hood to fender gap
 

Working on a 1968 c10 and trying to get the aftermarket hood and fender to line up. Now i'm sure someone here has run into this before and i'm looking to find out what to do to fix the problem and make it look right

Re: hood to fender gap
 

Looks like the hood is the problem. Cut along crease until you reach the good gap. Bend out the side of the hood so gap is parallel. Weld in wedge shaped piece of metal to fill.

Re: hood to fender gap
 

I have re-pop fenders with an original hood on my 67. My gap in that area is about half as bad as yours. Also, the fitament and contour where the grill panel meets the fenders is just terrible. Inner fenders fit is equally bad and none of the Bolt holes lineup at all. Good fenders if you need to keep a beater truck on the road, absolutely junk for a restoration.With some welding and metal work in both areas I could probably get the new fenders to work but I decided against it. Searching for original fenders for mine instead.

Steve weim55 Colorado

Re: hood to fender gap
 

The repop fenders the PO used on my 67 Burban have a very similar misalignment. Both sides are wrong where the hood meets and the drivers side front curves don't match the leading edge of the hood..
I decided that it wasn't worth the 20 hours it was going to take to fix the problem and my efforts to find some reasonable OE fenders in time didn't pan out. Nowadays I barely notice it.

Re: hood to fender gap
 

Pretty common with repop sheet metal. If you want it right, you have to decide where to cut, bend, patch, etc. I would mount the grille and then decide where to cut and reshape to make things right. Not really too hard, just time consuming and a bummer for sure.

Re: hood to fender gap
 

This was the decision maker why I chose not to use the repop fenders. Look closely where the fender meets the grill panel at the top, you can get a straight line at the fender and hood but that makes it impossible for the nose peak to match the fender. Now look at the upper line of the cove where the grill panel meets the fender, The fender cove line is much too high. Now look at the cove line where it wraps around the headlight bezel, it does not have a gentle curve around the bezel as it should and the line is way off. Yes, it would be possible to cut and hammer dolly this correct, Hell I even contemplated cutting this area out of the original fender and welding it in. If it was just a single issue I would’ve fixed the new fenders but because there were so many multiple problems I wrote them off. I’m not picking on your truck HO455, In fact your truck looks damn nice. I don’t think I would’ve noticed any of that stuff on your truck as an observer. But as all you guys know when you’re actually putting this stuff together and see all the details as it’s coming together it’s hard to turn away from the stuff that isn’t right.

Steve weim55 Colorado

Re: hood to fender gap
 

Thanks for the compliment Steve! I'm not too worried about being picked on otherwise I wouldn't of posted. (Besides that is one of my favorite pictures. The sun setting with Mt Hood in the background and the truck freshly painted. Thanks for reposting it. :lol:) Hopefully it will help others decide if repop 67-68 fenders will work for them.
For me it came down to a bunch more body work and/or staying in the body shop until a hunted down some new fenders and had them prepped.
The truck actually had a steel cowl hood on it when I got it but it just exacerbated the problem but I stumbled across a guy who traded straight across for a stock GMC hood.

Re: hood to fender gap
 

my drivers side is not as bad, i can live with it. but passenger side needs something.

Re: hood to fender gap
 

To repair mine we felt the easiest way would to section the bad area out of the repop and replace it with an OE section.
You might try reposting this in the paint section and see if one of the experts there can help you with a plan.
Good luck. And let use know how you repair it.

Re: hood to fender gap
 

After studying the problem for a few days i decided to just fix it. I ran a weld bead along the fender and ground it down then took a file to make it true. Then removed some spot welds along the front of the hood and the side. I then lifted the hood just enough to slide a shim under the front radius to lift the metal just a little to compensate for the hood being rolled more than it should have been. I then tack welded the front lip back. I then added a thicker piece of metal to the side of the hood in order to narrow the gap. Ground everthing down till the gap was about where i thought it should be. On the other side i just ran a weld bead along the edge of the hood and ground it down to where i thought it look ok. Took a few hours but i think it looks so much better.

Re: hood to fender gap
 

Yes, it does look better. And, you did the right thing by fixing it. It's a bummer to have to do so much work on new panels, but that is just the way it is most of the time.

As a result, I usually use as much of the original panel as a I can. For instance, I am almost finished with my rust repair and repaint. For the inner fender that is missing below the battery, I plan on buying a new repop inner fender and grafting the front of it to my original inner fender. That way, I know most of it will fit properly.