Im having a hell of a time getting the front fender off, I have the factory service manual out and it is showing only a couple things holding it on? I have them out but it still doesnt wanna budge? Help if you can

I like sitting here on the computer in the ac, but my truck is in the garage waiting on me

Dave

 

anyone take the fenders off before?

 

do you have the headlight out...

I've never had the fender off a second gen dodge but since nobody else is piping up I'll try. The only body work I've dont before was on hondas and s10 chevys... each of those the front fender was held in behind the headlight... on these the headlight is part of the fender I wonder if there isn't something holding it right to the core support.

 

Dieseldave has had his off and i believe he said that they are spot welded to the inner fender.

 

PM sent Dave...I will take some pics if you run into problems...

 

Dave...In my PM,I said about two bolt one on top of each other about 6 inchs apart.Here is a pic.The bracket just in the middle of the fender towards the top of the hood( i circled the bracket and lines to the bolts)...Hope this helps..


Edit....Also included another pic with the other bolt locations

 

I'm having the same issue today... It looks like the fender is spot welded along the inner seam (behind the plastic tub that you have to take out)... I plan on drilling out the spot welds with a #10 and then when I go to reinstall it I'm going to either use pop rivets or hi-locks to hold it in place.

Johnny

 

Geeez!!! There are about 500 spot welds on this fender... I decided to just take the inner and outer off together... which is going to be a HUGE mess because everything on that side of the truck is bolted to the frakin' fender... UGH!!!

So much for my quick and easy repair on my truck... looks like I'll be commuting on my 2 wheeler for a couple of weeks while I deal with this mess.


Cheers

 

Yep John...I went through it also......When I replaced my fenders with aftermarket...They are a pain..

 

Well, I finally got it all done... managed to squeeze in a few days to yank off the old one and throw on a "new" one... here's a tip for the Do-It-Yourself-er types like me... DO NOT try and repair a mangled fender unless you really have about a bazillion hours to spend on it and have NO other options... OMG!!! I got through about half the spot welds on my old fender to pull it apart and straighten it out before I said Fk-It and went and pulled a fender off a truck that was being parted out... it only cost me $75 and about 2 weeks of looking on "craigslist" to find one that would work... And then it cut my repair times down to zip... I probably should have squirted it with a rattle can while I had it off, so it would paint match, but I was in a hurry...

That's my 2 cents on fender repairs (FWIW)... it's easier to do a bolt on fender than to split the 3 pieces of sheet metal to make repairs... just keep your eyes open and you can find body panels near any major city.

If I can make this old war-wagon last me for 2 more years, I'm going to retire the pickup body and start an engine swap into an old Ford 2 door drop top I found ('48 ragtop)... It's gonna be really cool when it's done (about 5 years from now... LOL).

J

 

Also... FWIW... The pipe bumper on my truck probably saved my life... I hit a telephone pole at about 60 mph (wet road, swerved to avoid a collision, went through a couple ditches and stopped when I cut the pole in half)... The really cool thing was that as "mangled" as my truck was, I was able to drive home from the crash (since the other driver didn't stop, I didn't see a reason to wait for the cops to give me a hard time and keep me out in the rain for 2 or 3 hours... "protect and serve" my ***)... Anyway... just my 2 cents... these bumpers are about $650 brand new (mine is a bosshog brand, hencho in mexico) and it saved my bacon and my 12valve.

One "word" of advice/warning about them ... I'm going to switch to mounting hardware that will stretch more... the grade 8 bolts tore through the frame... and I'm also welding the new bumper in place (probably several short edge welds) to prevent it from rotating in place about the hardware ... which is what peeled the frame like a banana... it'll probably cause more buckling, but I'd feel safer with it staying attached if I got into another nasty wreck and just total out the truck.

J