1973 Mustang – Project SportsRoof – Fender Finding

If you look back at the video (to view click here) of the exterior walk around for my 1973 SportsRoof you’ll notice the two front fenders were, not perfect!!!

Right Side Fender – lots of crinkles, a few creases and good size dent.

Left Fender – major dent a lot of rebuilding

The right fender has some pretty sharp creases breaking the lines of the finder.  The belt line can be fixed  but it’s tough to get them back to the original look and I don’t want a ‘bondo’ build out.  The left fender is as bad, with that huge dent – almost completely straightening out the belt original fender lines.  Again these can be fixed but it takes a lot of work.  Additionally, I’m not even sure these fenders are original to the car – one appears to have holes consistent with a belt/side molding.

If you recall from earlier posts, the car came with two fenders.  Although a bit delayed getting into town they did arrive and I took a look at them.  I determined they were going to be as much work to fix as the fenders currently on the car.  That’s way I opted to not add to the clutter in my garage by dragging them home.

So that left me with attempting to find good original fenders or repros.   You’d think finding used fenders shouldn’t pose too big of an issue, Mustangs are everywhere, right?  True in many respects, however, the 1973 Mustang had unique fenders.  Often the 1971, 1972 and 1973 Mustangs are thought of as being the same car, but for 1973 the major difference is the change in bumpers that were Federally mandated.  For 1973 the Mustang got the urethane bumper and no longer required the filler panel, which the ’70-’71 fenders accommodated with 4 screw holes to attach the panel.

Given that, it’s no wonder that most of the used fenders will need a lot of work, if you do find them and I already have a set that needs repair.

So that leaves me with reproduction sheet metal.  There are a lot of forums out there that discuss the differences between ‘brands’ and I’ve done the research and the results were not conclusive.

There are 3 main providers of repop sheet metal, Dynacor, Legion (or Gold Legion) and Goodmark.  There’s a lot of discussion on which are the best, but apparently the all come from the same place in Twain.  Part of that discussion was that the manufacturer sells the sheet metal parts by quality grade and the above mentioned companies are some state what quality grade they will buy or have an exclusive deal to only get the top grades while the other companies are left to the poorer quality.  I don’t know how much truth there is to this, so it’s grain of salt time.   But the over all conciseness was that use parts would be better and the real difference for reproduced sheet metal comes down to the dealer’s customer service (read – return/replacement policy).

Even pricing varies by dealer.  Summit has fenders for my ’73 Sportsroof for $365, NPD has them for $392, Ohio Mustang Supply for $315 and Laurel Mountain Mustang for $294.00.  That’s a pretty good range.

I’ll let you know what I decide.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

#ProjectSportsRoof