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Rear fender welding questions

1

109ace

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Fl
I cut my rear fender just past the pinch weld and right now I have a bunch of small spot welds holding the inner and outer fenders together. I had to put some sheet metal inside of a large gap that formed and welded that up. How much structural support does that part of the body have? I plan on putting more spot welds in there to make it stronger. Sorry i dont have any pics, camera is busted.
 
It would be best to fully weld the seam together. An alternative option would be to make a sheetmetal reinforcement that runs the whole length of the fender and rivet it in. That's kind of a difficult solution though.
 
I added more welds to the seam and while it is not fully welded it should hold up for now. Once I have the time I will fully weld the fenders together.
 
As long as you have a little bit of seam that is still together (hasn't seperated) you should be ok. I took a drill, and drilled about 25 tiny 1/8" holes all along the seam and then filled them in with weld. If you turn the heat up (be careful it's sheet) and wire speed down, it should "melt" them together better, rather than just make a pile of bird crap.
 
I didn't even think about drilling the holes and doing it that way. I needed to remove the seam but I was able to bring bend the inner fender in towards the outer and welded them together and made a new seam.
 
if you would search... i posted a solution not to long ago.....this is a common problem...

but since i am nice...


i would of tried brazing it... with welded.. you end up heating the sheet metal and almost warping it. you can also do this with brazing but you are able to control it a little better.
 
The rear quarter panel and wheel well seam/pinch weld does not provide any support does it? It looks as if its just there to seal off the wheel well from having any dirt, water, crap, etc. get up back behind the fender.

Basically isn't the wheel well there to be like the front plastic WW liner? to keep dirt and junk from getting stuck up in the fender? So if you are able to just seal the joint that should suffice?
 
if you still have the little flare built into the rear quarter panel or whatever you want to call it. it is just above the spot welds you cut past, if you still have that, drill it and rivet it end of story, cheap, easy and rivets are idiot proof. i am still the only person i have seen do this and it has held up for years. suprised more dont do it.
 
and the answer to that last one is no! if you dont do something, the two peices will start spreading apart as soon as you flex your rig.
 
Thanks for all the help. I have about 30 spot welds holding the two pieces together right now. I plan on sealing everything with some silicone to make sure crap does not get in there. First time welding sheet metal like this. In all, it turned out pretty good but if they welds break next time I go out then I will clean it up again and redo it. Once I improve with a welder, I will probably go over it again any way just to be sure.
 
I riveted mine and the body panels directly over those wheelwells are now by far the strongest body panels on the entire Jeep. It really added a lot of strength in that area - but I attribute that to the fact that I left the outer panel pieces long and folded them in on top of the extra pieces of sheetmetal I used to fill in every gap. So that seam is now three layers thick in places and stout as hell - and all held together with rivets for about 4 years now of hard wheeling.
 
If you have 30 spot welds in a span of about 2 feet, I think you'll be fine. If you look at how the rest of your rig is put together compared to that, you'll wonder how it's still in one piece! :eek:
 
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