Fender help!

[Tad.]

Could anyone help me out with body work? No prior exp. replacing fenders. I've got the understanding, just wonderin if anyone's got a "Replacin Fenders for Dummies" piece of knowledge they'd like to share with me. I understand shimming an what not. I just wanna be more confident. I'll be replacing the fenders on my 74 I just picked up. Anything I should be sure to not do when removing? Any warnings for the replacement process? Thanks.

[gildardo01]

step one... night before spray wd 40 on all the bolts... its going to make life better the next morning when your trying to remove the fender... and there is no need to remove the hood... just keep it lifted on a 2 by 4 in between the hood and the radiator support... oh and a jack stand underneath the bottom corner of the grill/radiator support... these tips work for me... hope they work for you too... i know other members will also come up with useful tips...

[thirsty]

If you care about the paint on the door mask off the leading edge before removing the fender. Same for the new fender if it is painted. It's easy to make a mistake and chip paint.

[fitz]

  I'm sure some guys could just place all the bolts/shims on the air cleaner as they remove them and remember what goes where, not me.
  I take a shoe box and use it as miniature truck nose to keep the bolts/shims organized.
Draw a wheel on the 2 sides, write hood on the top, and grill on the front. As you remove a bolt from the truck, find the appropriate spot on the shoe box, poke a little hole in the cardboard, and stick the bolt in it. Nothing like a little model to show what goes where.
  Also work on 1 side at a time.

[bake74]

     Patients, Patients, Patients, take a break and get some air.  Patients, Patients, Patients, and more Patients.
     Don't rush your self, and as Fitz said, organization is a wonderful thing.  Good luck and after wards you can say you know how to change a fender.   

[firefighter]

Below is a copy and paste of what I wrote about a year ago when I was installing the fenders on my truck rebuild project.
I'm not a body man and I learned a lot when first trying to align my fenders to the doors and radiator support. You'll get it, it's just a bit of experimenting.

I just wanted to share with you how I went about lining up the fenders to the doors in case someone else is going to do this.
I had started another thread in the body section of our site and got some great tips about how and what to do, and those tips really helped me.
Let me first say I already had the doors adjusted and gapped before I painted them or the cab. After the painting was complete, all I had to do is lift them up in place and knock in the hinge pins. Those went back on very easily.
When I installed the drivers side fender last night I got the gap between the fender and the door pretty good, but that left the front of the fender about 1" low in the front. I really had to torque and flex the fender in the front to get it to line up with the radiator support. I saw no other way.
Then I learned what really needed to happen. I found out I needed to shim up the front of the cab. I would have had no idea to do this unless someone had mentioned it in the other thread I had started. You guys are awesome!!
The only thing that had me concerned is that when I had just the fenders lightly bolted on, it seemed they were sitting different than each other. The drivers side seemed like it was sitting low at the bottom and just the opposite for the passenger side.
Well tonight I found out why and then all of this made sense.
The first thing I did was to totally level the front and rear of the truck. Since my garage has floor drains, the concrete is sloped a bit in places. I just added shim material under the tires until the suspension was earth level. Then I double checked and confirmed the frame was level left to right also.
This is where I found out that my cab was about 5/16" lower on the drivers side than it was on the passenger side. Why? I have no idea. The chassis was perfectly level but the cab was not. I don't know if the problem is in the cab or the frame mounts but it didn't really matter. I had to fix it. I just got some 1/2" ID fender washers and placed them between the body mount and the cab. This now leveled the cab with the frame.
This made perfect sense why my drivers side fender had such a gap at the bottom, but the passenger side did not. When I installed the passenger side fender tonight, it aligned just like clockwork. After I take the drivers side fender off for paint, I'm really convinced when I put it back on, it will line up a whole lot easier now that I've raised that side of the cab.
Anyway, I just thought I'd share this in case someone else runs into this, or wants to install their own fenders, on their truck rebuild.
Having the cab square and level is very important. Knowing what to do if the fender to door gaps aren't correct is just as important.
All these things combined can make installing fenders a whole lot more enjoyable.

[Tad.]

Thank a lot gentleman. I will let everyone know how it goes when the tax return comes in. Thanks again.