1973 Camaro Type LT

Front Inner Fenders (July 27, 2007)

It has been a long time since my last update. I have been busy on the car, but not had the time to update the site. I should have a couple of updates in the next few weeks. This update is for the front inner fenders. Originally, I had three of them. I had the original pair off of my car and I had a spare left one off of a parts car that I grabbed some parts off of in 1989. I do not know what exact year that car was but it was between a 70 and 73. After inspecting the panels, I noticed that my two left panels had some subtle differences to them. The one from my car had added mounting holes and indentations for the charcoal canister and related hoses for the emissions system and an area for the windshield washer fluid. My parts car piece did not have these mounting provisions. I decided to go with the parts car piece because I like the smoother look. Also, I concluded that the right panel was rusted under the battery tray and I did not feel like repairing the rust so I bought a reproduction piece. The reproduction piece is decent except that the rear mounting holes are wrong. The repro piece had only two holes and old one had three holes in completely different places. I filled the two wrong holes by welding them shut and drilled out the three new holes.
The pictures below include comparison shots of the two left panels and of the factory right and reproduction panel. Also shown is the process of stripping and priming the panels with ZeroRust and the alteration of the right panel.

Status photos as of 7/27/2007:

Here is a picture of the front of the left inner fender from my car. Notice the indentation for the charcoal canister.	Here is a picture of the front of the left inner fender from the parts car. Notice that there is no provision for the canister

Here is a picture of the side of the left inner fender from my car. Notice the indentations for mounting the windshield washer bottle and running the vacuum lines for the charcoal canister.	Here is a picture of the front of the left inner fender from the parts car. Notice that there is no provisions for the windshield washer bottle and for running the vacuum lines for the charcoal canister

Here is a photo of both left inner fender wells. The one in front is the 73 unit the one in the back is off of the parts car.

Here are pictures of the original right side inner fender. As you can see from the photos, the front where the battery mounted is rusted. I decided to replace with a repro unit instead of repairing this one.

Here are a few photos of the left inner fender from the parts car that I am going to use. This is before I stripped it.

Here are a few photos of the left inner fender from the parts car that I am going to use. This is after I stripped it. After stripping the panel, I treated it with POR15 Metal Ready.


Here are both panels right before I coated them with ZeroRust. I sanded and scuffed the reproduction piece to give the paint a good surface to stick to.


Here are both panels with a couple of coats of ZeroRust on them.

Here is the difference between early and later 2nd generation front inner fenders. The later ones have two mounting holes and the earlier ones have three mounting holes in the back.	To make marking the holes easier, I cut a portion of the old inner fender out where the holes were to use as a template.

I laid the piece that I cut off the old inner fender on top of the new inner fender and marked where the holes should be.	Here are the markings for the new holes.

I used a 7/8 hole saw to drill the new holes. I then cut circles out of 18 gauge sheet metal to weld into the old unused holes and welded them in. You can see one of the patches in this picture.	Here is the inner fenderwell after I welded in the patches and ground the welds down smooth. I then put a coat of ZeroRust on the repaired area.

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