Normally, things like mismatched body panels don’t bother me. Witness the AMX, which has yet to be painted in one coordinated color scheme. But that wrong-year, wrong-shade-of-orange substitute front left fender on the Wagoneer got under my skin, so I knew I needed to take care of it sooner rather than later.
On a practical level, the replacement fender bothered me because I didn’t want to go find a marker lamp assembly that in no way matched the opposite fender, and I likely wouldn’t pass Vermont inspection with just a turn signal bulb hanging from a socket. On an aesthetic/OCD level, it probably bothered me because it was close to the Wagoneer’s Tawny Orange, but not the same shade.
Fortunately, after some searching, I came across a junkyard in Antelope, California, that advertised a rust-free, damage-free orange 1977 Wagoneer fender for a decent price. A week later and I had it in my grubby paws.
It took me nearly as long to unwrap it. Good job, junkyard shipping department.
A little bit of sunburn toward the front, but that’s okay. The matching cracked vinyl woodgrain and the included marker lamp and badges make up for that.
Yup, it’ll work.
Despite my best efforts to make this a simple bolt-off, bolt-on affair, I did have to remove the grille and headlamps, mostly to get access to the sheetmetal screws that a previous owner used in place of the nuts and bolts he should have used. With the grille off, you can see how the original sheetmetal stamping from 1963 remained in place and how Jeep simply covered it up with different grille designs over the years. I probably should have removed the driver’s side bumper end too, but given how out of whack it is from the tweaked bumper brackets, I had just enough room to slide the fenders around.
A closer shot of the damage hidden under the fender. I probably should have straightened it out while I had the fender off, but I’d likely just make it worse at this point. Plus, I was losing daylight. I did at least wipe off the accumulated dirt while I had the fender off. Fortunately, I didn’t spot any rust to speak of under the old fender.
New fender on and bolted in. I wrapped up the project just as dusk fell and only came away with a few extra nuts and bolts. The junkyard fender marker was cracked and unuseable, but it appears I can swap over one of several AMC passenger car side markers I still have in my parts bins.
Also, while it looks like it matches the faded Tawny Orange fairly well, I suspect this fender was originally Firecracker Red and somehow faded to a very similar shade of orange. Whatever – it looks much better now.
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