Can This Rare 56-Year-Old Charger Fender Be Saved?

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]We've finished up the door. So that's the entire car from the doors back done.

[00:00:05]So we only have this front clip left to do. But it's a 56 year old fender. Mike calls it unoptanium. They don't repop these. So you cannot buy them brand new.

[00:00:13]You have to find an old used set. And in order to get a set of fenders, they're like seven or eight grand if you can find them. And generally they're in worse shape than this.

[00:00:25]Now we just got to grind this off and then it's filler time. All that work dragging the welder over for like less than 10 seconds of welding.

[00:00:43]All right, guys. So, um we've finished up the door. So, that's the entire car from the doors back done. So, we only have this front clip left to do. So, two fenders, a hood, and then there's a little veilance there underneath. I still have to go back and clean up the edges around my bodywork and stuff, but I'm going to leave that to um when I do my final before prime prep. But yeah, so we're working on this fender today.

[00:01:09]Going to continue on this side of the door. Uh this fender is actually the better of the two, but it's in quite rough shape now that it's on the car and formed. We fixed some of the major damage on this already. There was some damage back here and this was bowed out a little bit too much and this was kind of twisted. So, we've kind of got this back end figured out. Uh, but going along the top here, lots of tiny little dents.

[00:01:32]There's quite a big dent right here and a high spot. Lots of just like little dings.

[00:01:39]Some really sharp Audi dents. So, we'll have to fix that as well. But anyways, there's still a little bit of uh old primer on here. So, I'm going to start off by stripping everything down to bare metal. and out of all these tiny little dents, getting all um of the paint out of that so I can use the pin welder and hammer and dolly it and have a nice clean panel to do so. And we'll see how good we can get this fender cuz it is quite rough. But it's a 56-y old fender.

[00:02:09]U Mike calls it unoptanium. They don't repop these so you cannot buy them brand new. You have to find a old used set.

[00:02:15]And in order to get a set of fenders, they're like seven or eight grand if you can find them. And generally they're in worse shape than this. So happy that we have a good fender, but it still needs some work. There's also a really big crease here. I might end up having to weld up cuz it's such a hard gouge. So I'll pull it, see what it looks like.

[00:02:34]Um, but there is some thin area. Also can't really get into this nose cone area because of the inner structure. So we'll have to deal with a little bit of that. But that's what we're going to do today is have this really sharp crease here. Might have to weld up this corner edge because it is such a deep gouge, but we'll see. Nice high spot right there. And all through here, every one of these is a small dent. And we have a couple right on the body line. And some work has been done down here. And we've got some sharp out dents that we'll have to address.

[00:03:16]And all down here has already kind of been messed with. So that's what we will do. So I stripped the rest of any other crusty paint off here for the most part. And then I took the sand blaster to the deep gouges that I couldn't get to and any pitting that I saw or any dent that was like kind of too low to grind out. There's another crease here. So we got quite a few pins to put on. I might try to hammer and dolly this one actually cuz it's easy to get to. But I'm going to start here at the front, I think, and start pulling this deep gouge. That's what I'm going to use a pin welder for because um the inner nose of this is uh in the way. Like there's a hole in. So, I might be able to get uh a spoon up into there, but I'm not quite sure. So, we're going to start off with some pins.

[00:04:18]I've gotten this pretty good actually now. Um, up here where that inner structure is, I did put a couple pins that there's very soft crease there. So, I put a couple pins there. Um, everything's looking really good. but right here in this spot. Um, another trick that you guys can do is take a block with some aggressive grit and go like this on your panel and it'll uh make the high spots a little bit more shiny and the lows look dull in comparison. So, you can kind of see it that way if you're having trouble uh finding your dents. But when I do that, and I can feel it, too, but I think right here might have a little bit of excess metal now. um and it's not much, not enough for a shrink. So, what we're going to do is actually use this tool um called a shrinking hammer. And so, as you guys can see, this side of the face is serrated and this one's flat. So, this serrated one, when you hammer the metal and sandwich it between the dolly and this, it kind of almost puts tiny dimples in it and tightens up that metal. So, this is good if you have just a little bit of excess metal that um you need to get rid of. I don't use one of these very often, but they are quite handy. And honestly, I forgot they existed until the other day. Um so, yeah, I'm just going to take my hammer on dolly.

[00:05:43]All right, we're going to call that good on this crease. I'm happy with that.

[00:05:47]I've just got a little bit of a bend here in my bottom uh piece of metal. So, I'm just going to use the flat side of this block and work that back up.

[00:06:13]All right, getting the welder pulled over here was a little bit of a challenge, but the shop is looking more clean, which is good for Mike than for work.

[00:06:26]Um, yeah. So, we're just going to weld up. There's like I don't know, not even a half an inch there where it's pretty gouged. I know that the metal is going to be thin there because of like how like dug out it is. So, uh, I'm just going to weld it up so we don't have a weak spot.

[00:06:45]Now I just got to grind this off and then it's filler time. All that work dragging the welder over for like less than 10 seconds of welding.

[00:06:54]My big polisher again. So all these little spots that I sand blasted, I I can't bond over the sand blasted stuff cuz it doesn't have the right grip. So I'm just going to quickly just stuff it up.

[00:07:15]I'm just going to get set up to put on some filler now. Um, we're going to start on the top section and work our way down and see how much we get done.

[00:07:24]All right. So, I'm just mixing up a little bit of Marg glass. Again, I'm just going to do my gaps. Um, I'm just going to do the cowl and down the door.

[00:07:31]I'm not going to do it to the hood um because those meet up pretty well and I have to change the hinges to the hood.

[00:07:37]So that might change. But um if there is any like variation between uh this fender and the hood and put the new hinges on um I can fix the top of it when I launder the hood. I'm going to put a little bit of Marglass here.

[00:07:53]There's a little bit of rust pitting.

[00:07:55]Um, I've sandlasted this area and the pits don't go all the way through, but anywhere where I see like a little bit of pitting, I always like to put this stuff as well.

[00:08:16]All right. Now, we're just going to sand between our two panels.

[00:08:51]All right, guys. Uh the top side of this fender is done and it feels really nice.

[00:08:57]Looks pretty good. Um so now we're going to start working uh down in this bottom.

[00:09:01]Just going to give it a skim. Probably check what time it is. Uh but yeah, this is really quick. So let's see if we can knock the bottom out as quick as we did the top.

[00:09:16]ALL RIGHT, GUYS. THIS FENDER IS FINISHED.

[00:09:30]MIGHT STILL DO A little bit more sanding down there, but um basically done anyways. Looking pretty good. Um I still got to clean up my edges and like cut them out with the grinder. All the actual body work is done for now. It's the end of the day, but tomorrow hopefully I'm going to work on that other fender, get that out of the way, and then it's just a hood, and then we should be able to maybe prime this week.

[00:09:52]But we will see what the rest of the week looks like. But stay tuned. Thanks for watching, and don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe.