good fit between cowl gap and fender spacing. I squared the hood to the cowl first and then brought the fronts of the fenders in to meet the hood. Since you have the hood on now, no big deal. I would just do the doors next and the fenders last. I know that it did take a lot of tweaking to get it looking good. I was never able to just put one panel on and consider it done. The next panel made me adjust the last a little. The body lineup wasn't as bad as fitting the upper side window seals and getting the roll-up windows to seat properly. That was a job!! Good luck! Enjoy! This is one of the most gratifying periods of putting that baby together. |