Ron Reichhart repairs the rear fender of Joe's Townie
December 9, 200215 Images2020 visitsAlbum by Joe Cimoch
1 1963 Town Wagon passenger side fender. Typical rot.
2 Ron cuts out the rot, back to some solid steel. He left the bottom edge of the fender intact to use as a guide. He ground down the paint above the cut.
3 Ron using a flanging tool in his air tool. This makes a nice flange to weld into in very short time.
4 You can see the nice lip the tool creates. You can also see the badly rotted inner fender. Ron fabricated a piece of steel to repair the inner fender as well.
5 Ron sets a compass to get a distance from the bottom edge of the fender to the top part of the lip created by the flanging tool. This will be transferred to the donor fender later.
6 Ron with his 4 1/2" grinder mounted with a 3M disk used to grind off paint.
7 Back side of disk.
8 Face of the 3M disk. Ron says these come in 3 grits, available from welding supply houses.
9 Ron grinds the paint off a Dodge stepside rear fender donated by Eric B. The shape is almost identical to the Town Wagon rear fender. Stepside fenders from 53-85 should work.
10 Ron marks the fender with the compass he set from the Town Wagon fender.
11 Ron cuts along the pencil line he just made with the compass, using an air chisel.
12 Ron positions the donor fender into place using Vise-Grip clamps.
13 Ron used his mig welder to weld the panel in place. He stitched the panel, let everything cool down, then finished welding along the entire seam.
14 Grinding down the welds with a flap wheel.
15 Ron applying a coat of plastic filler. Nice job Ron, thanks!
