Fender work

I've been working on the fiberglass fenders, trying to get them to fit nice and even. Turns out it's quite a bit of work! They were just bare skins without any bracing and were really flexy, so I've fabricated some alloy mounts for the front which will also serve as the base for whatever head light setup I end up using.

I cut the rear braces out of my old junk fenders, sand blasted them, drilled and cut them down for a bit of weight savings, and painted them.

With the help of rad weta workmate Joaquin we glassed the braces into the fenders. This was my first time working with fiberglass, and it turned out great. The fenders are nice and rigid now, and I can at last begin to bolt them on to the car properly. It's still gonna be lots of work to get them finished though, getting them to match the door edge, hood edge, valence, header panel, the body lines down the side, and level from side to side has proved to be pretty damn tricky!

I cut the flange off the fiberglass fenders where they bolt to the inner fender as they didn't line up very well and would have needed a lot of work to get right. I replaced them with these alloy 90° pieces, which I drilled and trimmed to fit, and bonded and riveted them on. As far as weight savings go, one of the old stock fenders weighed 14.2kg, and one of these glassed fenders weighs 8.4kg.

The old fenders make nice garage decorations though, and a place to put some of the piles of stickers you get with new parts.