Brian had an unsavable passenger side fender, so he found a 2A fender that met his needs and shows us what he did to fix it.  Thanks Brian!

Brian writes, ” The red fender, the original driver’s side 3b fender, was just more than I wanted to tackle. The yellow 2A fender had a useable top, but an inner wall that was gone.  Since I planned to removed the battery box portion of the fender anyway, the 2A fender fit my needs perfectly.”

“After I cut away the bad metal, I used a spot weld removal bit (here’s an example bit) to separate the pieces. (See the Early Cj2a page) I used the removal bit with my hand drill when I was working on the tub, but this time I used the drill press — much easier. One tip I learned was to look for a puff of rusty dust coming off the work piece, which indicates you through the first layer of material.”

As I mentioned earlier, my goal was to remove the bulge for the battery box. As a part of this process, I had the local fabrication shop bend a new inner piece.  Next, I used zip screws to reassemble the three pieces.

Here is an image of two holes ready to be welded. Not having a spot welder, I used my MIG. Both holes had #8 zip screws in them and both holes were counter sunk for better penetration of the weld. The hole on the left is perfect, but the one on the right is a little deep.

With the welding complete, there’s a good deal of grinding to be done.  Still, in the end, I needed to add a little filler to the fender.

Here’s why I removed the battery box. I need as much shock travel as possible and used tall shock towers to accomplish that task.  After considering my options, I chose shock towers for F-350 & F-250 (The part# is E5TZ-18183-A) that only cost $19.00 each (new) at the dealer. The fit well, but I still had to take some of the angle out of them by slitting the sides at the bend and then welding them back together.

Here’s a good look at the final clearance.  I have about 1/2″ between the fender and mount, which should be plenty.