How hard have you found it to be (or not be) to reinstall and properly realign the fenders on these cars after you have removed them? Is it a nightmare, a hassle, or a piece of cake?

 

Depends on how picky you are.
If your doors arent properly aligned it will be difficult.
The fender gaps are easy to setup against the doors, its going to be making sure they line up well with the hood that will be hard.

 

I found this my friend, hope it helps.

"there's adjustments for the fender!! There's also adjustments for the hood!! Trust me, you can't just bolt on body parts and be done with it. I bet both of your frames are 100% fine, and you just never tried to align anything! So with that good news, here's what you do:

The top holes for the fenders are slotted, and the bolts ride on shims. This allows for the top of the fender to be pulled out or pushed in from the center of the car. From your picture, the "top" of the fender appears to be pushed way out from the center of the car. I bet when you close your hood, you've got a huge gap between your hood and the fender.

The bottom hole for the fender, between the bottom of the door and the front tire, also has an adjustment, IIRC. I think you can slide that bottom of the fender forwards or backwards. If not, slot that hole in the fender.

So to fix your car, you've gotta loosen the fender bolts, ALL of 'em. Wiggle the fender around at the top and bottom until you get an even gap. Then, repeat this for the driver's side fender. When everythign's aligned to the doors, tighten the fender bolts down, and re-check the doors to make sure nothing moved. REMEMBER, these are fender bolts going into shims, you don't need to crank them down and make them ultra-tight!!! You can screw up the shims that way. (Shim = movable "nut" for the fender screws.) You can buy new shims at any auto parts store, in the "Help!" section (red carded parts).

Now, gently try to close your hood. It might hit the fenders, that's why i say to gently close it. If it does hit the fenders, if you look closely at the hood lines, you'll probably see the hood is cocked to the side. You'll have to loosen the three fender bolts at the back of the fender, which loosens up the hood hinges. Then bump the bottom of the hood hinges with your hand (don't lose a finger if the hood comes down suddenly!) to move the hinges. Then re-try closing the hood. The hood can also be adjusted to the upper part of the hinge. When you get the alignment done, tighten the bolts back down, and try closeing the hood slowly again to make sure your adjustment didn't fall out of whack when you tightened the screws.

You might find, when you've got it all aligned, that the curve of the hood doesn't match the curve of the fenders. An example of a post with a problem like this is here: https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/show...hreadid=111061 This means you'll have to play with all of the rubber hood bump stops. There's two on the top of the radiator support. There's one each on the bottom of the hood hinge. There should be some elsewhere, I think there's even a few on the hood. Note that by playing with these, if you go too crazy, you might affect your hood latch's ability to keep the hood closed! That's alright, cause guess what, your hood latch is adjustable too.

I bet I just opened up a nightmare for ya, eh? Be glad you don't have a Firebird. On a Firebird, after aligning the fenders to the doors, and the hood to the fenders, it's not done. The flip-up-headlights have to be aligned to the fender, the hood, AND the front bumper!! It sucks. When I prepped my car for a Maaco paint job, it took me a few hours to get it all aligned.

Good luck! And I think technically this is a "body and interior" forum question, too "

 

Oh yeah, that was exactly what I needed to read. Thanks, man.