Project Rebirth: Passenger Side Fender
Project Rebirth:
Passenger Side Fender
I liked this picture so much, I had to share it first. A Camaro with one foot in the air!
7-30-2005:
I should be ashamed of myself (but I'm not). It has taken over a year for me to find my way into my garage and pick up a tool to work on the Camaro. But one thing led to another and I kept putting it off (heck I had some vacation time I took earlier this month and I ended up spending almost all of it finishing up on re-modelling my kitchen).
But here it was, a comfortable Saturday (and I decided earlier in the week come Hell or high water, I'm working on the Camaro). I had a simple goal, get at least one fender off. Now, keep in mind, I have never removed exterior body panels from any cars before, so I pulled out the Helms shop manual and checked out what they had to say on the matter. Overall, piece of cake. I took my time (and I found it too me longer then it should have, but that's OK).
Now, I say this was a piece of cake, but really, something had to go wrong somewhere, right? I mean, most of the years this Z28 was on the road, it saw good northern Ohio salt, snow and ice. Well, I did have minor issues, but nothing that slowed down my goal. I snapped two studs to a re-placable bracket and I had to cut the head of a bolt off. The studs that broke were instant and effortless, apply a little torque (expecting to break the nut free) and WHOOPS, the stud snapped instantly. With a shrug I just said "I'll have to replace that". The bolt was a different issue, but nothing of a big deal. The bolt in question goes through a nut welded to the body on the lower back of the fender. I could not get it to free, so I applied a breaker bar and a lot of weight behind it (figuring I did not care if the bolt head broke off). Instead the welds holding the nut to the body broke free. That's why I had to cut that one off.
After making my goal of removing the fender, I ran out of play time and had to close up the garage and clean up. But of course, I had to take some pics first. This is not much progress, but it was progress.
Here are a couple of shots from behind the fender!
A shot of the rust on/around the battery tray
A couple quick shots grazing the under side of the strut towers/apron
Hmmmm, yeah the body shop that last painted my Camaro sorta missed a spot!!
The years of sitting have not been kind to the breaks
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