The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Cracked Fenders!

Both front fenders on my 42 have cracks about 8 inches long. What is the best way to fix this and what causes these fenders to crack like that?
Thanks in advance.

I had cracks in the fenders of my Willys Jeep that seemed to be caused by vibration and hitting the occasional tree. I fixed them by drilling a hole at the top of the crack (to relieve stress and stop it's spread) and then brazed the crack shut. That was before I had a mig welder but it held up fine. Now that I have the welding outfit I would probably weld the crack shut and grind it level.

The fenders are hung in such a way that they get exposed to quite a bit of stress and eventually they fatigue and crack. An extra brace rod or two may help a lot.

I remember some discussion here a loooong while back about the possibility of the front fenders actually having welds as part of their forming. Seems to make sense that the welds would be the weak spots...right?

If the surround metal is in good shape, butt welding them back up should be no problem for someone experienced in patch panels, etc.

-Boyo

Are thet in the middle starting from the wheel well and moveing up ?

The "weld" would not be the weak spot, it would be the metal right next to the weld that is weakened. DO NOT braze it, brazing needs flux, flux is acid and it is very hard to get it all out of there before painting. A brazed joint usually causes paint failures.

This is simply a vibration crack and unless you are going to drive the living hell out of the truck on poor roads and things like that, it will never happen again once it is welded.

To insure that it doesn't you could put a "backing" behind the weld made of a strip of sheet metal and weld through the crack into it.

Ron, yes they start in the middle and go up. They are slightly dented in this location also.

All of that vibration work hardens the metal , just like bending a peice of wire back and forth until it breaks. I'd welded mine up several times (I'm no expert) and it didn't finnally stop until I got another junk fender for a patch peice and replaced the surrounding metal with this "virgin" metal . It worked for me !

bear is right either braze them from the inside or mig them with solid wire and argon mixture donnot try with flux wire you will burn holes in the fenders.

Alan