Are 88 fenders and doors any wider than 83's . I have an 83 firebird and the front bumper is the from of an 88 trans am. The bumper and fender are perfectly flush where they meet but the fender is approximately 1/2 inch wider than the door thus creating a gap. Are new style fenders and doors wider causing the gap? any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

Ah Ha!

Restoration shops sell 82-84 and 85-92 fenders. I have '84 front fenders on my '86. The doors are '84 units, and the bumper's an '88.

I had to notch my passenger side fender mounting holes to get the fender to align to the frame. I wonder if that's what you need to do? You're saying you have a 1/2 inch gap between the door and fender, right? Now, I also had intensive frame work done, so our situations could be very different.

There's a normal adjustment available with the fender. If you loosen all the fender-to-frame mounting bolts, you'll see that you can slide the fender front-to-back, and out-to-in (from the frame). It could be that you just need to loosen the fender bolts and tap the fender back a bit.

There's also a normal adjustment built into the door-hinge-to-body bolts. You can loosen all six, and slide the door front-to-back.

Keep in mind that if you undertake this, you must be careful of a few things. The door-to-fender gap changes as the door opens. Make the gap too tight and your door will crush the fender. The fender/bumper/hood also align to the flip-up headlights, and that gap (most importantly the innermost edge of the flip-up panel) also narrows as the headlights open. The name of the game is to check clearance at all stages of the panel's motion before tightening bolts.

Did a body shop do the work? If so I'm surprised they didn't play with it more.


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-Tom P (Hot rodded 1986 Firebird 2.8l) from http://www.f-body.net/mailbag/3rd/3rd_mailbag.html message boards
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